Multiply Before You Compare: $149 a Quarter in Montana

The house wrote this one. Montana Registered Agent.co provides the competing service at $99 a year, and an owner who annualizes a quarterly invoice tends to end up here, which is the outcome we are hoping for. Swyft Filings' billing terms are the company's own, captured during a July 2026 verification pass.

The Case for Quarterly Billing

It is not a trick, and treating it as one would be unfair. Swyft Filings is an established formation company with a working filing operation, and splitting a payment into four smaller ones genuinely reduces what leaves the account in a given month. A young business watching its cash position can reasonably prefer that shape. Some buyers pay a premium for smoother billing on purpose.

The Case for Doing the Multiplication

Registered agent service bills at $149 per quarter. Four quarters annualize to roughly $596, and our review found no distinct first-year discount reducing that figure.

Here is the structural effect of the interval. The number you evaluate while shopping is $149. The number that leaves your account across a year is close to $596. Nothing in the purchase flow has any reason to compute the second one for you, and $149 four times over does not feel like $596 once. Comparison shopping only works on matching units, so this page converts everything to a year.

Now Compare It to the State's Own Recurring Number

Montana asks a limited liability company for one filing a year, the annual report, submitted between January 1 and April 15. The standard fee is $20, and Montana has suspended it for punctual filings through 2027, so a report lodged inside the window presently costs nothing. Filed late, it costs $35. Ignored entirely, the entity heads toward administrative dissolution, which is the only genuinely expensive outcome in the whole arrangement.

Line those up. The state's recurring bill is currently $0. The vendor's is near $596. Whatever a registered agent is worth, that ratio deserves a second look before the next quarter posts.

The $99 Alternative, Itemized

• A Montana street address on the public record instead of yours
• Same business day scanning of service of process, emailed and filed to the portal at once
• The document history available on demand, from any device
• April 15 tracked, with notice sent in advance of the deadline
• $15 per item for general mail scanning, flat, published rather than sprung on you
• $99 at every renewal, which is the same figure as the first invoice

Read that as among the lowest rather than the lowest. BetterLegal's published $90 undercuts us by nine dollars, and claiming a floor we do not occupy would cost this page its credibility on everything else.

Between the Quarters: How Montana Records a New Agent

The state's paperwork here is a single instrument that resets the registered agent, the registered office, or both: the Statement of Change. It has no number, because Montana has issued no numbered business forms since moving to electronic filing in 2017. You file it on the state's own website, biz.sosmt.gov, where an ePass Montana single sign-on gets you to your entity, and the Business Services Division makes the record.

On the official fee schedule, beside that filing, Montana prints the words NO FEE.

There is also a second route. During the annual report window, which runs from January 1 to April 15, the agent can be changed inside the report itself, which removes the need for a separate statement entirely. Both paths reach the same record and both cost the same nothing.

Appointment before submission, always: the form has a field for a successor and none for a vacancy, so the incoming agent has to exist before the paperwork can be completed truthfully. Sign on here, lodge the statement, watch for the new name, and let the quarterly billing run out at the end. Whether the cancellation lands on a quarter boundary is a matter for you and that vendor. Montana sets no window, takes no fee, and has no view about which week you choose. Our change of agent guide sets out the sequence and the verification step.

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