LLC formation breakdown

Offer company formation on your platform

Plenty of platforms have users who need to be a real company before they can get paid properly, invoice a business client, or open a bank account. Whop lets you register one for them with a single POST, and run it as a program rather than a one-off.

Below is that program mid-flight: five users, four already registered or filing, one still waiting. Form a company for the one who is waiting and watch what Whop says back.

Every request on this page is real and goes to Whop's sandbox, which validates the whole thing and then refuses to create the checkout. No company can be formed from here, and nothing is charged.

EndpointPOST /accounts/{id}/form_company

Entity typesLLC or C-Corp

States50 plus DC

Your user pays$500, or $750 expedited

6 short steps, highlighted on the page as you go.

Your users

Formation runs against an account, and on a platform every user has one. This is what the program looks like once it is running.

4/5 registered

You create each of these once, with a POST /accounts when the user signs up. Forming a company is a second call against that id.

Marcus is the only live row. He maps to this demo's sandbox account biz_hMI9nMwxmq3TOE and forming against him sends a real request.

Every stage after that begins when somebody pays $500, which the sandbox cannot do, so the other four are drawn from the documented shapes rather than live data.

Their company

Its legal name, what kind of entity it is, which state registers it, and where it lives.

Legal nameEntity ending

Entity typeState of formation

Business typethree linked fields, all three must match

Industry groupIndustry type

Use the registered agent's address

Whop supplies the address and the agent. Turn this off and your user has to give you a company address and phone.

Expedite their EIN

Adds $250 to what your user pays. Only for founders without a US Social Security Number, whose EIN otherwise takes up to eight weeks.

Their founders

Every member of your user's company, their share, and which one signs for the filing.

100% of 100

Responsible party

First nameLast nameEmailnever checkedPhoneE.164, never checkedDate of birthoptional, never checkedSSNleave empty if not a US resident

Ownershipmust total 100

StreetCityState or region

Postal codeCountry

The application

One call from your server, against your user's account. No draft to create first, no session to open.

POST/accounts/biz_hMI9nMwxmq3TOE/form_company

{
  "business_name": "Ridgemont Detailing",
  "entity_type": "llc",
  "entity_suffix": "LLC",
  "formation_state": "WY",
  "business_type": "brick_and_mortar",
  "industry_group": "automotive",
  "industry_type": "car_wash",
  "use_registered_agent": true,
  "founders": [
    {
      "first_name": "Marcus",
      "last_name": "Webb",
      "email": "marcus@ridgemont.example",
      "phone": "+12125550100",
      "is_primary": true,
      "date_of_birth": "1990-04-12",
      "ownership_percentage": 100,
      "address": {
        "line1": "907 Ridgemont Dr",
        "city": "Austin",
        "state": "TX",
        "postal_code": "78704",
        "country": "US"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Junk means a broken email, a phone that is not E.164, a founder born in 2024, and a postal code of ZZZZZ. Whop takes all four.

What came back

Whop answers with one sentence at a time, so a broken application takes as many round trips as it has mistakes.

Nothing sent yet. The panel above holds the exact request.

Hand it to your user

You do not pay for the formation. You pass the checkout on, and the filing starts when they settle it.

This is where checkout would open.

In production the response carries a Whop checkout link for $500. You show it to your user, and once they pay it the filing is real: state registration, EIN, Articles of Organization, the lot.

Nobody can pay here, because this demo runs on Whop's sandbox and the sandbox cannot form companies. Everything above this line was a real API call.

What production answers with

{
  "checkout_url": "https://whop.com/checkout/ch_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/",
  "checkout_session_id": "ch_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "total": 50000,
  "currency": "usd"
}

total is in cents, and it is a flat fee: $400 for the formation plus $100 for the first year of registered agent. Read it off the response rather than hardcoding it, because it has moved once already.

Then you track it on their account

1draft
Where the application sits until your user pays.
2processing
Paid. Whop files with the state and applies for the EIN.
3filed
The state has the paperwork. Documents start appearing.
4completed
Registered, EIN issued, Articles of Organization downloadable.

Read company_formation when you retrieve their account, or listen for account.updated rather than polling every user you have.