Cost of Setting Up a Company in Ireland: 2026 Breakdown

The number the formation sites lead with is €99, and the number the State actually charges is €50. Both are real, and neither is your cost. For an EEA-resident founder, a realistic first year runs about €300 to €700. For a non-EEA founder, the same company costs roughly €2,400 to €3,200 in year one, four to eight times more, because of one line item almost no pricing page itemizes: the Section 137 bond, or the resident director service that replaces it.

That multiplier is the story of this guide. Every package price you see advertised was built for an Irish founder with an Irish address and a PPS number. This page rebuilds the bill for the founder those packages were not built for, line by line, with every figure dated.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. State fees are checked against official sources as of August 2026; all service prices below are market estimates that vary by provider. Confirm every figure with the CRO, Revenue, or a qualified advisor before you rely on it.

The short answer: EEA founder vs non-EEA founder

All service figures are 2026 market estimates. The one legal constant: without at least one director resident in an EEA state, Irish law requires a bond, and that requirement alone explains most of the gap between the two columns.

CRO filing fee only€50

EEA founder, year 1€300-700

Non-EEA founder, year 1€2,400-3,200

What the State actually charges

The CRO's own price list is short, and it is worth seeing naked before any package markup:

Timelines: the Fé Phráinn online scheme processes a straightforward A1 in about 5 working days; an ordinary online filing takes around 10 working days. There is no premium same-day tier to upsell you, which is one reason Irish packages compete on bundled services rather than speed.

One myth to retire in three lines: Ireland has no minimum share capital to deposit. You do not need to lock €25,000 in a bank account the way some EU jurisdictions require; issuing 100 shares at €1 each is a perfectly normal capital structure, and the money does not have to sit anywhere special. Founders arriving from Germany or Austria ask this constantly, and the answer is genuinely "there is no such cost."

The step-by-step mechanics of the A1, CORE, and why filings get rejected are in our guide to registering a company in Ireland; which legal form the fees attach to is covered in Irish company types.

Formation packages: what €99 to €500 really buys

If the State charges €50, what is the other €49 to €450 in a package? Three recurring services, compressed into a headline price:

• Company secretary: every Irish company must have one, and if you are a sole director you cannot hold the seat yourself. A corporate secretary service runs €99 to €500 per year (market, 2026).
• Registered office: a physical Irish address for official mail, required by law. Service price €199 to €400 per year (market, 2026).
• Constitution drafting and the filing work itself, a one-time item worth tens of euros of effort for a standard LTD.

The advertised range in 2026 runs from €99 including CRO fees at the aggressive end of the local market to roughly $459 to $918 at international resellers. The number itself is not the problem. The problem is that the €99 headline is a year one acquisition price for services that renew at full rate, and the renewal line is rarely on the pricing page. Ask any provider two questions before paying: what does year two cost, and is the Section 137 bond included or extra? For a non-EEA founder the second answer is almost always "extra," and it is the biggest line on the bill.

The non-EEA surcharge: Section 137 bond or resident director

Here is the line item that separates the two columns in our first table. Under Section 137 of the Companies Act 2014, every Irish company must have at least one director resident in an EEA state. Residence, not citizenship. If no director qualifies, the company must hold a bond, in the prescribed form, to the value of €25,000, which in practice the market sells as a two-year insurance product.

What it costs, as observed on 2026 provider pages:

• The bond: premium of roughly €1,600 to €2,000 including VAT per 2-year period (observed: €1,950 and €1,957.50 at two major providers). Non refundable, renewed every two years for as long as the company has no EEA-resident director.
• A resident director service: €2,000 to €4,000 per year at the reputable end of the market.

On pure cost, the bond wins at every horizon, and it is not close. What the director service buys for two to four times the money is a human: a local signature, materially better odds with Irish banks, and substance for a VAT registration file. Which one fits your situation, including the exemption route under Section 140 and the traps in each option, is the entire subject of our non-resident director guide. Treat this section as the price tag and that guide as the manual.

Section 137 bond

• Year 1: about €1,600 to €2,000
• 2 years: still about €1,600 to €2,000, the bond runs two years
• 5 years: about €4,000 to €5,000
• Cheapest legal compliance, and nothing else

Resident director service

• Year 1: €2,000 to €4,000
• 2 years: €4,000 to €8,000
• 5 years: €10,000 to €20,000
• Buys a human: a local signature, materially better odds with Irish banks, and real substance

• CRO filing fee (Form A1, online)€50
• Section 137 bond or resident director~€1,800
• Secretary, registered office and accounting~€1,200

Recurring costs from year two

Year one gets the attention, but the renewal bill is what you actually live with. For a non-EEA founder with no Irish presence, as of 2026:

Call it €1,500 to €2,500 per year before accounting, and €2,500 to €4,500 with a bookkeeper and accounts preparation once there is any real activity. An EEA-resident founder doing their own admin pays a fraction of this. Neither number is scandalous; the scandal is only that no pricing page adds it up for you.

The cost of being late

Ireland's compliance penalties are mechanical, and the B1 annual return is where founders get burned:

• A late B1 costs €100 immediately plus €3 per day, capped at €1,200 per return.
• Worse than the fine: losing the audit exemption. A small company that files late can be forced into audited accounts, a €3,000 to €8,000 expense that dwarfs every fee in this guide. Under the reform in force since July 2025, the exemption is lost on the second late filing within five years rather than the first, a softening half the internet has not caught up with.

The full compliance calendar, deadlines and what a missed year actually costs is in the Irish company compliance guide.

VAT: the number your company does not automatically get

A quiet cost trap, and the one the formation packages never mention: incorporating in Ireland does not give you a VAT number. Registration is a separate Revenue process, and for a company managed from outside Ireland it is not a formality.

The 2026 registration thresholds, €42,500 for services and €85,000 for goods, apply to businesses established in Ireland. A company with no Irish establishment has a nil threshold: in principle it must register from its first euro of taxable Irish supplies, and at the same time Revenue actively questions applications from companies with foreign directors and no local substance.

Expect questionnaires, requests for contracts or evidence of Irish trade, and three to four weeks or more of processing; complex files often need a tax advisor at €500 to €1,500. Budget for that reality rather than discovering it mid-launch.

How VAT interacts with the 12.5% rate and with your position as a foreign owner is covered in Ireland corporation tax and Irish company taxes for non-residents.

Ireland vs UK vs Estonia: entry cost for a non-EEA founder

Three lines of framing, because cost never decides alone:

Ireland is the only one of the three with a bond-type barrier for non-EEA founders, and it is worth saying so: you are paying roughly €1,000 a year, amortized, for an EU member state company that the UK cannot offer post-Brexit. Estonia removes the residency barrier but taxes distributed profits differently and has suspended e-Residency applications from Russia and Belarus. The full strategic comparison lives in why incorporate in Ireland, and the country-specific paths for founders from restricted jurisdictions will be covered in our upcoming origin guides.