When the Only Thing You Need Is the Agent

Before the comparison, the bias behind it. This page belongs to MD Registered Agent.org, a Maryland agent service charging $99 a year that profits whenever a reader switches. The Rocket Lawyer figure is quoted from that company's published rate rather than estimated by anyone here.

One Price at Every Tier

Rocket Lawyer lists registered agent service at $125 per year, and the figure does not move according to which membership level a customer holds. In a market fond of introductory rates that step up on the anniversary, holding one number across an entire product line is unusual enough to credit plainly. Nothing about month thirteen has been engineered as a surprise.

You Are Renting a Legal Platform

The reservation is scope rather than candor. Rocket Lawyer sells a subscription: document templates, attorney consultations, filing assistance, with the agent role sitting inside as one component among several. A business drafting contracts monthly and wanting counsel reachable without an hourly engagement is getting real value from the surrounding package.

A Maryland LLC that needs an in-state street address, someone present during business hours, and fast delivery of whatever arrives is buying a single feature at platform economics. That is a scope judgment rather than a scandal, and different owners answer it differently for perfectly good reasons.

Who Maryland Actually Permits

A related point that catches people out. Maryland's Corporations and Associations article, at section 1-101(x), lets the role be filled by a person who lives in the state, or by a business entity of Maryland's own: a corporation, an LLC, or a limited partnership formed here. SDAT's own instruction sheet describes a narrower set of eligible parties than the statute does, and where the two disagree the statute governs.

The practical upshot is that eligibility is a low bar cleared by every company named on this page. Nothing in Maryland law rewards a larger platform or a longer feature list. The state cares about the address and the availability behind it, which is precisely why price and turnaround are legitimate grounds for the decision.

$99, and One Line on the Invoice

Our checkout contains a single item. That $99 covers a Maryland address that appears on the public record in place of your own, same-day imaging of whatever a process server leaves at our counter, an email alert as it happens, a portal reachable from a phone, and a reminder before the state's April filing date. Exactly one further charge exists anywhere in the account: $15 to image a single piece of routine business correspondence, stated on this page instead of on a later statement.

Cheapest in Maryland is not available to us as a claim, because BetterLegal publishes $90. What does hold up: $99 is a low published Maryland rate that holds steady through every renewal.

Twenty-Five Dollars and One Unnumbered Resolution

Maryland's paperwork for this is short. What SDAT wants is a Resolution to Change Principal Office or Resident Agent. Recording it costs $25, and because the agency assigns no numbers to its charter forms, the full title is what you ask for. Delivery goes to the Charter Division, and the online channel is Maryland Business Express, where card payments add a 3 percent service fee.

The order of operations:

1. Sign up with the replacement agent and get its Maryland name and street address in writing.
2. Complete the resolution with your entity name, SDAT identification number, and the incoming agent's details.
3. Obtain whatever signatures the form calls for.
4. File with the Charter Division and pay $25.
5. Check the public entity record until the new agent appears on it.
6. Then decide what to do about the Rocket Lawyer subscription.

Two things about that final step. Ending the agent appointment and ending the membership are two separate decisions, so if the templates and the attorney calls earn their keep, hold onto them and shift only the agent line. And leaving the old arrangement in place until SDAT displays the change is what prevents a vacancy, because Maryland expects the agent line on your record to be occupied continuously rather than eventually.

One more useful quirk of the fee schedule: an agent who resigns on its own initiative pays nothing to file that resignation. The $25 attaches to the resolution appointing somebody new. Our Maryland change of agent guide covers the form itself.

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Published rates for nine Maryland services are collected in our price comparison.