How to search Pennsylvania business entities online

What the search covers

The database covers domestic and foreign LLCs, business corporations, nonprofit corporations, limited partnerships, LLPs, limited liability limited partnerships (LLLPs), professional corporations, benefit corporations, and cooperative corporations. Charitable organization registrations are handled by the same bureau and are searchable through a separate tool.

Search options

A single search box accepts either an entity name or an entity (file) number, matched as 'Contains' or 'Starts with'. Results can be narrowed further:

• Entity Name or Entity Number — same search box; case-insensitive
• Filing Type filter — narrows results to a specific entity type (LLC, business corporation, nonprofit corporation, limited partnership, fictitious name, and more)
• Status filter — Active or one of several inactive statuses (dissolved, withdrawn, revoked, terminated, etc.)
• Filing Date Range — restricts results to filings within a chosen date window

Records cannot be searched by officer, director, or owner name — the Bureau indexes filings only by entity name and entity number. Results show the entity name, type, status, filing date, registered office address, and links to filed documents. The search page also posts a rolling notice of the date through which filings have been processed, so you can gauge how current the index is.

Pennsylvania's "Subsistence Certificate" — not "Good Standing"

Pennsylvania uses different terminology for what most states call a Certificate of Good Standing. For domestic entities, the correct term is a Subsistence Certificate. For foreign (out-of-state) entities registered in Pennsylvania, it is a Certificate of Registration. When a contracting party, lender, or foreign government asks for a "good standing certificate," request a Subsistence Certificate from the Bureau of Corporations. The fee is $40.

Payment — no cash accepted

The Bureau of Corporations does not accept cash for any filing, standard or expedited. Checks and money orders must be made payable to the Pennsylvania Department of State. Credit cards are accepted for expedited filing services only. Plan payment method accordingly before filing in person.

What Pennsylvania's Inactive sub-statuses mean

An Active status means the entity currently owes an annual report; anything else falls under Inactive, which Pennsylvania splits into five sub-variants shown right in the search result: Dissolved, Terminated, Merged Out, Withdrawn, and Cancelled. None of them owe an annual report going forward, but they got there through different routes — voluntary dissolution, a merger into another entity, a voluntary withdrawal of foreign registration, or a state-initiated action.

Pennsylvania's new administrative dissolution rules — and why they're not active yet

Pennsylvania didn't have an administrative dissolution process for missing annual reports until Act 122 of 2022 created one alongside the state's first-ever annual report requirement. The consequence for missing that report differs by entity type: a domestic corporation or LLC faces administrative dissolution, a domestic LLP instead faces administrative cancellation — which doesn't end the entity, it strips its LLP status and drops it back to an ordinary general partnership, losing the liability shield that was the point of registering as an LLP — and a foreign association's registration faces administrative termination instead.

None of this has actually triggered yet: the dissolution, cancellation, or termination consequence only applies to an entity that misses its report and stays delinquent 6 months past the due date, so the earliest any Pennsylvania entity could be affected under this new regime is 2027. A domestic entity that does get dissolved has no reinstatement deadline; a foreign association that gets terminated, however, can't reinstate at all and has to file a brand-new registration under a new entity number instead.

Frequently Asked Questions