The Department of Business Services at the Illinois Secretary of State keeps the register, and its database covers corporations, not for profit corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability companies and limited liability partnerships. The business entity search is unusual in how many doors it opens: business name, registered agent, president, secretary, manager, file number, keyword and partial word are all search methods, with an individual name search taking a surname, forename and middle initial.
What comes back is a File Detail Report, which the office calls the most requested information for a business entity and which costs nothing to read. It carries the official name, the date of formation or registration, the jurisdiction, the name of the registered agent and the address of the registered office, the status as active or inactive, and the names and addresses of the president and secretary for a corporation or of any managers for a limited liability company. A Certificate of Good Standing is bought from the same page. For Illinois businesses by place, see the Illinois county pages.
- Eight ways to search: name, registered agent, president, secretary, manager, file number, keyword and partial word.
- Officers in the free report: the File Detail Report names the president and secretary of a corporation or the managers of a limited liability company.
- Twenty five dollars, or five: a Certificate of Good Standing for a corporation or limited liability company, or for a not for profit.
- Individual searches only: bulk copying or downloading is prohibited and prosecuted under the computer tampering statutes.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Illinois's own systems: the Illinois Secretary of State business entity search, the business search and certificate of good standing page, the Department of Business Services annual report page, section 14.05 of the Illinois Business Corporation Act on the annual report, section 12.35 of the Illinois Business Corporation Act on administrative dissolution, section 15.15 of the Illinois Business Corporation Act on copy and certificate charges, section 50-10 of the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act on fees, section 50-15 of the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act on delinquency, the Illinois Assumed Business Name Act, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Searching by the people, not the company
Most state registers index companies and leave the people out of the search. Illinois does the opposite, offering registered agent, president, secretary and manager as search methods alongside the business name, so a researcher with only an individual name can find the entities that person is attached to. The search form takes a surname, forename and middle initial for a person, or a business name instead. The keyword and partial word methods help with the other common problem, an entity name remembered imperfectly, and the file number method is there when a document or a notice has supplied it.
Between them the eight methods cover most of the ways a name arrives in front of a researcher.
What the File Detail Report contains
The report is free and it is the heart of an Illinois search. It gives the official name of the entity, which is often not quite the name in use; the date of formation or registration; the jurisdiction, which shows whether the company is an Illinois entity or a foreign one registered here; the name of the registered agent and the address of the registered office, which is the service address for legal process; and the status, active or inactive.
For a corporation it names the president and the secretary with their addresses, and for a limited liability company it names any managers with theirs. That last part is what makes the Illinois report more useful than most for due diligence, since the officer names come free with the lookup rather than requiring a paid filing copy.
Buying a Certificate of Good Standing
A Certificate of Good Standing confirms compliance with the Department of Business Services, and it is the document another state, a lender or a counterparty will ask for. The route is short: search the database to reach the company File Detail Report, purchase the certificate online, then print it from the link on the receipt page or from the link in the returned email. The price depends on the entity type, at twenty five dollars for a corporation or limited liability company and five dollars for a not for profit, which makes Illinois one of the cheaper states for a not for profit certificate.
Because the certificate is printed by the purchaser rather than posted, it is available the same minute the payment clears.
What the annual report puts on the record
The officer names in the free report come from one place: the annual report every Illinois corporation and foreign corporation must file under section 14.05 of the Business Corporation Act. The statute lists what the report carries: the registered office and agent, the principal office, the names and addresses of the directors and officers, the authorized and issued shares by class, the paid-in capital in dollars, and, where the corporation elects it, the value of property and the gross business inside and outside Illinois that sets its franchise tax.
Corporations that file an EEO-1 with the federal government also attach employment data by gender, race and ethnicity, which the Secretary of State publishes on its website. The filing fee is seventy five dollars for a corporation and seventy five for a limited liability company, with fifty dollars added for each series of a series LLC.
The calendar runs on the anniversary month. A corporation delivers the report within the sixty days before the first day of its anniversary month, and a report posted with the right fees before that first day counts as on time even if it arrives later. A limited liability company must have its report filed before the first day of its anniversary month. For a researcher, the date of the last report on a record and the anniversary month together show whether a company is current or already in default.
Individual searches only, and the criminal statutes behind it
Illinois states its terms of use firmly. The database is provided to the public for individual searches only, and the use of the website or database to copy or download bulk searches or information is prohibited. The reason it can afford to say so is that the information is also a product: pursuant to statute, the Department of Business Services offers information for sale, with a telephone number published for contract inquiries.
The warning then names the law. The information in the database is the property of the Office of the Secretary of State, and any unauthorized use, unauthorized access, removal of data, copying or downloading is prohibited by criminal statutes, including the offenses of computer tampering and aggravated computer tampering at sections 16D-3 and 16D-4 of chapter 720 of the compiled statutes, with violators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
How an Illinois company loses its standing
The two entity types fall out of good standing by different routes, and the record shows which. For a corporation the grounds for administrative dissolution are in section 12.35: no annual report or franchise tax before the first day of the anniversary month, unpaid fees or taxes, a material misrepresentation in a filing, no registered agent, a payment returned by the bank, unanswered interrogatories, or a conviction under section 10-9 of the Criminal Code, the trafficking provision added with effect from January 1, 2026.
The office mails a notice of delinquency to the registered office, and if the default is not cured within ninety days it issues a certificate of dissolution reciting the ground and the date; a bounced payment or an unanswered interrogatory gives only thirty days. Reinstatement of a corporation costs two hundred dollars plus the reports and franchise taxes owed.
A limited liability company that has not filed its report before the first day of its anniversary month is declared delinquent and not in good standing under section 50-15 of the Limited Liability Company Act, as is one that goes sixty days without replacing a resigned registered agent. From the first day of the second month after the anniversary month the penalty is one hundred dollars plus one hundred for each year or part of a year of delinquency from the second year, the office refuses to file anything further for the company until it is cured, and it may answer inquiries by showing the company as not in good standing. Reinstatement of a limited liability company also costs two hundred dollars.
Copies, certificates and the assumed names that are not here
The statutes fix the price of paper from the register at a flat twenty five dollars: section 15.15 of the corporation act and section 50-10 of the LLC act each charge twenty five dollars for a copy or certified copy of any document on file, or for a certificate, and ten dollars each time the Secretary of State is served with process as a company resident agent. A corporate assumed name is filed with the state, and its fee runs down a five year cycle from one hundred fifty dollars in a year ending in 0 or 5 to thirty dollars in a year ending in 4 or 9, with a renewal of one hundred fifty, a change twenty five and a cancellation five; the LLC act prices assumed names the same way.
The names that never reach the state register belong to individuals. Under the Assumed Business Name Act, anyone trading under a name other than their own real name files a certificate with the county clerk of the county where the business is conducted, giving the real names and addresses of the owners and every address used in the county, then publishes notice once a week for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper there, with the first publication within fifteen days of filing and proof of publication lodged within fifty days.
A sole proprietor trading as a shop or a service will therefore be found at the county clerk, not in the Secretary of State database.
Questions about looking up a Illinois business
Related Illinois records
Illinois's other records guides on this site are the Illinois public records law guide for the Freedom of Information Act, the Illinois court records guide for the circuit clerks, the Illinois property records guide for the county recorders, and the Illinois county pages for every county office.