Guide 03 · Choose with facts, not folklore

Pennsylvania, Wyoming, or Delaware: the facts, side by side

Sethhost files in three states and recommends none of them — state choice is yours, and anyone who tells you one state is "best" without knowing your situation is selling something. What we can do is put the verifiable facts in one place, including the follow-on costs that headline comparisons leave out.

State fees change; the fee confirmed at filing is the current one. Sethhost always shows the state fee as its own line — never folded into a headline price.

The cost nobody puts in the comparison table

Forming in one state and operating in another usually means paying twice. If your LLC actually does business in a state — an office, employees, inventory, in-person operations — that state generally requires foreign qualification (registering your out-of-state LLC there), with its own fee, its own registered agent, and its own annual obligations, on top of the formation state's. Founders abroad with a purely online business and no physical presence in any state are the clean case for forming where they choose. The moment there is a physical footprint, the "cheap state" math changes, and that analysis belongs to an attorney who knows your facts.

Three questions worth asking before you choose

• Where will the business physically operate, if anywhere? Physical presence is what triggers foreign-qualification duties, not where your customers happen to live.
• What does each state charge every year, forever? Compare the annual line, not just the formation fee: $7, $60, and $300 are very different decades-long totals.
• Does anything about your plans involve investors or a future corporation? Delaware's popularity is largely a corporate-law story for venture-funded startups. Sethhost is built for operators, not venture fundraising — and switching entity types later is a legal project, not a settings change.

What Sethhost does — and does not do

The intake quiz records your stated state preference (Pennsylvania, Wyoming, or Delaware). Sethhost prepares and submits the filing at your direction and confirms it with you before submission. We do not recommend a state, rank states, or steer the choice — in the quiz, in these guides, or on a call. The decision, and its consequences, are yours; an attorney can advise on it. Sources: state filing-fee schedules as published by each state and reflected in Sethhost's checkout; see the FAQ for the same table in Q&A form.