If you ask ten EU founders what it costs to form a company, you’ll hear ten answers and none of them will be complete. That’s partly because the visible price — the registration fee on a member-state portal — is rarely the meaningful number. The meaningful number is the stack: registration plus notary plus accounting plus office plus filings plus the few things no one warns you about.
EU INC is being designed to compress that stack. Some components get genuinely cheaper under the new regime. Others don’t. This post walks through every line, gives realistic ranges, and calls out which items you can avoid.
The four cost buckets
It helps to think of EU INC costs in four categories rather than as one blended number:
- Formation costs — paid once, to get the company legally into existence.
- Registered office and agent — paid annually, to keep it legally addressed.
- Accounting and tax — paid monthly or quarterly, depending on activity.
- Ongoing filings and compliance — paid annually or on event.
We’ll take each in turn. All numbers below are indicative ranges based on current national company regimes, EU regulatory drafts, and reasonable expectations for an EU INC bundle. Specifics will firm up as the final implementing regulation is published — see the EU INC regulation timeline.
1. Formation costs — paid once
Minimum share capital
EU INC has no minimum share capital. The Commission’s proposal explicitly removes the share-capital floor so founders can form a company without parking cash against a regulatory minimum. This follows the direction national forms already took: Germany’s UG starts at €1; France’s SAS and SARL at €1; Estonia’s OÜ has required no paid-in capital before registration since 1 February 2023; Spain’s 2022 Ley Crea y Crece cut the SL minimum to €1.
Don’t confuse a legal minimum with how much you actually capitalise the company on formation. Capitalisation is a business decision — it’s what the company has in the bank on day one — not a regulatory floor.
State registration fee
This is the fee paid to the member-state registry that records the company’s existence. Under the European Commission’s EU INC proposal, Article 16(2) caps the registration fee at €100. That’s the hard ceiling — member states may charge less, not more. Expect most registrations to land between €0 and €100, with low-cost digital registries (Estonia, Latvia, Ireland) likely at or near zero.
Notary fees — the variable
This is where costs traditionally spike. In Germany, notary fees for a GmbH formation typically run €350–€1,000+ depending on share capital and share class structure (a simplified Musterprotokoll formation with one shareholder and a small capital sits at the low end; anything bespoke climbs quickly). A stated goal of EU INC is to remove notary involvement entirely for standard digital formations, using member-state electronic identification instead. Several member states will drop it altogether for EU INC; others will keep it as an optional or jurisdiction-specific step. Expected range: €0 to €1,000, depending on country and whether you use a standardised template.
Legal drafting
If you use standard articles of association and a standard founders’ agreement, legal drafting is close to zero. If you negotiate custom preferred share rights on formation, pin vesting cliffs, or set up unusual board controls, plan for several hours of a startup lawyer’s time. Expected range: €0 to €1,500. An EU-wide standard-terms founders’ agreement template — see our proposal for EU-FAST — should, once adopted, drive this number close to zero for standard cases.
Bundle pricing at INC48
INC48’s formation bundle is designed to collapse most of the above into a single, predictable fee. The thing to compare carefully is not the headline price — it’s what’s inside the bundle. A cheap formation bundle that excludes the registered office and first-year accounting is usually more expensive overall than a bundle that includes them.
2. Registered office and agent — annual
Every EU INC must have a registered office in an EU member state. This is the official address for service of process and registry correspondence. You have three options:
- Your own physical office. Cost: whatever your lease is. Only realistic if you’re already operating in the member state of registration.
- A commercial registered-office service. Independent providers typically charge €200–€600 per year, depending on country and whether mail forwarding is included.
- The INC48 bundled address. Included in our standard formation package at launch.
If you’re a non-resident founder, a registered-office service is not optional — you need an EU address that accepts official correspondence. Make sure it genuinely forwards mail and handles registered post. Several of the cheapest services just hold mail until you fly in.
3. Accounting and tax — recurring
Accounting is the most underestimated line in the whole budget. Founders look at formation cost, see it’s low, and then discover that the monthly bookkeeping plus annual accounts plus VAT returns plus payroll are several multiples of formation cost every year.
Monthly bookkeeping
For a pre-revenue or very small company, bookkeeping can be close to zero if the founder does it directly in a tool like Fakturoid, Dokka or Xero. Once there is real revenue and expenses, expect €80–€250 per month for outsourced bookkeeping, depending on transaction volume and country.
Annual accounts
All EU member states require annual accounts filed to the registry. Expect €400–€1,200 per year for annual accounts preparation and filing from a small accounting firm. This does not include audit. Most small and medium EU INC will not need an audit until they cross size thresholds.
VAT registration and returns
If you sell to EU consumers, you register under the EU’s VAT One-Stop-Shop (OSS) regime once you cross the threshold. OSS itself is free; filing quarterly OSS returns adds a small amount to the accountant bill (typically €30–€100 per quarter). B2B sales inside the EU under the reverse charge are simpler and usually require no extra registration.
Corporate tax return
Paid annually. Usually bundled with annual accounts by the same firm. If not, budget €200–€600 per year on top.
Payroll
If you have employees, payroll runs every month and varies wildly by country. Germany, France and Italy are relatively expensive payroll jurisdictions; Ireland, Spain and Portugal are relatively cheap. Expect €15–€40 per employee per month for outsourced payroll processing, on top of the payroll taxes themselves.
4. Ongoing filings and compliance — annual or event-driven
This bucket is small if you do it right, painful if you don’t.
- Annual confirmation / return filing. A lightweight annual statement that the company still exists and its details are current. Usually filed together with accounts. Cost: included in the accountant’s annual fee.
- Beneficial ownership (UBO) filing. All EU member states maintain beneficial ownership registers. Updates are required when ownership changes. Usually free or close to free.
- Data protection. If you process personal data, GDPR obligations apply. For most small companies this is a policy, a DPA with processors, and a lightweight record of processing activities. Cost: a few hours of legal or DPO time per year.
- Cap-table changes. When you issue shares, do a SAFE round, or amend articles, expect filings plus potentially notary involvement. Budget €200–€1,500 per event.
- Employment compliance. Pension, health insurance, sick leave, working-time tracking — mostly handled through payroll.
What a realistic Year 1 budget looks like
For a typical pre-revenue two-founder startup forming an EU INC at launch, a realistic first-year budget looks roughly like this:
- Formation bundle (registration + standard articles + registered office year 1): €400–€1,200
- Bookkeeping (12 months at low volume): €0–€2,400
- Annual accounts + tax return: €500–€1,200
- Miscellaneous filings + UBO + minor legal: €100–€400
All-in first year: roughly €1,000–€5,000, with most well-run, pre-revenue EU INCs landing around €1,500–€2,500. That’s meaningfully less than the same setup as a German GmbH or a French SAS, mostly because of the notary reduction and the digital-by-default registry process.
Year 2 onward
The formation cost is gone. You’re left with the recurring three: registered office + accounting + filings. For most early-stage EU INCs, that’s €1,000–€2,500 per year until the company grows enough to justify an in-house finance function.
Once you cross audit thresholds (varies by country, typically around €8M turnover or 50+ employees) the numbers shift materially — but at that point you’re also a very different company with a finance team making these decisions, not a founder reading a blog post.
The cost not to optimise for
One quiet warning. Optimising for the absolute lowest formation fee is almost always a false economy. The cheapest bundle tends to exclude the registered office, the first annual filing, and any accountant handover. You then spend far more in year two cleaning up what wasn’t set up cleanly in year one.
The number that matters is total cost of the first three years, not the first invoice. Pick a bundle that’s boring, complete, and includes ongoing accounting. The marginal cost of boring is tiny; the cost of clean-up when it’s not boring is very high.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to register an EU INC?
The state registration fee is capped at €100 under Article 16(2) of the Commission’s EU INC proposal. Once you add a registered office (€200–€600/year), first-year bookkeeping and annual accounts, a realistic all-in first-year budget lands around €1,500–€2,500 for a typical pre-revenue two-founder startup.
Is there a minimum share capital for EU INC?
No. The EU INC proposal removes the minimum share-capital requirement entirely. You still decide how much cash to capitalise the company with on day one, but there is no regulatory floor.
Do I need a notary to form an EU INC?
The regulation is designed to allow fully digital formation via member-state electronic identification, with no mandatory notary. Individual member states may retain an optional notary step for bespoke setups; for a standard EU INC formation, the intended path is notary-free.
What are the annual running costs of an EU INC?
For most early-stage EU INCs, recurring costs — registered office, accounting and annual filings — total roughly €1,000–€2,500 per year from year two onward, before payroll and audit thresholds apply.