Northwest Registered Agent Review: The Boring Choice, in a Good Way

Verdict

If you want a registered agent and don’t want to think about it again, this is the one. The price is $125 a year, and Northwest says it hasn’t changed in 20 years. Your personal address stays off the public record wherever the state permits, and the checkout doesn’t push a business kit or a tax consultation on you.

The flip side is real too. You pay $39 for formation where competitors charge $0, the EIN is an add-on, and annual report filing costs extra. For that $39 you get the first year of agent service free, an operating agreement, same-day processing, and a business address with mail scanning.

We haven’t run our own document-forwarding test on Northwest yet, so the forwarding claims below are the company’s.

What it costs

	Year one	Year two onward
Registered agent only	$125	$125
Formation, agent free for year one	$39 + state fee	$125 (agent)
Annual report filing (optional)	$100 + state fee	$100 + state fee
EIN application (optional)	$50, or $200 without a US SSN	None
Operating agreement	Included	None

Prices are Northwest’s published rates before the state fee, checked on its own pricing pages on November 8, 2026. The state fee is the same whoever files it; see LLC cost by state.

Privacy by default

This is the feature people pay Northwest for. When Northwest forms your LLC, it lists its own office as the registered agent address (that part every agent does) and, where the state’s form permits, also as the principal office and the mailing address, so your home address does not appear on the Articles. Some states require the real principal office (California’s Statement of Information wants it, for instance) and Northwest will tell you when that is the case rather than pretend otherwise.

Northwest also states that it does not sell client data to marketers. Anyone who has formed an LLC through a cheaper service and then received a drawer full of “official-looking” compliance mailers will know why that matters.

The $39 formation deal

Order formation and you get the Articles filed in your state, the first year of registered agent service free, an operating agreement, a business address with mail scanning, and an online account where state mail shows up as scanned PDFs. The EIN is an optional $50 ($200 if you don’t have a US Social Security number). Doing it yourself at irs.gov is free and takes about ten minutes if you have an SSN or ITIN.

Northwest advertises same-day processing. After that the state takes as long as it takes, which varies a lot from state to state.

Where it falls short

• Year-one price. $39 against $0 is a real difference if money is tight and you plan to be your own agent anyway.
• EIN is extra. It’s $50 here and included in some competitors’ mid-tier packages. It’s also free from the IRS.
• Annual report filing is extra and not cheap at $100 on top of the state fee. Filing an annual report yourself is a fifteen-minute job in most states; our compliance guide shows where.

Who it suits

People who work from home and do not want their address public. Multi-state companies that want one agent everywhere at one price. Anyone who has been burned by renewal surprises elsewhere.

Who it does not suit: someone who wants the lowest possible year-one cost and will be their own agent. For that person, the state portal and $0 is the right answer, and the LLC formation guide shows how.

See how Northwest compares in the best registered agent services table and the best LLC services comparison.