Vermont Secretary of State
Vermont Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Vermont Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Vermont Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Vermont's register is at bizfilings.vermont.gov, free and without an account. It is one of the few states that gets the default right, and one of the few that makes you prove you are human afterwards.
Contains, out of the box
Almost every state starts you on a narrow match. Minnesota stacks three narrow settings at once. New Hampshire, Wyoming and Michigan all default to Starts With.
Vermont defaults to Contains, the thorough one. A search for Acme returns companies with Acme anywhere in the name without you changing anything.
Starts With and Exact Match are there if you want to narrow. You will rarely want to.
Alongside the name you can search by record number, principal name, filing number or registered agent name, the last two from an Advanced Search panel. That makes Vermont one of a handful of states where you can look up a person rather than a company.
The robot check comes after you press Search
Not before. You fill the form, submit it, and then get asked to prove you are human.
It is a small thing and worth knowing, because a search that appears to hang is usually waiting for that rather than failing.
Read the record type column
Results give the business name, record number, record type, physical address and status.
The record type column is the one to read. Vermont mixes assumed names in with companies and labels them, so a hit may be a trading name rather than a company, and the two are not the same thing when you are checking whether a name is free. An assumed name in use still means somebody is trading under it.
The record, and the six people on it
Open an entity and Vermont gives you a great deal.
Record Information: business name, record type, election type, record number, record status, principal office and mailing addresses, initial filing date, and the foreign jurisdiction country and state where one applies.
Business Purpose with a NAICS code: 237310 Highway, Street, and Bridge Construction on the example record, which tells you more about what a company actually does than its name usually will.
Annual Report Information: report status, the date the reporting period opens, and fiscal year end month.
Registered Agent Information with agent type: the example shows a commercial agent marked Business rather than an individual.
Principal Information names every officer with a capacity and both a physical and a mailing address. The example record lists six: three directors, a president, a secretary and a treasurer.
Filing History lists each filing with its number, date, effective date and type, each with a download.
That is a fuller picture than most states give, and it is all on one page rather than behind tabs.
Who decides
The Vermont Limited Liability Company Act, 11 V.S.A. Chapter 25 sets the standard, and the Secretary of State applies it on examining the filing. Vermont cites that chapter against its own formation fee, which makes the connection easy to follow.
Before you rely on it
Leave the match on Contains. Vermont has already made the right choice for you.
Read the record type before concluding a name is free. Assumed names count.
Use the Advanced Search if your question is about a person: principal name and registered agent name are both searchable.
Expect the robot check after you press Search, not before.
Vermont filing facts
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Articles of Organization | $155.00 |
| Annual Report | $45.00 |
| Application for Reserved Name | $25.00 |
Check these against anything you read elsewhere. Figures of $125 to form and $35 a year circulate widely and are both out of date. The state's current schedule says $155 and $45. That is a 24% error on the formation fee and 29% on the annual, repeated across a lot of sites.
At $155 and $45 Vermont sits mid-table on both: more than Iowa's $50 to start, less than New York's real cost; more than New York's $9 biennial statement to maintain, less than DC's $300.
The register took 8,820 applications in the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, 35 a business day, up 15.4% on the year, 51st of 51 by volume.
What the register will not tell you
Vermont has 5,407 live registered marks, one of the smallest pools in the country, and the concentration in it is extraordinary:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| vermont | 630 | 699x |
| maple | 110 | 86x |
| mountain | 164 | 16x |
| coffee | 130 | 7x |
| green | 112 | 6x |
| good | 99 | 4x |
| life | 139 | 2x |
Vermont at 699 times the national rate is the steepest concentration of any word in any state we have measured, ahead of Wyoming's 503x, Hawaii's 438x and Nebraska's 341x. In a register of five thousand marks, six hundred and thirty of them contain the state's own name.
Maple at 86x is the second, and it is exactly what you would expect. Together with mountain at 16x and green at 6x, Vermont's trademark register reads like a description of Vermont.
The practical consequence is sharp: if your name contains Vermont or maple, assume the ground is taken. Very few states have a naming landscape this concentrated, and none has one this concentrated on words a Vermont business would naturally reach for.
Filing spreads more evenly than the words do: Burlington 17.0%, South Burlington 5.6%, Williston 4.8%.
What the Vermont portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Vermont Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Vermont are held by the Vermont Secretary of State, which maintains the public register this page searches, accepts new filings, and issues the certificates a bank or a counterparty may ask you for. Contact them directly for anything that has to be official.
| Business entity search | bizfilings.vermont.gov/business/businesssearch |
|---|---|
| Phone | (802) 828-2386 |
| Address | Business Services Division, 128 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05633 |
| Office hours | 7:45 a.m.-4:30 p.m. |
| LLC filing fee | $155 |
| Processing | 7-10 business days for mail filings, less than 1 business day for online filings |
The office handles registration, not disputes. If a name is already taken, they will tell you it is unavailable but not who holds it beyond what the public record shows, and they will not advise on whether your name infringes someone’s mark.
Common questions about Vermont business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Vermont?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Vermont does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: contains. A match means the entity is on file, and its status line tells you whether it is still active.
How do I verify a company is registered in Vermont?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get business name, record type and election type, record number and record status, principal office and mailing addresses, initial filing date and the foreign jurisdiction country and state where applicable. The status on the record is the one to trust: a dissolved company still appears in a search and still holds its name.
Does a clear search mean my Vermont business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Vermont register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Vermont Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Vermont in particular: it matches on Contains, so the default is the thorough one. What it puts in your way is a robot check that appears only after you press Search. Read the record type column: a good share of the results are assumed names, and an assumed name still occupies the name.
Can I look up who owns a business in Vermont?
The Vermont register shows the registered agent and, depending on the filing type, officers or organizers. It does not list members or shareholders for every entity, so the register identifies who accepts legal service rather than who owns the company.
How much does it cost to register a business name in Vermont?
Vermont Secretary of State charges $155 to file the Articles of Organization, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 7-10 business days for mail filings, less than 1 business day for online filings to process. Reserving a name beforehand is a separate and smaller fee. Confirm the figure with the state before you file: schedules move.
Sources
- Vermont business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Vermont Secretary of State, Business Services fees and statutes, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Vermont Secretary of State.
- Formation activity: Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics, retrieved via FRED at the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.
- Federal trademark data: United States Patent and Trademark Office, 3,374,058 live registrations cross-referenced against the state registers. Live excludes both abandoned applications and cancelled registrations.
- Office contact details: Vermont Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Vermont Secretary of State, Business Services fees and statutes.
- Naming statute: 11 V.S.A. 4005, published by the state.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.