Written by Keshav Sehgal, E-commerce Filing Expert · Reviewed by Ankush Goyal, GST Services Expert · Last updated: 31 August 2026
GST registration costs nothing in government fees. The GST portal does not charge for FORM GST REG-01, and no notification prescribes a fee for a fresh application. What people call GST registration fees is almost always a professional charge, a digital signature purchase, or a notary bill.
Key facts on GST registration fees
Cost head | Position as on 31 August 2026 |
|---|---|
Government fee for FORM GST REG-01 | Nil |
Fee to check application status or download the certificate | Nil |
Fee difference between states | None. The portal is a single national system |
Digital signature certificate | Payable, and only mandatory for companies and LLPs |
Notarised consent letter or affidavit | Payable where the premises are not in your own name |
Professional or consultant charge | [VERIFY: insert Complylocal’s current published fee before publishing] |
Casual taxable person | Advance tax deposit equal to estimated liability, refundable against tax paid |
What are the government fees for GST registration?
There are none. You submit FORM GST REG-01 on the common portal, you receive an Application Reference Number, and the officer or the system grants the GSTIN without any payment being demanded at any stage.
This surprises people because almost every other Indian registration carries a statutory fee. Company incorporation has MCA filing fees. Trademark filing has a per-class fee. FSSAI licensing has an annual fee. GST does not, and that gap is exactly what fake agents exploit.
If a website asks you to pay a "government fee" or "portal fee" before your application is filed, that money is not going to the exchequer. You can verify this yourself by starting an application on gst.gov.in and walking through to submission without ever reaching a payment screen.
So what does GST registration actually cost?
For a proprietor with owned premises and an Aadhaar-linked mobile number, the honest answer is zero rupees and about ninety minutes of work. Costs appear only when one of four things is true.
Cost trigger | Why it costs money | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
You are a company or LLP | The application must be signed with a Class 3 DSC; EVC is not available | DSC purchase, two-year validity |
Premises are rented or borrowed | A consent letter or rent agreement is needed, often notarised | Stamp paper plus notary charge |
You need a place of business in another state | A virtual or additional place of business has to be arranged and documented | Monthly or annual service charge |
You hire someone to file it | Professional time for drafting, filing, and replying to any REG-03 query | [VERIFY: Complylocal fee] |
Everything else in the process is free. Tracking the ARN is free. Downloading FORM GST REG-06 is free. Replying to a departmental query in FORM GST REG-04 is free. Amending your registration later in FORM GST REG-14 is free.
What do CAs and consultants charge for GST registration?
Professional charges vary by entity type and by how much document work sits behind the filing, not by the state you register in. A proprietorship with clean documents is the cheapest file to handle. A private limited company with three directors, a rented office and a DSC to be issued is the most expensive.
What you are paying a professional for is not the form filling, which takes twenty minutes. It is the judgement calls: which HSN codes to declare so the department does not ask questions, whether your address proof will survive scrutiny, and whether to answer Yes or No to the Rule 14A option in Part B.
[VERIFY: insert Complylocal’s published fee slabs for proprietorship, partnership, LLP and private limited company before this section goes live. Do not publish market averages we cannot source.]
Are GST registration fees different in each state?
No. GST registration is processed on one national portal under one set of central rules, so the government cost in Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka is identical: nil. There is no state-level registration charge anywhere in India.
Two things do differ by state, and they are what create the impression of state-wise pricing. First, stamp duty on a rent agreement or affidavit is a state subject, so a notarised consent letter costs more in some states than others. Second, professional charges track local market rates the way they do for any service.
The registration threshold does vary by state, and that is a genuinely different question. Ten states and union territories never adopted the Rs 40 lakh limit for goods, so the GST registration turnover limit in those places is Rs 20 lakh.
GST registration fees for a proprietorship, partnership and company
The government fee is nil for all three. The difference lies entirely in what each entity must produce alongside the application.
Entity type | Government fee | Signing method | What adds cost |
|---|---|---|---|
Proprietorship | Nil | Aadhaar OTP or EVC | Usually nothing |
Partnership firm | Nil | EVC or DSC of a partner | Partnership deed if not already executed |
LLP | Nil | Class 3 DSC of designated partner | DSC purchase or renewal |
Private limited company / OPC | Nil | Class 3 DSC of an authorised director | DSC plus a board resolution |
Trust, society, HUF | Nil | EVC or DSC of authorised person | Certified constitution documents |
A company cannot file with an Aadhaar OTP, so the DSC is a hard requirement rather than a convenience. The full list sits in our guide to documents required for GST registration.
The one payment that is genuinely required: casual taxable persons
A casual taxable person pays an advance deposit before registration is granted. Under Section 27 of the CGST Act, a casual taxable person must deposit tax equal to the estimated liability for the period covered by the registration, and the certificate is issued only after that deposit is made.
This is not a fee. It is your own tax paid upfront, credited to your electronic cash ledger, and adjusted against the liability you actually report. A trader taking a stall at a Delhi exhibition for ten days estimates the tax on expected sales, deposits it, and gets a registration valid for ninety days.
What happens to your money if you register late
Section 25(1) of the CGST Act gives you thirty days from the date you become liable to apply for registration. Missing that window does not increase your registration fee, because there is none. It costs you input tax credit instead.
Under Section 18(1)(a), a person who applies within thirty days of becoming liable can claim credit on inputs held in stock on the day before liability arose. Apply on day forty and that stock credit is gone. For a trader carrying Rs 15 lakh of stock at 18 per cent, that is Rs 2.7 lakh of credit written off because of a ten-day delay.
Late registration also attracts penalty. [VERIFY: quote the exact penalty under Section 122 of the CGST Act for carrying on business without registration, with the sub-clause, before publishing this line.]
When filing it yourself costs more than paying someone
Self-filing makes sense when you own your premises, your Aadhaar is linked to a live mobile number, and you sell from one state. It stops making sense the moment a virtual place of business or an additional place of business enters the picture, because those files get scrutinised harder than ordinary ones.
The real cost of a rejected application is not the rupees. It is the clock. A rejection in FORM GST REG-05 means starting again, and a marketplace seller who cannot list for another three weeks loses more in missed sales than any professional fee.
Where GST registration applications lose money
Every rupee of avoidable cost in this process comes from rework. An application that draws a query in FORM GST REG-03 adds at least a week, and the reply in FORM GST REG-04 is due within seven working days or the application is rejected outright.
Want the filing handled end to end, including the REG-03 reply if one comes? Talk to Keshav’s team at Complylocal about GST registration services.
