Business Registration Cost Calculator for India 2025-26

What Company Incorporation Really Costs in India

Ask five service providers what it costs to register a company in India and you will get five different answers, all of them bundled. That bundling is deliberate.

When a portal quotes you a single “₹6,999 all-inclusive” figure, it has folded the government charges you cannot avoid together with a service margin you absolutely can. This business registration cost calculator exists to pull those two apart, because a founder in Pune deserves to know that the state actually charged ₹1,400 and the rest was the vendor.

There are only two kinds of money that leave your account when you incorporate. The first is statutory cost: the fee the Ministry of Corporate Affairs charges to process your SPICe+ form, the name reservation charge, the stamp duty your state government levies on the Memorandum and Articles, and the small PAN and TAN charges.

This money goes to the government and no professional can waive it. The second is vendor cost: the Digital Signature Certificate you buy from a licensed Certifying Authority, and the professional fee a Chartered Accountant or Company Secretary charges to prepare and file everything for you. This money is optional in the strict sense that you can, if you choose, buy the DSC yourself and file SPICe+ yourself.

The reason this distinction matters so much in 2025-26 is that the government fee has quietly fallen to zero for most small companies. Under the Companies (Registration Offices and Fees) Rules 2014, the MCA charges no filing fee at all on the SPICe+ incorporation form where authorised capital does not exceed ₹15,00,000.

So for the overwhelming majority of startups, family businesses and first-time founders who register with ₹1 lakh or ₹10 lakh of authorised capital, the entire government cost is state stamp duty plus a thousand rupees of name reservation. That total can be as low as ₹500 in a cheap state. When you see a ₹15,000 quote against that backdrop, you are looking at almost ₹14,000 of service and DSC.

None of this means you should always file yourself. A Company Secretary earns their fee when your shareholding is complex, when you are drafting a shareholders agreement, when you need help right-sizing authorised capital to avoid stamp duty, or simply when your time is worth more than the hours the paperwork will eat.

The point of this tool is not to tell you to skip professionals. The point is to let you see the government floor clearly, so that whatever you pay above it is a decision you made with open eyes rather than a number you accepted because it was the only one on the page.

Consider what that opacity costs an ordinary founder. A first-time entrepreneur in a tier-two city, with no accounting background, searches for the cost to register a company and finds a dozen pages each leading with a bundled package price. Nowhere does a single one of them say plainly that the government charged a few hundred rupees and the rest was service.

So the founder budgets ₹20,000 because that is the number they kept seeing, when their actual unavoidable government cost was closer to ₹2,000. That gap is not a scandal, professionals are entitled to charge for work, but it is information the founder should have had. Giving them that information, cleanly and for free, is the entire reason this tool separates the two columns instead of quoting one blended figure like everyone else.

The four entity types and why cost differs

A Private Limited Company is the default choice for anything that intends to raise money or scale, and it carries MoA and AoA stamp duty tied to authorised capital. A One Person Company suits a solo founder who wants limited liability without a second shareholder, and it enjoys a lower MCA fee slab as a small company.

A Limited Liability Partnership has no Memorandum or Articles at all, so instead of MoA and AoA stamp duty it pays a FiLLiP form fee and stamp duty on the LLP agreement, which makes it the cheapest formal structure in most states. A Section 8 company, the not-for-profit form, pays no MCA incorporation filing fee and is exempt from MoA and AoA stamp duty in most states, so its government cost is largely name reservation and the small tax registrations.

How the Government Fee and Stamp Duty Are Calculated

The calculator runs three separate engines behind that single total, and it is worth understanding each because the logic is exactly what the MCA SPICe+ portal applies when you file.

Step one: the MCA registration fee

For companies with share capital, the MCA fee follows the slab table in Rule 12 of the Companies (Registration Offices and Fees) Rules 2014. The headline rule for 2025-26 is the waiver: if your authorised capital is ₹15,00,000 or less, the incorporation filing fee is nil. This single concession is why a ₹10 lakh Private Limited Company pays zero to the MCA.

Above ₹15 lakh the slab math kicks in, and it differs between ordinary companies and the small-company and OPC class, which get a gentler schedule. For an ordinary company past the threshold the base is ₹36,000 with additions of ₹300 for every ₹10,000 of capital between ₹10 lakh and ₹50 lakh, then ₹100 per ₹10,000 up to a crore, then ₹75 per ₹10,000 beyond. An OPC or small company past its own threshold pays ₹2,000 plus ₹200 for every ₹10,000 up to ₹50 lakh.

Step two: state stamp duty on MoA and AoA

Stamp duty is where the real variation lives, because it is a state subject under the Constitution and each state writes its own schedule. The duty is charged on three instruments together: a flat stamp on the SPICe+ eForm, a stamp on the Memorandum, and a stamp on the Articles. The Memorandum stamp is usually a flat figure. The Articles stamp is the one that scales, and states use three different models to do it.

Some charge a flat amount regardless of capital, like West Bengal at ₹300 on the Articles. Some charge a percentage of authorised capital, like Delhi at 0.15 percent or Maharashtra at 0.3 percent. And some charge a fixed sum for every slab of capital, like Karnataka at ₹5,000 for every ₹10 lakh or part thereof. The calculator holds the current schedule for 24 states and territories, including the 2024 and 2025 amendments that raised Karnataka tenfold and moved Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to new bases.

Step three: the small fixed charges and the DSC

Name reservation through SPICe+ Part A costs ₹1,000 for a company and ₹200 for an LLP. PAN and TAN are issued inside the SPICe+ form for a nominal charge.

DIN and DPIN are free for the first three directors or two partners when applied through the incorporation form, so you should never be charged separately for them. The Digital Signature Certificate is the one genuinely unavoidable market purchase: every director or designated partner needs a Class 3 DSC to sign the form, and these run from around ₹800 to ₹2,500 each depending on the Certifying Authority and validity period.

One nuance trips up founders here. The Memorandum stamp is charged on authorised capital while the Articles stamp, in some states, references paid-up capital, and the interaction of the two is what produces the state totals in the table below.

You do not need to compute this by hand, because the calculator and the MCA portal both do it, but it explains why a single headline stamp-duty figure per state is misleading: the three instruments are charged on different bases and only their sum is meaningful. When you compare states, compare the combined total at your actual capital, which is exactly what this tool shows.

State-Wise Stamp Duty Reference for Company Incorporation

The table below shows the total company stamp duty, combining the eForm, Memorandum and Articles, at three common authorised-capital levels. Every figure is computed from the current state schedule and matches what the MCA SPICe+ portal will charge.

Notice how the ordering changes as capital rises: a state that is cheap at ₹1 lakh because it charges a flat amount can become very expensive at higher capital in a percentage state, and vice versa. The rates reflect the Karnataka Stamp (Amendment) Act 4 of 2024, the Tamil Nadu amendment of May 2024 and the Maharashtra amendment of October 2024.

Two things stand out for anyone with flexibility over where to register. First, at the ₹1 lakh and ₹10 lakh levels that most founders use, the cheapest states cost a few hundred rupees while the most expensive cross ₹6,000, a swing large enough to matter for a bootstrapped venture.

Second, because the MCA filing fee is nil below ₹15 lakh, these stamp figures are effectively your entire government cost at that capital. If your business is fully remote and you have a genuine choice of registered office, this table is a real planning input, not trivia.

MCA Filing Fee Slabs Above the SPICe+ Waiver

Most founders never touch these numbers because they stay under ₹15 lakh. But if you are incorporating with higher authorised capital, perhaps because a term sheet requires it, the MCA fee becomes a real line. The table shows the fee for both company classes at capital levels above the waiver.

The lesson buried in this table is the single most useful cost-saving move at incorporation: right-size your authorised capital. Authorised capital is only the ceiling on shares you may issue, not the money you must bring in.

Declaring ₹50 lakh when you plan to issue ₹1 lakh of shares does not help you and costs you both MCA fee and stamp duty immediately. Start at ₹1 lakh or ₹10 lakh, stay inside the waiver, and increase later through Form SH-7 when a funding round actually needs it, paying duty only on the increment.

Three Real Incorporation Costings Across Indian Cities

Numbers make sense when they belong to someone. Here are three founders in three cities choosing three different structures, each costed exactly the way the calculator does it.

Six Expert Tips to Cut Your Registration Cost Legally

Quick Reference: Cost Components at a Glance

The SPICe+ Filing Journey From Name to Certificate

Understanding where each rupee is spent is easier once you can see the road the money travels. Incorporation in India runs almost entirely through one integrated form called SPICe+, and knowing its shape helps you spot where a vendor adds value and where they simply add a charge.

It begins with name reservation in SPICe+ Part A, where you propose up to two names and pay ₹1,000. This is the stage where a little care saves money, because a rejected name means paying the fee again.

Checking the MCA name-availability database and avoiding anything that clashes with an existing company or a registered trademark is free and prevents a wasteful resubmission. Once a name is approved, it is reserved for a fixed window during which you must complete the rest of the filing.

Part B is the substance. Here you enter the registered office address that fixes your state and therefore your stamp duty, the directors and their details, the authorised and paid-up capital that drives both the MCA fee and the stamp duty, and the objects of the company.

The form then generates the Memorandum in INC-33 and the Articles in INC-34, and it is on these two documents that stamp duty falls. When you submit Part B, the portal calculates the duty for your state automatically and routes you to the SHCIL e-stamp gateway to pay it online. There is no physical stamp paper and no separate visit to a stamp vendor, a change that has been in place since early 2020 and that removed one of the oldest sources of incorporation delay.

Alongside incorporation, SPICe+ bundles the linked registrations that a new company needs: PAN and TAN are issued through the same form for a nominal charge, and the AGILE-PRO-S attachment lets you apply for GST, EPFO, ESIC and a bank account in the same flow.

This bundling is genuinely useful and it is free of separate government fees, so if a service provider itemises each of these as a paid add-on, that is margin rather than statutory cost. Every director signs the whole package with a Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate, which is why the DSC is the one purchase no founder can skip.

After submission the Registrar of Companies reviews the filing, verifies that stamp duty is correctly paid, and, if everything is in order, issues the Certificate of Incorporation digitally, typically within seven to fifteen working days. The certificate carries your Corporate Identity Number, and PAN and TAN arrive with it.

From that moment the company legally exists. There is no official fast-track fee, so approval speed is a function of clean documents rather than money spent, which is worth remembering if anyone offers to expedite your file for a premium.

Choosing a Structure Without Overpaying at the Start

The cheapest registration is not always the right one, and the most expensive is not always the safest. Choosing your entity type is a business decision first and a cost decision second, but the two are tied together more tightly than most first-time founders realise, so it helps to think about them side by side.

If you intend to raise external equity, take on investors or issue employee stock options, a Private Limited Company is effectively mandatory, because investors expect shares, a board and the governance that the Companies Act imposes. The cost consequence is that you accept scaling Articles stamp duty and, above ₹15 lakh authorised capital, the MCA slab fee.

The way to keep this in check is to register with modest authorised capital, use the SPICe+ waiver, and increase capital later only when a round demands it. A founder who declares ₹1 crore of authorised capital on day one because it sounds ambitious has simply handed the state a large stamp-duty cheque for a ceiling they will not touch for years.

If you are a solo founder who wants limited liability but has no immediate plan to raise equity, a One Person Company gives you the corporate shield with a lighter fee slab and simpler compliance than a full Private Limited.

The trade-off is that an OPC must convert to a Private Limited once it crosses certain turnover or capital thresholds, so it suits the early solo phase rather than a business that already expects rapid scale.

If your venture is a professional practice, a services firm or any small business that will fund itself from revenue rather than investors, an LLP is usually the most economical formal structure. It skips MoA and AoA stamp duty entirely, pays a capped FiLLiP fee, and carries lighter annual compliance because it is not bound by the full company governance regime.

The cost saving is real both at registration and every year afterwards. The limitation is that raising equity into an LLP is awkward, so if there is any serious chance of an investment round, the small saving now can become an expensive conversion later.

If your purpose is charitable or not-for-profit, the Section 8 company is the designed vehicle, with no MCA incorporation fee and stamp-duty exemption on the Memorandum and Articles in most states.

Its registration is cheap, but the licensing process is more involved and its ongoing compliance is heavier, so treat the low entry cost as one factor among several rather than the deciding one. Across all four, the honest rule is the same: pick the structure your business genuinely needs, then use capital sizing and state choice to keep the government cost as low as that structure allows.

Frequently Asked Questions on Registration Cost

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