What are articles of incorporation called in each state?

Articles of incorporation is the document a corporation files with a state to come into existence. Nine states do not call it that. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma call it a certificate of incorporation, Texas a certificate of formation, Massachusetts articles of organization, and Tennessee a charter. Those nine hold 26,192,364 registrations, 26.7% of the 98,021,597 records on file across the 50 state registries and the District of Columbia as of August 2026, dissolved companies included.

What the founding document is

A corporation exists because a state says it does, and the document that asks the state to say so is filed once, at formation. It names the company, sets the shares it may issue, gives an address in the state, and names an agent to receive legal mail. The state accepts it, assigns the company a registry number, and the corporation is a legal person from that moment.

Everything else in the public file comes later. Annual reports, amendments, name changes, and mergers all attach to the record the founding document opened. There is no federal register of any of it: a company is chartered by a state, so the document sits with that state and nowhere else.

What each state calls it

Find your state and read across. Each name is the statutory one, and the citation under it links to that jurisdiction's own primary source for it: statute text, the Secretary of State filing form, or the state rule that prescribes the filing. The rows cover the 50 states and the District of Columbia, which runs its own registry.

How much of the country uses each name

Grouping the rows above by the corporate document name shows how lopsided the split is, and how much of the country sits on the short side of it.

Counts are every record on file in each registry as of August 2026, dissolved companies included, across 98,021,597 registrations in all 51.

The nine states in the lower four rows hold 26,192,364 registrations between them, 26.7% of the total. Delaware and New York alone account for 12.7 million. So the phrase most people search is the wrong phrase for more than a quarter of the country's business records, including every record in New York and every record in Delaware.

Two of the exceptions are worth knowing by name. Texas files corporations on Form 201, "Certificate of Formation for a For-Profit Corporation," which breaks the rule of thumb that a certificate of formation means an LLC. Tennessee calls the document a charter, under T.C.A. section 48-12-102, and calls later changes to it articles of amendment to the charter.

The LLC side splits three ways instead of five.

An LLC is not incorporated. It is organized, and the vocabulary follows. A company that later registers in a second state does not file a founding document there at all: it files for foreign qualification, which is a different filing with a different name again.

Seventeen registries, holding 26,236,985 registrations, call the LLC document a certificate rather than articles. The split does not follow the corporate one. Washington keeps articles of incorporation for corporations but takes Delaware's certificate of formation for LLCs. New York does the reverse: a certificate of incorporation for corporations, articles of organization for LLCs. Pennsylvania, Iowa, Utah and Nebraska pair articles of incorporation with a certificate of organization.

Texas is the only state that uses one name for both. A Texas corporation and a Texas LLC each file a certificate of formation, on different forms.

Why does Massachusetts say articles of organization?

Massachusetts uses the phrase "articles of organization," but not for an LLC. Under chapter 156D, section 2.02, a Massachusetts business corporation files articles of organization. Its LLCs file a certificate of organization instead. So a Massachusetts filing headed "Articles of Organization" is a corporation, the opposite of what the phrase means in the 34 states that use it. Anyone reading entity type off the document name will get Massachusetts backwards.

Why the name matters when you are looking for a filed document

The state's word is the one you have to ask for. Copy-request forms, fee schedules and filing-history lists are all written in it, so a request framed in the wrong vocabulary names a document the state does not have. Delaware's fee schedule, for instance, prices a "Restated Certificate of Incorporation."

The founding document also is not where the current facts live. It carries the name the company had on day one, the incorporators who signed it, and the shares authorized then. Later name changes, agent changes, and status changes attach to the registry record, not to the original filing. Read the record for what a company is now, and the founding document for what it was at the start.

What a copy costs is a state-by-state question too. California gives free online access to over 17 million corporate, limited liability company and limited partnership images and lets you print plain copies at no charge. New York charges $5 for a plain copy and $10 for a certified one. Delaware charges $50 per document for a certified copy plus $2 a page, or $10 for the first page of a plain copy plus $2 for each additional page. The NASS corporations directory links all 50 official portals.

How to read a company's filing history

A state portal is the place to get the document image. It is a poor place to ask the same question of fifty registries, because each one holds only its own records and words them its own way. GovFiles normalizes the entity record and its filing history from all 50 Secretary of State registries into one schema, refreshed monthly, delivered as a REST API and bulk Parquet. A record is addressed by jurisdiction code and registry number, so the call has the same shape in every state:

curl -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" \
  "https://api.govfiles.dev/v2/companies/us_fl/112252"

That record is PUBLIX SUPER MARKETS, INC., which Florida types as a "Domestic Profit Corporation" in legal_form_raw. Its filings array carries one entry per filing Florida holds for the company. Each entry has a filed_on date and a type object holding the registry's own code and name for that filing, such as CORAPNC and NAME CHANGE AMENDMENT. The record itself carries entity_url, the link back to the entity on the state's own site.

Frequently asked

What are articles of incorporation? Articles of incorporation is the document a corporation files with a state to come into existence. It names the company, states the shares it may issue, gives a registered address, and names an agent to receive legal mail. The state files it and assigns the company a registry number, and the corporation exists from that moment. Not every state uses the phrase.

Is a certificate of formation the same as articles of incorporation? It is the same kind of filing under a different statutory name. Texas calls the founding document a certificate of formation for corporations and LLCs alike. Alabama, Delaware, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Washington use certificate of formation for LLCs while their corporations file something else. The filing does the same job in every state: it creates the entity.

What is the difference between articles of incorporation and articles of organization? Usually the entity type. Articles of incorporation form a corporation and articles of organization form an LLC, in most states. Massachusetts inverts it: a Massachusetts corporation files articles of organization, and a Massachusetts LLC files a certificate of organization. So the document name alone does not tell you what kind of entity you are looking at.

What does my state call the founding document? Forty-one states and the District of Columbia call the corporate founding document articles of incorporation. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma call it a certificate of incorporation, Texas a certificate of formation, Massachusetts articles of organization, and Tennessee a charter. For LLCs, 34 states say articles of organization, eight say certificate of formation, and eight states plus the District of Columbia say certificate of organization. The table above gives both answers for all 50 states and DC, with the statute for each.

How do I get a copy of a company's articles of incorporation? From the state that chartered the company. There is no federal copy. Some registries publish the filed image free, including California, which offers free online access to over 17 million corporate, LLC and limited partnership images. Others charge: New York is $5 for a plain copy and $10 for a certified one, and Delaware is $50 per document for a certified copy plus $2 a page, or $10 for the first page of a plain copy plus $2 for each additional page. Search the state's own portal, using the name that state gives the document.