Three checkouts and one advisor. Here’s what each one is actually built for, without the marketing.
doola, Firstbase and Stripe Atlas are not competing for the same founder, and none of them is a scam, and that’s worth saying plainly before comparing anything. The honest question isn’t which platform wins. It’s whether a self-serve platform is the right tool for your case at all, and if it is, which one.
The short version
Pick doola if your situation is simple, already settled, and price is the deciding factor. Broadest state and entity range, lowest entry price, and a checkout that does what it says.
Pick Firstbase if you’re on a US funding path and need Delaware plus the surrounding apparatus (cap-table tooling, a large perks marketplace) because investors expect that shape.
Pick Stripe Atlas if you specifically need a Delaware entity, you’re already inside the Stripe ecosystem, and you have a lawyer and accountant lined up for everything the formation itself doesn’t cover.
Pick neither if your tax residency question is still open, if banking is going to be the hard part, or if your paperwork will be read by an enterprise client’s legal team or a bank’s compliance officer. That’s the case we exist for, and the full comparison table below is the one that matters for it.
What each one costs
Prices move, so treat this as a snapshot with a date on it: checked on doola.com, firstbase.io and stripe.com/atlas in August 2026. Verify on the live pages before you decide anything.
doola publishes four annual plans. Starter is $297 per year plus state fees, covering formation, EIN, a US business address and registered agent. Tax and Compliance is $1,999 per year and adds federal and state tax filing with a licensed professional. Business-in-a-Box runs $2,999 per year (or $329/mo) for the fuller done-for-you scope.
Firstbase unbundles instead. Start is $399 one-time for Delaware or Wyoming formation and EIN. Registered agent (Agent Autopilot) is $299 per year per state. Tax filing for a single-member LLC owned by a non-US person is $899 per year. A combined subscription, Firstbase One, bundles those pieces at $199/mo.
Stripe Atlas is $500 one-time, with registered-agent service renewing at $100 per year after year one, plus $2,500 in Stripe credits and partner discounts. That’s the whole formation product; tax filing and ongoing compliance sit outside it, on the assumption you already have or don’t need an accountant.
Three things matter more than the headline figures. The billing units differ: one is annual from day one, two are one-time with recurring parts sold alongside; $297 against $399 against $500 tells you nothing until you decide which recurring pieces you’ll actually use. Formation is the cheap part everywhere, including here; the real money sits in the annual filing, and on doola and Firstbase that’s a tier north of a thousand dollars a year. Nobody’s entry tier includes the annual US filing a foreign-owned single-member LLC actually needs: a Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120, required even at zero activity, with a $25,000 penalty for missing it. Budget for the formation number and stop there, and year two is a surprise on all three.
doola: volume incorporation
Strong at speed, price and range: the broadest state and entity menu of the three, including Wyoming, New Mexico and DAO LLCs. For a founder comfortable filing paperwork and troubleshooting problems solo, that’s a genuinely competitive package.
The limit is structural, not a flaw. A checkout can’t ask where you’re tax resident, can’t notice you’re mid-move between jurisdictions, and can’t tell you not to buy. doola’s own banking pathway runs through Mercury, with no stated fallback if Mercury declines the application, and its BBB profile (C rating, not accredited) shows complaints centered on slow support-ticket response, exactly when a fast answer matters most.
More detail, including the four cases where a checkout is genuinely the wrong tool, is in the doola alternative page.
Firstbase: the startup toolkit
Better product experience, clearly aimed at founders heading toward institutional capital: Delaware, cap-table tooling, a $350,000+ partner-credit marketplace. If that’s your trajectory, it’s a coherent, well-executed product.
The mismatch shows up when you’re not raising. Delaware without investors is a recurring cost with no return: more paperwork than Wyoming, weaker privacy, no tax advantage for a non-resident single-member LLC. Support is a self-serve dashboard, which is fine until a bank says no or a compliance question lands mid-year.
The full breakdown, including what happens if a Firstbase LLC’s bank account gets rejected, is in the Firstbase alternative page.
Stripe Atlas: the Delaware default
Atlas is the simplest of the three to describe: $500 to form a Delaware entity, tightly integrated with Stripe, and built for founders who already know they want Delaware and are comfortable self-serving everything downstream. As of 2026 it offers both a C-corp and an LLC; older comparison content claiming it’s C-corp-only is out of date.
What Atlas doesn’t pretend to be is a full-service platform. There’s no state choice beyond Delaware, no bundled tax filing, and no banking product beyond what the Stripe ecosystem itself touches. That’s an honest trade for a founder who already has counsel and an accountant lined up. It’s a gap for a solo non-resident founder who assumed “Stripe” meant the banking question was handled. It isn’t, and Atlas’s own materials don’t claim otherwise.
What all three share
Three things, and they’re the three that hurt when your case isn’t simple:
The assessment doesn’t happen. All three models start at the purchase. Nobody establishes whether the structure fits your residency, your business model or your ownership situation before it’s filed, which for a founder between jurisdictions is exactly the wrong order.
The paperwork is generated, not drafted. An operating agreement from a template holds right up until someone competent reads it: a bank’s compliance officer, or a client’s legal team during vendor due diligence. That fragility is invisible until the exact moment it’s expensive.
Banking is a referral, not a protocol. doola points to Mercury. Firstbase and Atlas leave it to you or bundle it loosely into their own ecosystem. None of the three builds the file, picks the institution that fits your specific profile, or does anything useful on the day you’re declined, which happens to genuinely good applications, not just weak ones.
Not sure how this applies to your case?
Eleven questions and we tell you whether the LLC fits, and if it does not, that too.
Cheq Capital: the fourth option, for a specific founder
Not a platform: an advisor who forms the structure. The sequence inverts: assess the fit, design the structure, build the banking file, then maintain it. In practice that means the state is chosen for your actual case (usually Wyoming or New Mexico for a service business), the operating agreement describes the company you actually run, the banking application is reviewed and matched to your profile before it’s submitted, and first-year compliance, including the Form 5472 filing, is included rather than upsold in year two.
I’ve run my own US LLC since 2019 and built and maintained more than 120 of these for founders in the UK, Northern Europe, Canada and Australia running an established online business: agency, ecommerce, SaaS, consulting. That’s the whole product: judgment applied to your specific case, and a named person for the year, not a support queue.
This isn’t a “we’re worth the difference” pitch. If your case is simple, buy the cheap thing and spend the difference on your actual business. We say that on calls, and it costs us revenue.
Full comparison
The table above summarizes it; here’s the same information with the reasoning attached, criteria by criteria: doola wins on range and entry price, Firstbase wins on perks if you’re raising, Stripe Atlas wins on simplicity if you’re already committed to Delaware, and Cheq is built for the founder who wants the LLC to actually bank, invoice and stay compliant without doing the diagnosis alone.
How to decide in five minutes
Four questions. Answer them honestly and the choice usually makes itself.
1. Is your tax residency settled, and can you name the country? If you hesitated, stop here: no platform resolves this, and forming an entity first makes it harder, not easier. Start with tax residency or run the assessment.
2. Is anyone going to invest in this company in the next two years? If yes, Delaware and Firstbase’s or Atlas’s world is probably where you belong, alongside US startup counsel. If no, Delaware is a cost you’re paying for a signal nobody is reading.
3. How hard will your banking be? A solo consultant with EU clients and a clean profile: moderately easy on any of the three. E-commerce, crypto-adjacent, high-risk processing, or resident somewhere banks treat as elevated risk: it’s the hardest part of the whole project, and it’s where the money should go.
4. Will anyone competent read your documents? Enterprise clients, procurement teams, a bank’s compliance officer, a future acquirer. If yes, template paperwork from any of the three platforms is a liability with a delay fuse on it.
Two or more answers pointing at difficulty means a self-serve platform is the wrong tool, whichever one you’re considering.
What happens if your bank account gets rejected
This is where the three platforms and Cheq diverge most. US banking partners for LLCs (Mercury, Relay and similar fintechs) decline applications for identifiable, predictable reasons: a country of residence on a restricted list, an incomplete beneficial-ownership disclosure, an address that reads as an empty shell, or a business model the bank won’t underwrite. None of that means the LLC is broken. It means one specific trigger tripped, and triggers are fixable or avoidable once you know which one it was.
The structural gap is what happens next. If you formed through a platform built around a single banking partner or no banking product at all, there’s typically no one to review the rejection with you. You’re left researching alternative providers, resubmitting documentation you’ve already prepared once, and working out which bank fits your country, ownership structure and business model, often while a client payment is stuck with nowhere to land. Many fintech platforms also record a decline against the LLC’s EIN, so reapplying to the same bank with the same details can be auto-rejected without a fresh human review.
Cheq’s approach is to match the bank to your profile before the first application goes in, and to sit with you on what to try next if it doesn’t clear the first time. That’s not a guarantee of approval; no honest provider can promise that, since the decision sits with the bank. It’s a guarantee you’re not solving it alone at 11pm with a stuck invoice. The full breakdown of the seven reasons banks decline non-resident LLCs is in your bank application was rejected.
Who should not hire us
If your situation is straightforward and you’ve already resolved your residency question, use whichever of the three platforms fits your trajectory: doola for range and price, Firstbase or Stripe Atlas if you’re raising or specifically need Delaware. You’ll get what you paid for, and a meaningful share of the people who run our assessment get exactly that answer from us.
Come to us when the case isn’t simple: when you’re moving jurisdictions and the order of operations matters, when a client’s due diligence will read your paperwork, when a bank has already declined you and you need someone to work out why, or when you already have a structure from one of the three above and suspect nobody ever checked it. If that’s you, switching your LLC starts with an audit of what you actually have. If you’re still deciding, the assessment is the cheapest way to find out which of the four answers is yours.
Narrower head-to-heads, if you have already shortlisted: doola vs Stripe Atlas, a Stripe Atlas alternative, a doola alternative and a Firstbase alternative.
Frequently asked questions
So which one should I actually pick?
If your case is simple, already settled, and price is the deciding factor, doola. If you're raising from US investors and need a Delaware C-corp with the surrounding tooling, Firstbase. If you specifically need a Delaware entity and already have a lawyer and accountant lined up for everything downstream, Stripe Atlas. If your residency question is unresolved, your banking is going to be hard, or your paperwork will be read by someone with an interest in finding holes, a platform is the wrong tool regardless of which one.
Does Stripe Atlas support an LLC, or only a C-corp?
As of 2026, Atlas offers both a Delaware C-corp and a Delaware LLC: it's no longer C-corp-only, despite what older comparison articles still claim. What hasn't changed is the state: Delaware only, with no Wyoming or New Mexico option.
Is Delaware better than Wyoming?
Only with investors. Delaware's corporate law and courts are what institutional money expects; that's its real value, not tax. For a non-resident single-member LLC with no funding round, Delaware means a flat annual tax, more paperwork and weaker privacy, in exchange for nothing. Wyoming or New Mexico is usually the correct answer.
Do any of the four guarantee a bank account?
No, and you should treat that promise as a disqualifier wherever you see it: the decision belongs to the bank, not to us or to any platform. The honest differentiator is what happens around that decision: whether someone builds the file properly, picks the right institution, and regroups when the answer is no.
Which one is cheapest over three years?
It depends entirely on which add-ons you end up needing, which is why the headline prices mislead. As published in August 2026, doola's entry plan is billed annually with a separate compliance tier; Firstbase and Stripe Atlas are one-time formation fees with registered agent and tax filing sold as separate annual line items. Build the three-year total for your own case with the pieces you'll actually use, and compare that. Nobody's pricing page will do it for you.
Can I start on a platform and move to an advisor later?
Yes, and a meaningful share of our clients come from exactly that path. The entity itself and the EIN stay yours. What usually gets redone is the operating agreement, the registered agent and the compliance calendar. Starting cheap on doola, Firstbase or Stripe Atlas is not a mistake you have to live with.
Does any of the four handle my taxes at home?
No. All three platforms sell US federal and state filing; none of them, and neither do we beyond Spain and Latin America, touch what your own country does with the income. That's usually the more consequential question of the two, and it needs a separate professional in your own jurisdiction, not a US formation package.