Two state agencies hold the Washington business record, and they hold different halves of it. The Secretary of State registers the legal entity, the corporation, limited liability company or partnership, and its Corporation Search takes either a business name, matched by contains, begins with or exact match, or the nine digit Unified Business Identifier. That number, the UBI, is shared across state agencies: a business that has already registered with the Department of Revenue, Labor and Industries or Employment Security may hold one before it ever files with the Secretary of State.
The other half sits with the Department of Revenue, whose Business Licensing Service runs the Business Lookup. It is the place to find trade names, general business licenses, tax accounts and reseller permits, and the department warns that the name on a tax account may not be the trade name a business actually trades under, and that the license name may differ again. A shop sign, an invoice and a court caption can therefore point to three different names for one UBI. For Washington businesses by place, see the Washington county pages.
- Free Filing History: every successfully filed document of a business, plus copies of the notices the state sent it, viewable and printable at no charge.
- Twenty dollars: the price of a Certificate of Existence, a long form certificate or a Certificate of Fact, with an instant Express PDF for active entities.
- No text messages: the Secretary of State says it does not currently send them, so a text about an annual report is not from the office.
- Two registers, one UBI: the Secretary of State for the legal entity, the Department of Revenue for licenses, trade names and tax accounts.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Washington's own systems: the Washington Secretary of State Corporation Search, the Corporations and Charities Filing System tools and resources page, the Secretary of State page on certificates and certified copies, the fee schedules and priority services page, the third party notices and solicitations page, the Department of Revenue business licensing questions, the Department of Revenue Business Lookup, the Attorney General release of May 9, 2023 on deceptive texts, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The filing history is free, and it is the real record
Many states sell what Washington shows for nothing. Open a business in the filing system, scroll to the bottom and select Filing History, and the office lists every document successfully filed for that entity, each with a View Documents link that opens the file stamped record. The same list carries copies of the official notices the Secretary of State sent to the business, which is how a researcher can see whether a company was warned before it was administratively dissolved.
The office adds one caution that matters in court: documents printed from a filing history are not certified copies. For a bank, a judge or a foreign government, the certified version still has to be ordered.
The tools and resources page also explains the advanced search, which is the closest thing Washington offers to a free list builder. It filters by business type, status and expiration date, by formation or registration dates, and by registered agent or governor, so every company sharing one agent or one governor can be pulled up together, then exported to a spreadsheet through a CSV button at the bottom of the results.
What certificates and copies cost
The fee schedule prices four certificates the same, at twenty dollars each: the Certificate of Existence, also called Good Standing, the long form certificate that recites the entity whole filing history with its expiration date, a Certificate of Fact on Record verifying specific facts such as an administrative dissolution or a conversion out of state, and a duplicate of the commemorative certificate issued at formation. Photocopies of recorded documents cost ten dollars for any single document or an annual report, twenty for the charter documents, and ten dollars plus the copy fees for certification.
A file running past a hundred pages carries a further thirteen dollars for each fifty page increment.
The cheapest route is the Express PDF Certificate of Existence, short form, at twenty dollars in total. The system generates it automatically, so it is available at once from the account dashboard and sent by email. The same certificate ordered through the general certified copies option adds a twenty dollar processing fee and arrives within one to three business days. Two limits apply: the Express certificate can only be issued while the entity is active, and since November 2017 every certificate the office issues is a digital PDF, with no paper version printed by the state.
Speed costs extra, and so does standing at the counter
Standard record orders are typically processed within seven to ten business days, longer when volumes rise. Expediting costs a hundred dollars per UBI on a records request, generally three working days, and online customers have been able to expedite through the shopping cart for a hundred dollars per item since August 13, 2025, with the twenty dollar online processing fees still owed on top. In person same day service is offered in Tumwater or Cheney for a hundred and fifty dollars.
Apostilles are a separate fifteen dollar charge per document and are not valid for use inside the United States. Payments, the office states, are not refundable.
How to tell a real notice from a solicitation
The Corporations and Charities Division publishes a step by step test. Its own notices follow a fixed calendar: the annual report reminder goes out on the first of the month before the anniversary month, roughly sixty days before expiration, a delinquency notice on the first of the month after expiration, an administrative dissolution notice a hundred and twenty days after expiration for a domestic entity, and a statement of termination after ninety days for a foreign one.
A notice arriving outside that timeline is most likely not from the office. Warning signs it lists include a sender address or payment link not ending in .gov, words such as final notice or legal action without earlier contact, a QR code, a caller from outside Washington area codes, and any text message at all.
The annual report itself costs seventy dollars for a for profit business on the current schedule, with a twenty five dollar delinquency fee once the status turns delinquent. Third party solicitors must tell recipients that using them is not mandatory and that they can file with the Secretary of State directly. The division also reports calls to newly formed businesses falsely claiming to be the Secretary of State and selling labor posters, which Labor and Industries supplies free.
The texts that charged two hundred dollars
On May 9, 2023 the Attorney General announced a lawsuit in King County Superior Court against two Wyoming companies, EFile Business Inc. and Online Filing LLC, and their owner. In just over a year they sent more than 147,000 deceptive texts to Washington businesses and nonprofits, demanding two hundred dollars to file an annual report that the state then charged sixty dollars for, and between a hundred and fifty and a hundred and seventy five dollars to file annual meeting minutes that Washington does not require at all.
More than 800 companies paid. The release puts the annual report at sixty dollars, while the fee schedule read today lists seventy, so the gap reflects a later fee change rather than an error. The same release recalls a November 2022 judgment of more than 24.8 million dollars against CA Certificate Service and Labor Poster Compliance over letters selling certificates and posters.
Licenses, trade names and the Department of Revenue
The Secretary of State register stops at the legal entity. Trade names, endorsements and the state business license itself are handled by the Business Licensing Service of the Department of Revenue, which says it can provide information about corporations or individuals doing business under a trade name and can verify that a business exists. Its Business Lookup asks first which kind of account to search: a tax account, a reseller permit, to confirm the permit is active and its effective dates, or a general business license.
A sole proprietor trading under a name never appears in the Secretary of State system at all, so the Department of Revenue lookup is often where a search has to finish.
Questions about looking up a Washington business
Related Washington records
Washington's other records guides on this site are the Washington public records law guide, the Washington licenses guide for professional and occupational licensing, the Washington court records guide for lawsuits naming a business, the Washington unclaimed property guide, and the Washington county pages for every county office.