How Ohio's business registry works
An Ohio business record carries one of four statuses — Active, Hold, Cancelled, or Dead — and no annual report sits behind them: Ohio doesn't require one from LLCs or for-profit corporations. What moves an entity off Active is a specific failure. Let the statutory agent lapse (Ohio's term for a registered agent) and the Secretary of State mails a notice; if it isn't cured within 30 days, the articles are cancelled without further action. A nonprofit that skips its five-year statement of continued existence is cancelled the same way. A cancelled entity then has two years to reinstate before the cancellation is permanent.
Hold is the status to read carefully. It marks an entity the Secretary of State cancelled for failing a legal requirement, with the name protected for one year after cancellation — the window in which nobody else can register it. Cancelled is the same cancellation with the name released. Dead means the business dissolved voluntarily. Read as a binary, Hold looks like a dead record; read correctly, it's a company that may be one $25 reinstatement filing from Active.
The public search at businesssearch.ohiosos.gov is free and covers for-profit and nonprofit corporations, professional associations, LLCs, limited partnerships, LLPs, business trusts, trade names, and fictitious names. It matches on business name, exact name, prior name, agent or registrant, organizer or incorporator, or Entity Number, and filing images open as PDFs; records have been computerized since 1973. Every record carries an Entity Number — a charter number for domestic corporations, a license number for foreign corporations, a registration number for LLCs and everything else — which deep verification returns as jurisdiction_id. Ohio doesn't publish owner or officer rosters; the statutory agent's name and street address are the contactable record on file.
BizVerify supports both quick checks and deep verification for Ohio. A quick check returns whether the entity exists, its registered name, its status, and good_standing — and good_standing: true maps only to an Active Ohio record. Deep verification adds the entity type, the Entity Number, the statutory agent on file, and the formation date.
What Ohio specifically charges and requires
Formation
Ohio charges a flat $99 to form almost anything. Articles of Organization for an LLC (Form 610), Articles of Incorporation for a for-profit or nonprofit corporation (532A / 532B), and a Certificate of Limited Partnership are each $99. So is the registration that lets a foreign LLC or foreign corporation transact business in Ohio. For corporations, $99 covers up to 990 authorized shares; above that the fee climbs on a graduated scale. Regular processing runs 3–7 business days. Expedite is a surcharge on top of the filing fee: $100 for two business days, $200 for one, or $300 for four-hour turnaround on documents hand-delivered by 1:00 p.m.
Ongoing obligations
There's no annual report and no annual fee for LLCs or for-profit corporations. The recurring filings Ohio does require are entity-specific. Professional associations and LLPs file a $25 biennial report; nonprofit corporations file a $25 statement of continued existence within each five years of incorporation or their last filing; trade names renew for $25. Miss the nonprofit statement and the articles are cancelled. The tax obligation sits with the Department of Taxation instead. The Commercial Activity Tax applies at 0.26% of Ohio taxable gross receipts above $6 million a year from 2025 onward, with no annual minimum tax since 2024.
Statutory agent
Every Ohio entity except banks, trust companies, insurers, and public utilities must continuously maintain a statutory agent with an Ohio street address — a P.O. box or commercial mailbox doesn't qualify. Changing the agent is $25 (Form 521). Let the agent lapse and, once a 30-day notice expires, the articles are cancelled; reinstatement is $25 and must happen within two years. Deep verification returns the agent on file.
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| LLC Articles of Organization (Form 610) | $99 |
| Articles of Incorporation, for-profit or nonprofit (532A / 532B) | $99 |
| Foreign LLC registration / foreign corporation license (617 / 530A) | $99 |
| Statutory agent update (521) | $25 |
| Reinstatement (525A / 525B) | $25 |
| Biennial report, professional associations and LLPs (520) | $25 |
| Nonprofit statement of continued existence (522) | $25 |
| Certificate of dissolution (561 / 616) | $50 |
| Trade name or fictitious name registration (534A) | $39 |
| Name reservation, 180 days (534B) | $39 |
| Copy or certificate request (500) | $5 |
| Expedite: 2 business days / 1 business day / 4 hours | $100 / $200 / $300 |
Common ways developers use Ohio verification
Gate an agent's provisioning on Active
An onboarding agent takes an Ohio LLC name and calls verify_business({ entity_name, jurisdiction: "us-oh" }) through the BizVerify MCP server. Because Ohio has no annual report, there's no "delinquent but active" middle state to reason about. good_standing: true means the record reads Active; anything else — Hold, Cancelled, Dead — fails closed and routes to a human. The same tool call runs from Claude Code, a LangChain agent, or a CrewAI crew.
Tell a reinstatable company from a dead one
A lending or marketplace platform sees a counterparty that isn't Active. Hold means the Secretary of State cancelled it for failing a legal requirement — a lapsed statutory agent, say — and it's inside the one-year name-protection window. A $25 reinstatement filing brings it back, so the right move is a follow-up, not a rejection. Dead is a voluntary dissolution. One quick check separates the two before anyone picks up the phone.
Seller onboarding: deep once, quick on a schedule
Common Ohio LLC names collide in a name search. A marketplace runs deep verification once at signup to capture the canonical record — entity type, Entity Number as jurisdiction_id, statutory agent — and stores the number as the seller's stable key. The state tracks prior names, so a renamed seller resolves to it. A scheduled quick check confirms the record is still Active before each payout cycle. Trigger both from a Zapier or n8n step; the re-check is one credit.
Deep verification for the statutory agent
Formation and compliance tools need the agent of record, not just a flag. Deep verification for Ohio returns the entity type, the Entity Number, the statutory agent's name and Ohio street address, and the formation date. A typed Node SDK or Python SDK client writes that record into a KYB pipeline, and because Ohio agents must keep a physical in-state address, the address doubles as a service-of-process contact.
Frequently asked questions
What do Active, Hold, Cancelled, and Dead mean for an Ohio entity?
They're the four statuses the Ohio Secretary of State assigns. Active is on record as engaged in business. Hold is an entity the state cancelled for failing a legal requirement, with its name protected for one year so it can reinstate. Cancelled is the same cancellation once the name is released. Dead is a voluntary dissolution. BizVerify returns good_standing: true only for Active; the other three never come back in good standing.
Does Ohio require an annual report?
No. Ohio LLCs and for-profit corporations file no annual report and pay no annual fee to the Secretary of State. The recurring filings are entity-specific: professional associations and LLPs file a $25 biennial report, nonprofits file a $25 statement of continued existence within each five years, and trade names renew. For a KYB check, status isn't a proxy for "paid this year's fee" — it reflects whether the entity kept its statutory agent and, for nonprofits, its five-year filing.
What happens when an Ohio company loses its statutory agent?
The Secretary of State mails a notice. If the company doesn't appoint a new agent within 30 days, its articles are cancelled with no further action and the record moves off Active. It then has two years to file a $25 reinstatement; after that the cancellation is permanent. With no annual report to miss, the statutory-agent requirement is the one every Ohio LLC and corporation can fail — treat a fresh cancellation as a follow-up, not an automatic reject.
Which identifier do you return for an Ohio entity?
Deep verification returns the Entity Number the Secretary of State assigns as jurisdiction_id. That's a charter number for domestic corporations, a license number for foreign corporations, and a registration number for LLCs, partnerships, trusts, and name registrations. A quick check returns the registered name, status, and good_standing without it. The number is the stable key in the state's search, and the record keeps prior names, so reconcile on the number rather than the name.
Do you return officers or owners for Ohio?
No. The Ohio Secretary of State doesn't list the owners or officers of registered entities; the contactable record is the statutory agent's name and address, which deep verification returns along with the formation date. If you need people data, the agent is the company's designated recipient for legal notices. States that publish officer rosters return them in the same officers field.
How current is Ohio entity data?
Each check reflects the Secretary of State record at the time it runs — there's no nightly snapshot between the source and your response. A reinstatement that just posted, or a cancellation after a 30-day agent notice expires, shows on the next check. Latency tracks the registry's own responsiveness.
Do I get charged for an Ohio entity that doesn't exist?
A confirmed no-match (exists: false) is still a quick check — 1 credit, about $0.08 on public pricing — because the verification ran and proved the name isn't on the Ohio register. Ohio's search returns Hold and Dead records alongside Active ones, so a no-match means the name isn't on file, not that the company folded. Try a name first on the free checker if you're unsure how it's registered.