Year One Is $0. Year Two Is Unpublished.

Bias, declared: California Registered Agent.ai publishes this page and sells a competing registered agent service. The case made below turns on a documented absence from Inc Authority's own site rather than on any assertion of ours.

The Free Year Is Not in Dispute

Purchased alongside an Inc Authority formation package, registered agent service costs $0 for twelve months. Our review looked specifically for the mechanism that usually offsets an offer like this, a setup charge, a truncated term, a clawback on early cancellation, and did not find one. For a California founder managing a constrained first-year budget, twelve months of a legally mandatory service at no cost is a real benefit and should be counted as one.

A Recurring Service With an Undisclosed Recurring Price

The renewal rate is not published. We examined the frequently asked questions, the premium package listings, and the homepage; the figure is in none of them, and it is not disclosed in the terms either. Our conclusion is that the number is revealed at checkout or by telephone, which is to say after the free year has already performed its function.

Two observations follow, neither requiring us to speculate about the amount.

The first is that agent service is structurally recurring. California obliges an entity to hold the designation for as long as it exists, so this is not a one-time purchase whose renewal terms are a secondary detail. The renewal is the cost.

There is a related asymmetry in when the information arrives. A buyer choosing a formation package is at the point of maximum commitment to the vendor and minimum knowledge of what the ongoing relationship will cost. By the time the renewal figure is disclosed, a year of records, addresses and correspondence has accumulated on the vendor's side, and the switching decision now carries friction that did not exist at the outset. None of that is unlawful or even unusual. It simply means the sequence favours the seller, and a buyer who notices the sequence can neutralise it by asking the question before ordering.

The second is that we will not estimate the figure. Publishing a guess at a competitor's price would forfeit the single proposition this page advances: that a disclosed price serves a buyer better than a concealed one. The comparison holds without a number in that cell.

Our Renewal Is on the Pricing Page

$99 for the first year and $99 for each one after, printed where a prospective buyer can read it before spending anything. Same-day scanning of service of process is included at the base rate, with the original retained on file. The agent field of your public record carries our California street address. Deadline tracking for the biennial Statement of Information comes with the service. No premium tier sits above this one.

The disclosure argument cuts both ways, so: BetterLegal publishes $90, under our $99. Among the lowest published California rates is what we claim, and publication is doing real work in that sentence.

When the Number Arrives, California Lets You Act on It

Whenever the renewal figure does surface, this state lets you respond to it the same week and at no cost. There is no change of agent form to locate, because California does not produce one; the appointment shifts on a re-submitted Statement of Information, the LLC-12 where an LLC is concerned, filed at bizfileOnline and free whenever it falls outside a scheduled filing period. The safe order puts the new appointment ahead of that filing, so the designation transfers instead of lapsing, and the previous account is closed only once the state's record confirms the change. Our California change of agent page walks the whole procedure.

Order Here Every published and unpublished rate we found is catalogued in the California rankings. Contact us with questions.