Searching for a Virginia company means going to the State Corporation Commission, an independent body that also regulates utilities, insurers and banks. Its Office of the Clerk describes itself as the central filing office for businesses in Virginia, covering corporations, general and limited partnerships, limited liability companies and business trusts, as well as uniform commercial code financing statements, and it is also the official custodian of the Commission's own judicial and administrative records. Everything runs through one online tool, the Clerk's Information System, known as CIS, which handles searches, payments and filings.
Searching costs nothing and needs no login. Ordering certificates, reserving names and paying fees does need a CIS account, and the account setup has a twist: the applicant enters a home address rather than a business address, because a third party, Experian, verifies identity before the account opens. For Virginia records by locality, see the Virginia county and city pages.
- Six dollars: a certificate of good standing or certificate of fact, downloaded instantly from CIS.
- Free images: noncertified copies of business filings made on or after January 1, 1997 cost nothing online.
- One flat fee: a certified copy ordered online costs six dollars with no charge for extra pages.
- Automatic cancellation: an LLC that misses its fee by three months past the due date is canceled by operation of law.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Virginia's own systems: the State Corporation Commission business home, the Clerk's Information System, the Clerk's Office page on certificates and copies, the annual registration fees questions, the fictitious names questions, the business entity names questions, the reinstatements questions, the maintaining your business page, the Attorney General alert on VA Certificate Service, the State Corporation Commission contact page, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
What the Clerk sells, and what it gives away
The certificates and copies page sets out a price list that is short and low. Three certificates download instantly through CIS at six dollars each: the certificate of good standing for corporations, the certificate of fact of existence or registration for limited liability companies, and the certificate of fact of existence for Virginia and foreign limited partnerships. A certified copy of a filed document is also six dollars per request online, with no extra charge for extra pages.
If every image is already scanned the certification happens in real time; if staff have to pull something, the request goes in house and comes back by email.
Plain images cost nothing. Noncertified copies of documents filed on or after January 1, 1997 are generally viewable free through CIS. Documents submitted but never accepted for filing, or later withdrawn, are not shown to the public. The Commission attaches a condition to those free images: they are unofficial, provided only for convenience, and may not be passed off as certified copies or as a certification that any fact in them exists or does not.
Ordering on paper
A mailed or delivered request goes to the Clerk's Office, State Corporation Commission, at post office box 1197 in Richmond, or in person at the Tyler Building, first floor, 1300 East Main Street, with a check payable to State Corporation Commission. Paper copies are priced by length: twenty five pages or fewer are free, twenty six through fifty cost ten dollars, and fifty one or more cost twenty dollars. Certification adds six dollars per document on top of the page charges, and certificates of good standing, certificates of fact and property title record certificates are six dollars each.
Because the page count drives the price, the office asks requesters to call it first, at 804-371-9733 or toll free on 1-866-722-2551, to learn how many pages a document runs. The contact page gives regular Commission hours of 8:15 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon on weekdays, but in person service at the Clerk's counter runs only from 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning.
The sixty seven dollar certificate
In February 2020 the Attorney General filed suit in Richmond Circuit Court against VA Certificate Service, LLC, alleging, in the words of the office's consumer alert, that it mailed businesses registered with the Commission a request for a sixty seven dollar and twenty five cent fee for a Virginia Certificate of Good Standing, a document the Commission sells for six dollars. The mailers carried a notice date and a document number, looked like government forms and appeared to confirm that filings were complete.
The Commission's own maintaining your business page still carries a standing alert: companies offer to file annual reports or pay annual registration fees, by mail, by email or even by text message, often with web links or QR codes, some of the pieces looking like official notices at first glance, and none of them affiliated with the Commission. Using such a service does not guarantee that a filing will be accepted.
Fictitious names live in the same register
Virginia centralised its assumed name filings. The fictitious names page says the Clerk's Office is the central filing office for all certificates of assumed or fictitious names, including those of sole proprietors, general partnerships and trusts as well as registered businesses, with a filing fee of ten dollars. A trade name filed by a company on record is linked to that company in CIS; one filed by a sole proprietor is linked to the person who applied.
Fictitious names do not have to be unique and carry no wording restrictions, and the Commission says plainly that it has no authority to decide who has the right to use one, so two filers can hold the same name. Operating under an unfiled fictitious name can bring a misdemeanor conviction, a fine of up to twenty five hundred dollars, jail or both, and bars the business from bringing suit in Virginia courts.
Older trade names may still sit with a circuit court. The same page explains that a name on file with a circuit court is released by filing a certificate of release with that court's clerk, on paper only, for ten dollars, so a researcher tracing an old trade name may need the local court as well as CIS. A certified copy of a fictitious name receipt, or a certificate of fact of fictitious name, costs six dollars.
Why a company can vanish from the active list
Virginia does not chase late payers for long. Under the annual registration fee rules, a stock or nonstock corporation pays by the last day of the month it was formed or registered, a limited liability company pays fifty dollars by the last day of the month it was organized, and limited partnerships and business trusts pay fifty dollars by October 1. Stock corporation fees scale with authorized shares, and nonstock corporations pay twenty five dollars.
A late stock corporation pays a penalty of ten percent of the fee or ten dollars, whichever is higher, a nonstock corporation ten dollars, and everything else twenty five dollars.
Then the law acts without a hearing. A corporation that has not paid or filed by the last day of the fourth month after its due date is terminated, a limited liability company is canceled at the end of the third month, and limited partnerships and business trusts are canceled if payment has not arrived by December 31. A foreign entity in the same position loses its authority or registration to transact business in Virginia. The Commission mails each assessment to the registered agent two months before the due date, and it is the agent's duty to pass it on, so a company that says it never got a bill is usually a company whose agent record is stale.
The reinstatement page lists four statuses a search can show, Active, Pending Active, Pending Inactive and Inactive, each with a reason for status, and it allows an inactive entity five years to reinstate. After five years the Clerk has no authority to bring it back, so an old inactive record is final in a way a recent one is not.
Reading names in the register
The business entity names page explains how the Clerk compares names. Required words such as company, corporation, Inc. or LLC are disregarded, as are minor words like the, and, or, of and for, along with punctuation, leaving a core name that must differ from every name designated, registered or reserved and from all active entities other than general partnerships. The office gives its own example: ABC of Virginia, Inc. and ABC Virginia Company reduce to the same core name and cannot both be filed.
When searching, enter the distinctive words rather than the full legal name. A foreign company whose name is taken may appear under a designated name adopted for use in Virginia, so a search on the home state name can miss it. Names can be reserved for a hundred and twenty days for ten dollars, renewable in the forty five days before expiry, and the Commission adds that a name on its records gives no trademark protection.
Questions about looking up a Virginia business
Related Virginia records
For more Virginia research on this site, use the Virginia court records guide for the circuit and district courts, the Virginia property records guide for land records, the Virginia public records law guide for the Freedom of Information Act, the Virginia unclaimed property guide, and the Virginia county and city pages.