How We Test

Every state guide on Check LLC Name is produced by doing the thing the guide describes. This page explains the method, so you can judge how much to trust what you read — and hold us to it.

The hands-on rule

For each state we cover, we open the actual official portal — the Secretary of State's system, or whichever agency really keeps the records (in Arizona, for example, it is the Corporation Commission, not the Secretary of State) — and we run the search the way a first-time founder would. We record what we find:

• The exact search URL, and which agency operates it
• The search modes offered (exact match, contains, starts-with, by file number, by registered agent) and which one we recommend, and why
• The friction: logins, per-search fees, captchas, result limits, and defaults that can hide the very record you are looking for
• What a real record shows — and what it never shows, such as owners in states that do not collect them

Rules and money come from primary sources

• Name rules are taken from the state's LLC statute and regulations, and every guide cites the section (for example, Florida Statute §605.0112 or A.R.S. §29-3112).
• Fees and deadlines are taken from the state's official fee schedule or filing instructions — not from other blogs. Where a figure could not be confirmed on an official page, the guide says so in plain words ("reported", "check the current schedule") instead of presenting it as settled fact.
• Traps are checked, not copied. If a state charges a $400 late fee, suspends your authority for missing a publication deadline, or quietly replaced its whole filing system, we verify it against the state's own pages before it goes into a guide.

Last verified dates

Every state page displays a "Last verified" date: the last day the page's portal, fees, and rules were checked against the official sources. We re-verify pages on a rolling basis, and immediately when a state announces a system or fee change that we become aware of.

Independence

• We do not accept payment to write, change, soften, or remove anything in a guide.
• Partner commissions (see the Affiliate Disclosure) never affect fees, rules, or warnings quoted from official sources, and the free do-it-yourself route is documented in full on every page whether or not any partner exists for that state.
• If the official source and our page ever disagree, the official source is right and our page is wrong — please tell us and we will fix it.