If you looked up what it costs to register a US business in Ontario, you probably found $330. That is a real fee, and for most US LLCs it is the wrong one. Ontario charges $330 for an Extra-Provincial Licence, which is the filing a foreign corporation makes. A limited liability company is not a corporation under Ontario law and does not use that route. It registers as an extra-provincial limited liability company for $60.
British Columbia goes the other way. There an LLC pays $380 to get in, files an annual report every year, cannot use the online system at all, and must appoint someone in the province to accept legal documents. Two provinces, the same company, a six-fold difference in cost and a completely different amount of work.
This guide covers Ontario and British Columbia, because those are the two provinces that publish a clear answer for an LLC. What Alberta does is at the bottom, and the honest version of that section is short.
Ontario runs two separate registers, and which one you land in depends on what kind of entity you are rather than where you came from. A foreign corporation doing business in Ontario needs an Extra-Provincial Licence, and the ministry prices that at $330 whether you want it in five business days or ten. An extra-provincial limited liability company does something different: it registers its company name under the Business Names Act. The ministry fee schedule lists that as "Extra-Provincial Limited Liability Partnership/Limited Liability Company" at $60.
The obligation itself is short and it is worth reading in the original, because the whole registration turns on one sentence.
"No extra-provincial limited liability company shall carry on business in Ontario unless it has registered its company name."
Business Names Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.17, s. 2.1(2)That is the requirement. Register the name, and you may carry on business. The Act does not ask an LLC to file its formation documents, appoint an Ontario agent, or file anything annually. Compare that with the corporate route, which does all three, and the $270 gap starts to make sense: you are buying a lighter filing, not a discount on the same one.
Registration is $60, immediate if you file online and fifteen business days by mail. The registration is not permanent. Section 4(1.1) of the Act sets the term: "The registration is effective for five years from the date it is accepted for registration by the Registrar." Renewal is another $60. Amending or cancelling the registration costs nothing.
So the real Ontario number is $60 every five years, which works out to $12 a year. There is no annual report and no annual fee attached to the registration itself.
On service of legal documents, Ontario is unusually relaxed. Section 2.1(5) allows a person to serve your LLC at its Ontario place of business "if any", or at the address you are required to keep in the state where you were formed, or your principal office. The words "if any" are doing real work there. Ontario contemplates that you may have no Ontario address at all and provides a route to reach you anyway. You are not required to appoint an agent in the province.
One consequence worth planning for: because there is no annual filing, there is also no annual reminder. A five-year clock with nothing in between is easy to lose. Put the renewal date somewhere you will still be looking five years from now.
BC does not have a lighter route for LLCs. An LLC registers as an extraprovincial company, the same category a foreign corporation uses, and it pays the same price. The registry's own guidance adds a step nobody expects.
You cannot file online. BC Corporate Online states plainly: "If this registration is for a limited liability company (LLC), you must, instead, submit a paper Registration Statement Form 33 to the Corporate Registry." Every other extraprovincial registration goes through the web system. LLCs are carved out of it, so budget mail time on top of processing time.
You must appoint an attorney. The requirement is not optional and not conditional on how much business you do: "A foreign entity registering as an extraprovincial company MUST have one or more attorneys, unless its head office is in BC." This is BC's equivalent of a registered agent, and it is the single biggest practical difference from Ontario. If you have no BC head office, you need a person or firm in the province willing to hold the appointment.
Your head office address has to be real. BC asks for the delivery and mailing addresses of the head office whether or not it is in BC, and requires a physical location rather than a PO box, reachable during business hours. A mailbox service does not satisfy this, which rules out the usual workaround.
Registration is $350 plus a $30 name approval fee, so $380 to get in. After that the annual report is $43.39 a year, and unlike Ontario it is a recurring obligation with a deadline attached. Changing the company name later is $100 plus another $30 for the name approval.
| Item | Ontario | British Columbia |
|---|---|---|
| To register | $60 | $380 ($350 + $30 name) |
| Every year | Nothing | $43.39 annual report |
| Renewal | $60 every 5 years | Not applicable |
| Cancel | $0 | Fee applies |
| File online | Yes, immediate | No, paper Form 33 only |
| Agent in province | Not required | Attorney required unless head office is in BC |
| Five-year cost | $60 | $596.95 |
Canadian dollars, government fees only. Excludes any service fee if you use a filing agent, and excludes translation if your formation documents are not in English.
This is the part that costs real money, and it has nothing to do with the registration fee. Canada does not treat your LLC the way the United States does.
In the US, a typical LLC is fiscally transparent. The company does not pay tax; the income passes to the members and they do. Canada does not accept that characterisation. The Canada Revenue Agency treats a US LLC as a corporation for Canadian tax purposes, and has said so in its own words: a US LLC "is treated as a corporation for Canadian tax purposes but as fiscally transparent for US tax purposes". Current CRA guidance carries the same logic, describing "a limited liability company formed in the U.S. that has not elected to be treated as a corporation for U.S. tax purposes" and then testing it as though the US treated it as one.
Two countries classifying the same company two different ways is a hybrid mismatch, and the Canada-United States tax convention has provisions aimed at it. Article IV(6) lets treaty benefits reach through a transparent entity to the people behind it; Article IV(7) denies them where the two treatments do not line up. Which one you land in turns on facts this page cannot see, including who the members are and where they are resident.
That is the honest limit of a guide. The fees above are fixed and published; your tax position is not, and getting it wrong costs more than every fee on this page put together. Price an hour with a Canadian accountant into the project before you file anything, and ask them whether an LLC is the right vehicle at all. For some structures the answer is that a corporation would have been cleaner, and the time to learn that is before the registration exists.
Alberta does not publish an answer for LLCs, so this guide does not give you one. Its out-of-province page never mentions limited liability companies, its forms list covers corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships and cooperatives with no LLC category, and its online system is closed to you: it "is only used to extra-provincially register corporations and limited partnerships from the New West partner provinces", which means British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
What Alberta does say is that registration is required if you carry on business there, which includes soliciting business, maintaining an address, having a resident agent or owning land, and that you need an agent for service who is "an individual located in Alberta". Helpfully, "The agent for service does not need to be a lawyer." Alberta publishes no fee because filings go through private registry agents who charge a government fee plus their own. If Alberta is your province, call the Corporate Registry or a registry agent and ask which form an LLC uses, because guessing at it is how people file the wrong one.
Registering in Ontario or British Columbia does nothing about the states you already operate in. Your home state still expects its annual or biennial report, your registered agent still has to be in place, and any US state where you have crossed the doing-business line still expects a foreign qualification of its own. A Canadian registration sits alongside those obligations, not instead of them.
If your US side is not current, that is the cheaper problem and the one with real penalties attached. Our state filing guides cover what each jurisdiction charges, and the penalty guides cover what happens if you have been operating somewhere unregistered. A Canadian registrar can also ask for proof of your standing in the state that formed you, so ordering a certificate of good standing is often the first step rather than the last.
One thing we cannot help with: no US registered agent service files these Canadian registrations. Northwest, Harbor Compliance and the rest cover US states only. For the BC attorney appointment you will need a Canadian provider or a lawyer in the province, and that is a separate search from anything on this site.
Expanding into Canada usually means the business has been growing across state lines for a while, and unregistered US states are the more expensive gap. Answer three questions and see which states you have triggered, with the exact fee and form for each.
Start the free compliance check ↗This guide summarizes Ontario and British Columbia registration requirements and published government fees as of 2026, read from each ministry's own pages and statute text. Fees are in Canadian dollars and exclude any third-party service charge. It is not legal or tax advice, and it does not tell you how Canada will tax your business. The tax treatment of a US LLC in Canada depends on facts specific to your company and its members. Confirm current fees with the province and speak to a Canadian accountant or lawyer before relying on any of this for a specific situation.