Best Registered Agent in Texas: Nine Services Priced and Reviewed

Here is a quick way to test any Texas registered agent comparison you come across. Look for the part that tells you to file a Texas annual report with the Secretary of State. That filing does not exist. Texas moved the yearly obligation to the Comptroller of Public Accounts, and a page that gets the basic shape of the state wrong is unlikely to have been careful with anybody's price list. Which brings us to the bias on this one, stated plainly: TX Registered Agent.org wrote it, our own service sits in the top row, and $99 a year lands with us whenever a reader agrees with that placement. The pricing carries no such angle. Every figure below was copied from the vendor's own published rates when we checked in July 2026.

The 2026 Annual Price Table for Texas Registered Agents

Prices shift in this industry without any announcement, so treat the table as a July 2026 photograph rather than a promise. Check the current rate on whichever vendor's own site you land on, this one included, before you hand over a card.

Why the First Row Is Ours

We would rather defend the placement with specifics than with adjectives.

Service of process delivered to our Texas registered office is scanned and posted to your portal before the same business day closes, with an alert attached, so a response deadline never starts running quietly. The rate is $99 a year and the renewal invoice reads $99 as well, in year two and year nine alike. Checkout holds a single service and no ladder of packages built to move you upward. Our street address, not yours, is what shows in the Secretary of State's searchable file. And the one extra charge we carry, $15 an item for scanning mail that is not legal process, is printed on this page instead of appearing later without warning.

What we will not tell you is that nothing costs less. Judged by advertised sticker and nothing else, the cheapest registered agent service in Texas belongs to BetterLegal, whose $90 listing undercuts us by nine dollars. Our claim is narrower and holds up better. As flat annual prices go, $99 is among the lowest on this table, same-day scanning is folded in rather than billed for, and the number never moves.

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Reviewing the Remaining Eight

2. Northwest Registered Agent

Second place goes to Northwest without much argument from us. They publish their prices without games, they staff their phones with employees, and they were protecting client addresses back when most of the industry treated privacy as an upsell. Two conditions keep them out of first place. The free year of agent service exists only when Northwest also forms your company; bought on its own, the service runs $125 a year. And the reduced $100 per state rate requires five or more state registrations, a threshold a Texas-only business never reaches. For nearly everyone reading this page, Northwest means $125 annually, which is $26 above what we charge on the same schedule.

3. BetterLegal

No renewal figure in this table sits lower than BetterLegal's $90 a year, and our July 2026 review confirmed that rate as ongoing rather than promotional. The gap is what happens in year one. We found no plain statement of first-year terms anywhere in their public copy, and on a page built entirely around published pricing, a missing number costs a vendor position. Third rather than lower, though: nine dollars a year is a real saving, and anyone who reaches their checkout, reads the first-year terms, and finds them fair is buying an inexpensive agent.

4. Rocket Lawyer

Agent service from Rocket Lawyer runs $125 annually, and the figure does not budge between membership tiers or conceal an expiring introductory rate underneath. Discipline like that deserves credit. The question is whether you want what surrounds it. Rocket Lawyer sells a legal subscription first, with the agent role bolted onto a document library and attorney access. If you draw on those monthly, $125 makes sense. If your entire need is a Texas street address and fast scanning, you are renting an office suite to use the mailroom.

5. ZenBusiness

ZenBusiness has built the smoothest dashboard in this group, and nothing here disputes that. Read the pricing twice, though. Agent service purchased on its own runs $99 plus state fees for the first twelve months, then $199 a year from there onward. A registered agent is a standing fixture rather than a one-year purchase, so $199 is the number that belongs in your math. At that figure the interface premium works out to $100 every year against our flat rate.

6. Bizee (formerly Incfile)

Bizee, which spent years operating as Incfile, throws free agent coverage into its formation packages for a stretch running between three months and twelve, set by whichever package you buy. If Bizee is forming your Texas LLC anyway, those months are money you did not spend. What they create is a calendar problem: standalone service bills $149 a year once the bundle expires, and expiration dates are easiest to lose track of precisely when the thing started out free.

7. LegalZoom

LegalZoom carries the highest flat rate in the table: $249 annually, renewing automatically, and our July 2026 check located no introductory discount anywhere beneath it. That premium purchases the most familiar brand in consumer legal filings, which is genuinely reassuring to a nervous first-time owner. It buys nothing additional from the State of Texas. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 5.201 lays the same duties on a $249 agent and a $90 one: a Texas street address, availability through business hours, and served papers passed along promptly.

8. Swyft Filings

Swyft's $149 looks competitive until you notice the billing period, which is a quarter rather than a year. Annualized, that comes to roughly $596, the steepest effective cost on this page, and our review turned up no first-year relief from it. Quarterly billing flatters a total, too; four charges of $149 feel much smaller than one charge of $596, though the bank statement disagrees. Twelve months of Swyft coverage runs to about six times what we charge for the same twelve months.

9. Inc Authority

The first year from Inc Authority costs nothing, and then the company goes quiet. Sweeping their homepage, their FAQ, and their premium package material in July 2026 produced no second-year number in any of it, which normally signals a figure held back for the order form or the sales call. When a comparison is built on published prices, a price nobody published can only finish ninth. The free year itself is real. So is the decision not to print what comes after it, and that decision tells you something.

Texas Has No Annual Report, and Half the Industry Says Otherwise

This is the Texas detail worth carrying into any vendor conversation. The Secretary of State handles formation and agent filings, then asks nothing of a for-profit LLC on a yearly basis. Your recurring obligation runs to an entirely different agency, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, in the form of an annual Franchise Tax Report paired with a Public Information Report. Both are due May 15, and the window to file opens January 1.

Missing the date is not free. Tex. Tax Code § 171.203 and the franchise tax provisions of chapter 171 set a $50 penalty plus 5 percent of any tax owed when payment lands 1 to 30 days late, with another 5 percent stacked on past the thirty day mark. Keep ignoring it and §§ 171.251 through 171.255 take over: corporate privileges are forfeited first, and the certificate of formation can follow.

So when a national provider's Texas page offers to keep you current on your annual report with the Secretary of State, you have learned something about how closely that provider read the state. Our annual report guide covers what Texas genuinely requires, and reminders ahead of May 15 come with the service either way.

What Texas Requires of the Agent Itself

Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 5.201 defines the role and § 5.207 adds the consent condition. In practice that shakes out four ways.

Who qualifies An individual who lives in Texas, or a business entity that is either formed in Texas or registered here as a foreign entity.

Who does not Your own company. Texas does not let a filing entity hold its own agent appointment, a restriction the Secretary of State spells out in the Form 401 instructions and one that quietly removes an option several other states leave open.

Consent is not a formality Whoever you name must have already agreed to serve, in writing or electronically. A designation made without that agreement fails § 5.207.

The address has to be real The registered office must be a street address where someone can hand the agent a lawsuit in person during normal business hours. A mailbox rental or a telephone answering service standing alone does not meet the test. More detail sits on our registered agent requirements page.

Switching Agents: One Form, $15, and a Card Surcharge

Leaving any of the nine services above takes a Statement of Change of Registered Office/Agent, Form 401, filed with the Secretary of State under § 5.202. For an LLC the fee is $15. You will see $5 quoted in various corners of the internet; that rate belongs to nonprofit corporations and cooperative associations, and borrowing it for an LLC is a good way to have a filing come back to you. The state's own fee schedule lists both figures side by side. Paying by card adds a statutorily authorized 2.7 percent convenience fee, modest in absolute terms at this size but worth expecting.

For a sense of scale, the document that starts a Texas LLC is a Certificate of Formation, Form 205, rather than the Articles of Organization you may have filed in another state, and it costs $300 under Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 3.005 with the fee fixed at § 4.154. Set against that, $15 to move your agent is a rounding error, and no departing provider has any power to block it. Incoming clients get those details assembled for them during onboarding, and our change of agent page lays out each step.

Making the Call

Every service in the table satisfies § 5.201, so the statute will not choose for you. What separates them is price, how fast a served document reaches your hands, and whether the renewal figure was ever printed where a shopper could find it. One brand asks $249. One advertises $90 without ever describing year one. One divides its bill into quarters, and one declines to print a renewal figure at all. Our number stays $99 for as long as you keep us, documents get scanned the day they land, and the address filed with the state is our Texas office rather than your house.

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