There is no LLC in Canada

What people are usually looking for

Almost always, one of two things. The first is limited liability with simple pass-through-style taxation, which is what an American LLC provides — and the Canadian answer is that liability protection comes from incorporating, while the tax treatment does not follow it. A Canadian corporation is a separate taxpayer that files its own return; there is no election that makes it disappear for tax purposes the way an American single-member LLC does by default.

The second is a name for “the small, cheap version of a company”. In Canada that is registering a business name and operating as a sole proprietor — cheaper than incorporating, and with no separation between you and the business at all. It is the difference the whole decision turns on, and no naming convention changes it.

One trap is worth naming. Several provinces offer a Limited Liability Partnership, and the initials invite the wrong conclusion. An LLP is a partnership, generally restricted to licensed professionals, and it is not an American-style LLC in any respect that matters.

What incorporating actually costs

Government fees only. Every figure below was read on the registry’s own fee schedule on the date shown; 9 of 14 jurisdictions are verified, and the other 5 are listed without figures rather than filled in from a secondary source. Name-search reports, lawyers and the private service providers several provinces license all charge their own fees on top, and none of those are government prices — so none of them are here.

Across what is verified so far the incorporation fee runs from $200 in Federal (Corporations Canada) to $397 in Quebec. As in the United States, the recurring obligation matters more than the one-off: several jurisdictions charge nothing to incorporate’s annual counterpart and several charge every year, and that difference compounds while the filing fee does not.

Federal or provincial?

Incorporating federally through Corporations Canada gives name protection across the country, but it does not remove provincial registration — a federal corporation still registers extra-provincially wherever it actually carries on business. Incorporating provincially is a single filing in a single place. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how many provinces you operate in, and the fee table above is the input to that question rather than the answer to it.

Corporations Canada, verbatim: "Provincial and territorial legislation requires you to register your federal corporation in each province and territory in which it will conduct business." It gives the working test as "having an address, a post office box or a phone number in a province or territory, or offering services or products in a province or territory", and says of the cost only that "Most provinces and territories charge for registering a corporation. The cost varies depending on the province or territory." Federal incorporation is therefore never the whole bill for a business operating in one province — the provincial registration fee stacks on top. Corporations Canada has partnered with Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador so that provincial forms are pre-filled during federal incorporation (business corporations only), and offers a joint registration path for Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec.

Should a Canadian form a US LLC instead?

It is possible and it is sold heavily, usually as a Wyoming or Delaware filing with a registered-agent subscription attached. What the pitch tends to omit is that a US LLC owned by a Canadian resident is treated as a corporation by the Canada Revenue Agency while the United States treats it as a flow-through — a mismatch that can produce tax on the same income in both countries without full relief. It is a genuinely specialist question and the wrong one to answer from a web page.

What we can say plainly is that the American state fee comparison on this site is a comparison of US options, and none of the 9 Canadian figures above belong in it. If your business, customers and bank account are in Canada, the Canadian entity table is the relevant one.

Canadian payroll — CPP, EI and the employer side of both — lives at workmoneytax.com, which carries the full CRA calculation. This page stays on the entity question.

The US comparison, for contrast

If you are forming in the United States after all, the LLC cost calculator covers filing fees, annual reports and franchise taxes state by state, and the five-year comparison shows how often the cheapest state to form in is not the cheapest to stay in.

Where these came from

bizphoton.com publishes calculators and verified government figures for education and planning. It is not tax, legal, accounting, or financial advice, and using this site does not create a professional relationship. Every changing figure links the official source it came from. For advice about your own business, consult a licensed professional in your state.