Form a US LLC Without an SSN (2026): Whop Does It for $400

You can now form a US LLC without an SSN, from a terminal. The Whop CLI launched on July 21, 2026, and it files a real limited liability company with a real US state after you describe the business in plain language to an AI agent. Whop's own demo forms a car detailing business called Palo Auto. The command is whop accounts llc, and the price is $400 for the first year.

Whop files the LLC and gets the EIN without a Social Security Number, which is the wall most non-US creators hit before US banking. That is useful, and it is also completely standard: doola, Firstbase, and Stripe Atlas have all done it for years, at $297, $399, and $500. What makes Whop different is neither the price nor the terminal. This guide runs the comparison Whop does not publish, names what actually changed, and flags the one demo default you should not copy.

What the $400 Whop LLC actually buys

Formation services love a bundle. Here is the line-by-line, from Whop's published pricing rather than from the demo:

• State filing fee: included. This is the fee the state charges to register the entity. It varies by state, and Whop absorbs it inside the $400.
• EIN registration: included. It is the federal tax ID you need to open a US business bank account, sign up for US payment processors, and file taxes.
• Registered agent, year one: included. You get a legal address in the state of formation that receives official mail and lawsuits on the company's behalf.
• Renewal: $100 a year. It keeps the registered agent and the ongoing service. It is not the state fee.
• Expedited EIN: $250, optional. Whop offers it only on the no-SSN path. Read the section below before you decide.
• Not included: your state's annual franchise tax or annual report fee. Delaware charges $300 a year. California charges an $800 annual minimum. That money goes to the state and no formation service can make it disappear.

For comparison, filing yourself costs the state fee plus roughly $50 to $150 a year for a standalone registered agent, and the EIN application is on you. The $400 is not a scandal and it is not a steal. You are paying for one pass instead of a checklist, and for someone else to chase the EIN when you have no SSN. That is where most non-US founders stall.

Whop vs doola, Firstbase, and Stripe Atlas: what each one costs

Whop does not publish a comparison, so here is one. All four form a US LLC and obtain an EIN for a founder with no Social Security Number. That capability is the baseline in this market, not a differentiator.

The ranking is unremarkable. doola is cheapest to form. Firstbase is cheapest to maintain. Atlas is the priciest and files in Delaware only. Whop sits mid-table on both counts. If all you need is a US LLC with an EIN, Whop is not the obvious answer, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

How the Whop CLI files your LLC, start to finish

The flow in the video is short enough to describe completely. You install the CLI and run whop to authenticate; the same command registers Whop's tools with your agent. From there:

• The agent asks for what a lawyer would ask for. That means your legal name, date of birth, address, and optionally a Social Security Number.
• You describe the business in plain English. The agent maps that description onto Whop's fixed taxonomy of business type, industry group, and industry type.
• The legal name gets a suffix. Whop appends LLC by default, so Palo Auto becomes Palo Auto LLC.
• You ask for a registered agent if you want the filing to carry their address instead of yours.
• You read the filing and confirm it. The agent files nothing you have not seen, which is the correct default for a document that creates a legal entity.
• Payment happens on a hosted checkout page. Nothing is charged and nothing reaches the state until you pay there.
• You track the status from the account within a few days of the state receiving the paperwork.

The CLI ships with MCP support, so none of this is locked to one assistant: any agent that speaks the protocol can drive it. And if the terminal is not your world, the same formation runs through the Whop portal and the API.

What Whop changed, and what it did not

Not the price, and not the terminal. Formation over an API already existed. doola announced agentic formation over MCP on April 30, 2026, letting founders incorporate from inside Claude or Replit, roughly three months before the Whop CLI shipped.

The difference is where the company lands. The CLI requires an --account_id, and in the demo the filing goes under the existing Palo Auto account. doola, Firstbase, and Atlas form the entity and hand it back to you. Whop forms it attached to the account that already holds your checkout, your payouts, and your customers.

That gives Whop a stack no competitor has in one place:

• The legal entity and its EIN are filed under your account.
• The registered agent receives your state mail and service of process.
• Merchant of record status makes the platform the legal seller, so it handles the tax.
• Checkout, subscriptions, and payouts run on that same account.
• The product itself lives there too: courses, paid communities, access.
• A CLI and an API with MCP support drive all of it from one agent.

The Delaware default is the one thing not to copy

Delaware has a reputation, and that reputation does a lot of unearned work. On screen in the demo, Whop's agent explains the trade-off correctly, and Delaware still stands as the default until you name another state. A correct explanation is not a correct default, and the default is what most founders will accept.

If you live and operate in a US state, forming in Delaware does not replace registering in your own state. It adds to it. A Delaware LLC that operates in California has to foreign-qualify in California, which means:

• California charges its $800 annual franchise minimum, whether or not you make a profit.
• Delaware still charges its $300 annual franchise tax on top.
• You pay for a registered agent in Delaware plus a registered address in California.
• You keep two sets of filings current instead of one.

Forming in the state where you actually operate is usually cheaper and always simpler. Delaware earns its fee when you are raising venture capital and investors expect Delaware corporate law. That is not the creator selling a course.

There is one real exception, and it covers most people reading this. If you are a non-US founder with no US operations, there is no home state to default to and nothing to duplicate. Delaware, Wyoming, or New Mexico are all defensible then, and the choice comes down to annual cost and privacy rather than to law. Wyoming and New Mexico are cheaper to maintain than Delaware's $300.

Forming a US LLC without an SSN: the EIN trade-off

If you are reading from outside the United States, this is the section that matters most. It also contains a detail Whop's marketing does not lead with.

An EIN application filed with a Social Security Number goes through the instant online channel and comes back quickly. Without an SSN, the application leaves that channel, and Whop states the EIN can take up to 8 weeks to arrive. The $250 expedite exists to compress that wait, and Whop only offers it when no founder on the filing supplies an SSN. You are choosing one route or the other, never both.

The practical decision comes down to what you are waiting on:

• You have a US co-founder with an SSN. Put them on the filing, skip the $250, and take the fast EIN.
• You have no SSN and no urgent deadline. Take the 8 weeks. The LLC itself exists as soon as the state registers it, and the EIN is only blocking bank and processor onboarding.
• You have no SSN and a launch date. Pay the $250. Waiting 8 weeks on a bank account while an offer is live costs more than that.

One thing the EIN does not do is change your tax position. A US LLC owned by a non-resident with no US employees or offices is not automatically taxed in the US. It still carries filing obligations, and the analysis depends on your treaty and your facts. That is an accountant question, not a CLI question. Our guide on payment processing for international creators covers the money-movement side of the same problem.

Concentration risk: one vendor holds the entity and the money

That one-account stack is the product, and it is also the exposure. Entity, registered agent, checkout, payouts, and the product itself sit with a single vendor, and those layers are not equally easy to replace.

• A storefront is portable. You can rebuild a checkout somewhere else in a week.
• A registered agent is not a storefront. It is the legal address receiving service of process and state notices. Losing access while a filing deadline runs is a different class of problem.
• Your entity and your revenue share a failure mode. A dispute that freezes your payouts now involves the vendor holding your corporate paperwork.
• Switching costs compound. Changing registered agent is a state filing, not a settings toggle.

None of that makes the offer bad. It makes it a decision rather than a no-brainer. If you are already all-in on Whop, adding the entity is coherent and convenient. Founders who keep their legal structure independent of any single commercial partner should form with a provider that has no claim on their revenue, then point their payments wherever they like.

Be honest: do you need an LLC yet?

We have an affiliate relationship with Whop, and we will still say this. Most creators who ask about forming an LLC are asking too early. A terminal that reduces the filing to a 60-second job does not change that.

If you sell through a merchant of record, the platform is the legal seller. It collects and remits sales tax and EU VAT for you, and it pays you as a supplier. You can validate an offer and take real money with no entity at all. That is the real reason so many creators can start with nothing.

Form the LLC when one of these four things becomes true, not before:

• Your revenue is consistent, not a single launch that may never repeat.
• You are taking on real liability, such as coaching advice, done-for-you client work, or anything with a deliverable someone can sue over.
• A partner or client refuses to contract with an individual, which happens fast once you sell B2B.
• You need US banking or US payment rails as a non-US resident. This is the one case where the LLC plus EIN does something nothing else can.

And a caution that gets skipped: the entity does not protect your payment processing. An LLC changes who is liable and how you are taxed. It does not change how a processor scores a coaching business or a paid community. If you have been reading about frozen accounts, the entity is not the fix. Our guide to high-risk payment processors explains what really drives those decisions.

Verdict: should you form your US LLC on Whop?

If all you want is a US LLC and an EIN, do not reach for Whop first. doola forms for $297, Firstbase maintains for $79 a year, and both clear the no-SSN hurdle just as well. Whop at $400 plus $100 is a fair mid-market price for a service whose distinguishing feature you would not be using.

Whop earns it when you already sell on Whop. The entity lands next to the money, one account covers formation through payout, and an agent can drive the whole chain. That combination is real, and nobody else sells it in one place.

Weigh that convenience against the concentration and decide deliberately. If you are a US resident, override the Delaware default and file where you operate. If you are pre-revenue, do nothing yet: sell through a merchant of record, prove the offer, and come back when one of the four triggers above is true.

Full transcript of the Whop announcement video

The video runs 1 minute 5 seconds and is in English. Subtitles are available in French, Spanish and Portuguese from the player. Here is the whole thing in text.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to form an LLC with Whop?

$400 for the first year. That covers the state filing fee, EIN registration, and one year of registered agent service. Renewal is $100 a year, which keeps the registered agent and the ongoing service running. Founders without a US Social Security Number can add expedited EIN processing for $250. The state franchise tax or annual report fee is separate and is paid to your state, not to Whop.

Can I form a US LLC through Whop without an SSN?

Yes. Whop files the LLC and applies for the EIN without a Social Security Number, which is the blocker most non-US founders hit. The trade-off is time: without an SSN the EIN can take up to 8 weeks to arrive, because the application leaves the instant online channel. Expedited processing costs $250 and is only offered on the no-SSN path. If a founder does supply an SSN, the EIN comes back fast and the expedite option is not offered, so you are choosing one route or the other, never both.

Which state should I pick when forming an LLC on Whop?

If you live and operate in a US state, form in that state. Whop defaults the demo to Delaware, but a Delaware LLC operating in California has to foreign-qualify in California anyway, which means paying California's $800 annual franchise minimum on top of Delaware's $300 franchise tax and a registered agent in both states. If you have no US operations at all, which is the case for most non-US creators, there is no home state to default to and Delaware, Wyoming, or New Mexico become defensible on their own merits.

What is the Whop CLI and do I need to be technical to use it?

The Whop CLI launched on July 21, 2026 and exposes Whop's full API from a terminal. It ships with MCP support, so any AI agent can drive it. In practice you install it, run whop to authenticate, and then describe what you want in plain language. The agent maps your description onto the fields Whop needs. You do not write code, but you do need to be comfortable opening a terminal. If you are not, the same LLC formation is available through the Whop web portal.

Does forming an LLC stop Stripe from freezing my account?

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. An LLC changes who is liable and how you are taxed. It does not change how a payment processor scores your risk. Creators selling coaching, courses, and paid communities get flagged for the category and the chargeback profile, not for the legal wrapper. A US LLC plus EIN does unlock US banking and US Stripe access for a non-US founder, which is worth having, but the freeze risk travels with you.

Do I actually need an LLC to sell online?

Not on day one. If you sell through a merchant of record, the platform is the seller of record, it collects and remits the tax, and it pays you as a supplier. You can validate an offer and take real money that way with no entity at all. Form the LLC when one of four things becomes true: you are earning consistently, you are taking on real liability such as coaching advice or client work, a partner refuses to contract with an individual, or you need US banking as a non-US resident. Forming early mostly buys you paperwork.

Is Whop cheaper than doola or Stripe Atlas for forming an LLC?

No. doola forms from $297 and Firstbase from $399 with $79 a year ongoing, while Whop is $400 the first year and $100 a year after. Stripe Atlas is the most expensive at $500 and forms in Delaware only. All four obtain an EIN for a founder with no Social Security Number, so that capability does not separate them. Whop is worth the premium only if you already sell on Whop, because it is the only one that files the entity under the account that also runs your checkout and payouts.

Can an AI agent really form a company for me?

It can prepare and submit the filing, but it does not act unsupervised. In Whop's demo the agent collects the founder details, maps the business description onto the required fields, then presents the filing for a human to read and confirm before anything is submitted, and payment happens on a hosted checkout page. Nothing reaches the state until you pay there. doola shipped a comparable MCP flow on April 30, 2026, so agent-driven formation is now available from more than one provider.