LegalZoom vs Swyft Filings: The LLC Showdown

Key takeaways

• Swyft Filings is cheaper to form with. Its Standard plan runs $169 against LegalZoom's $249 Pro.
• LegalZoom is far cheaper to keep. Registered agent is $249 a year, against $149 a quarter at Swyft Filings. That is close to $600.
• Over three years the gap reaches $1,041, which reverses the verdict for anyone who needs an agent.
• Swyft Filings files faster and covers five entity types. LegalZoom has attorney access, but only for 30 days.
• Neither is the cost winner. Northwest charges $125 a year for the same agent service.

Both companies file LLCs competently. Swyft Filings packs more into its formation packages. LegalZoom has a reference library and attorney access that Swyft Filings cannot match.

Most comparisons stop there and hand it to Swyft Filings on value. That conclusion does not survive pricing the registered agent, so this one goes further.

All figures are what each company was charging in August 2026, read from their own pages.

Pricing

Swyft Filings is cheaper at every paid tier. Both Swyft Filings tiers carried a $30 discount off list when we checked. At list price the mid tier is $199 against $249, and the top tier ties at $299.

Filing speed

This is where Swyft Filings wins cleanly, and the margin is wide.

Read the LegalZoom column again. Its standard processing is the same 15 to 20 business days on every tier, and paying $99 to expedite still lands at 5 to 10 days. That is slower than Swyft Filings' free plan.

Both sets of times describe the provider's own turnaround. Your Secretary of State then adds its own review, which varies by state and season and which neither company controls.

Registered agent: where this comparison is decided

Neither company bundles registered agent service into a formation package. Here is what it costs to add:

Swyft Filings bills quarterly rather than annually, which makes the headline look small. Its own page states "$149 + Quarterly" and supports it with the line "Get a registered agent for less than $50 per month".

Worth knowing that several well-known review sites report this figure as "$149 annually". The provider's own page does not say annually. It says quarterly, and the per-month line settles it. The difference is about $447 a year.

Swyft Filings also charges a separate subscription for each entity using the service, so a second state means a second bill.

What three years actually costs

Formation is a one-off. The agent is not, so the totals separate fast.

Method: formation fee once, agent at each provider's published rate, state fees excluded because they are identical whichever you choose.

The $80 Swyft Filings saves on formation is wiped out several times over in year one alone. By year three the gap is $961, and Northwest costs less than a third of either.

If you already have a registered agent, or you act as your own, Swyft Filings is the better buy. If you need one, it is not close.

What is in each package

LegalZoom Basic covers the name check, the articles of organization and the state filing. You also get a digital welcome packet and a tax consultation. Pro adds an operating agreement, an EIN, a document library and a Wix website. Premium adds bookkeeping tools for six months.

Swyft Filings Basic is unusually deep for a free tier:

• Business name verification and filing of the articles
• State filing and a secure online portal
• Lifetime customer support
• A free business tax consultation

Swyft Filings Standard adds a custom operating agreement, organizational minutes, banking essentials and one free month of the business address service.

Swyft Filings Premium adds same-day processing and a professional business address. It also brings a custom digital kit, unlimited attorney consultations and compliance monitoring.

On raw contents at the entry and middle tiers, Swyft Filings gives you more. That has not changed.

One thing that has: Swyft Filings used to include free BOI report filing on the Standard plan, and it was a real selling point while the requirement existed. FinCEN ended that requirement for US-formed companies on 14 August 2026. It is no longer a reason to choose any plan. See what a BOIR report is for who remains in scope.

The attorney access question, read carefully

LegalZoom's attorney network is the thing Swyft Filings cannot match at the same depth. Read the duration before you decide it settles the argument.

Pro and Premium include unlimited 30-minute consultations on new legal topics, but as a 30-day subscription. After that, access runs at $49 a month. If your legal questions arrive in month one, that is real value. If they arrive in month four, you are on a monthly plan.

Swyft Filings includes unlimited attorney consultations on its Premium plan at $269, which is cheaper than LegalZoom Premium at $299. LegalZoom's advantage is depth of catalogue and the reference library, not the consultation line itself.

Add-on pricing

Swyft Filings prices individual documents where LegalZoom tends to bundle them. Everything below is listed on the Swyft Filings pricing page:

ComplianceGuard, the annual report service, comes as a trial with Premium and renews at $199 a year. Diarise the trial end date the day you buy, because it converts automatically.

Entity types

Swyft Filings wins this outright, and it matters if you expect to file more than one thing.

Swyft Filings files LLCs, S corps, C corps, nonprofits and DBAs across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. LegalZoom also covers corporations and nonprofits, plus trademarks, DBAs and estate planning, which is the widest catalogue of any service we track.

Between these two the entity range is a tie at the top. Where they separate is that Swyft Filings does it for less at the paid tiers, and LegalZoom does it with a lawyer available.

Guarantees

Both publish a 100% accuracy guarantee. Both refund windows have edges.

Swyft Filings offers a 60-day money-back guarantee covering its own service fees. Government, state and third-party fees are excluded.

LegalZoom offers a 60-day satisfaction guarantee with a harder boundary: once your documents are submitted to a government agency, the filing fees are not refundable. The practical deadline is submission, not day 60.

What the ratings say, and what they do not

The two companies have very different public records, and reading only one platform gives the wrong answer.

LegalZoom's split confuses people. A letter grade measures how a company answers complaints, not how many it gets or how satisfied customers are (BBB). Its scale explains part of the complaint volume too, since it has formed roughly seven times as many businesses.

The useful signal is where the friction sits. On both platforms the filing itself rarely draws complaints. Billing, renewals and cancellations do.

Who owns them, and why it shows in the pricing

Only one of these companies has to publish audited numbers, and those numbers are worth a buyer's attention.

LegalZoom has traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker LZ since its June 2021 IPO. In its second quarter 2026 results, reported on 5 August 2026, it posted revenue of $205.3 million, up 7%, with subscription revenue up 11% and transaction revenue down. Average revenue per subscription unit is $270 a year, and annual small business retention is around 57%.

That retention figure is the most useful number in this article. More than four in ten small business subscribers do not renew, which tells you what most buyers conclude about recurring services after a year. Treat every subscription at either company as opt-out.

Two other disclosures matter to a buyer. Full-year revenue guidance was cut to $795 to $805 million from $810 to $830 million, and a 13% workforce reduction was announced alongside it. Support capacity is usually the first thing a cut of that size reaches.

Swyft Filings publishes nothing comparable. It was founded in Houston in July 2015, the private equity firm GreyLion acquired it in December 2021, and its about page now names 360 Legal as the parent company with Jeff Mosler appointed chief executive in June 2025.

The pattern is worth naming. A public company and a private equity owner both need recurring revenue, and both product lines reflect that: LegalZoom through subscription trials that convert, Swyft Filings through quarterly agent billing and a la carte documents. Neither is misconduct. It is the lens to read the pricing with.

Ease of use

LegalZoom offers the simpler, more navigable interface. The Swyft Filings landing page carries a lot at once, which makes it harder to scan for a first-time founder.

Swyft Filings does one thing better at checkout. It shows the full pricing table before you commit, which is more transparent than services that reveal add-ons at the final step.

Both signup flows are long. LegalZoom lets you save progress and return later.

Customer service

LegalZoom runs a toll-free helpline seven days a week, plus email and a Knowledge Center organised by service category, with Spanish-language material. That library is the real differentiator, not the support hours. Keep the August 2026 workforce reduction in mind if response times matter to you.

Swyft Filings offers phone Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm Central, plus live chat and email inside one business day. Lifetime support is included on every package, including the free one, which is unusual at this price.

Verdict

Pick Swyft Filings if you are supplying your own registered agent, or acting as your own. Standard at $169 is more package for less money than anything LegalZoom sells at that price, it files in 3 business days against 15 to 20, and Premium at $269 undercuts LegalZoom Premium while including attorney consultations.

Pick LegalZoom if you need a registered agent, or you want a lawyer available past the first month. The agent pricing alone makes it the cheaper platform to run past year one, by $961 over three years.

Pick neither if cost is the whole question. Northwest Registered Agent charges $39 to form plus a free first year of agent service, then $125 a year. At $289 over three years it beats both by a margin nothing in the feature lists closes.

Or split the purchase. Nothing obliges you to buy the agent from whoever files the paperwork. File with Swyft Filings for the speed and the deeper package, appoint Northwest as agent at $125, and you get the best of both for roughly $414 over three years. Changing registered agent later is a routine state filing.

Common questions

Which one files faster? Swyft Filings, by a wide margin. Its free plan takes 7 to 10 business days against LegalZoom's 15 to 20, and its Premium plan files in one business day.

Is Swyft Filings really $149 a year for a registered agent? No. Its own page says $149 per quarter, which annualises to roughly $596. Some review sites report this incorrectly.

Does LegalZoom include a lawyer? For 30 days on Pro and Premium. After that it costs $49 a month.

Which handles nonprofits? Both. Swyft Filings files LLCs, S corps, C corps, nonprofits and DBAs; LegalZoom covers corporations, nonprofits, trademarks and estate planning.

Can I switch registered agent after forming? Yes. It is a routine filing with your state, and it is the single largest saving available in this comparison.

Full breakdowns are in our LegalZoom review and Swyft Filings review. For the wider field see the best LLC services chart, or compare ZenBusiness and LegalZoom if ZenBusiness is also on your list. If cost over three years is what decides it, LegalZoom against Bizee, the service formerly called Incfile, is the sharper contrast. Our scoring method is set out in how we rank.

Prices verified against each provider's own pages in August 2026. Swyft Filings Standard and Premium were discounted $30 off list at the time of checking. Financial figures come from LegalZoom's second quarter 2026 results of 5 August 2026. Confirm current pricing before purchase.