What the state charges
Almost every page about Cyprus company formation belongs to someone who sells company formation. The figures on those pages therefore mix official fees with professional fees. What follows are only the Registrar’s fees.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Name approval, per proposed name | €10 |
| Name approval accelerated, per name, additional | €20 |
| Incorporation, limited company with share capital | €165 |
| Incorporation, company without share capital | €235 |
| Accelerated incorporation procedure, additional | €100 |
| Certificates package obtained with the incorporation | about €120 |
| Accelerated issue of the certificates, additional | €100 |
That gives four realistic totals:
- €175 — name approval and incorporation, no certificates package, standard procedure
- €295 — with the certificates package or fully accelerated
- €515 — accelerated, with the accelerated certificates package
Anyone reading a figure in the thousands is reading a quotation. The difference between €175 and that quotation is the professional fee.
The name
Each proposed name costs €10 and is checked for similarity, for being misleading and for being undesirable. The Registrar’s search is not limited to Cypriot entities.
An approved name is reserved for six months. The incorporation application must be filed within that window, or the reservation lapses.
Incorporation
You file the memorandum and articles of association plus three forms:
- HE1 — the statutory declaration. The Registrar states it is signed and sworn “before the court by the entrusted lawyer”.
- HE2 — notification of the registered office address
- HE3 — notification of the first directors and the secretary
The memorandum and articles must be signed in Greek. The Registrar charges no fee for the documents themselves.
Invest Cyprus, the state investment agency, states that only lawyers licensed by the Cyprus Bar Association may prepare and sign the memorandum, the articles and form HE1. A lawyer is therefore unavoidable in practice — and that fee, the largest single item of the formation, is not an official charge.
What it no longer costs
Three items that still appear in older guides have been abolished:
- Capital duty of 0.6% on authorised share capital — abolished on 18 December 2018. The incorporation fee has been a flat amount since, no longer tied to the level of capital.
- Stamp duty — abolished in full on 1 January 2026 by Law 239(I)/2025. On 19 January 2026 the Registrar announced expressly that documents filed with it no longer require stamping. The detail is in the article on the tax reform.
- The €350 annual levy — abolished from 2024 by Law 25(I)/2024. Arrears for 2011 to 2023 remain payable.
On the annual levy the official website contradicts itself: two pages state the abolition, while two others still describe the fee as due on 30 June. We follow the law and the announcement.
What the company must have
| Requirement | Rule |
|---|---|
| Minimum share capital | none |
| Shareholders | at least one, at most fifty |
| Directors | at least one, aged 18 or over |
| Company secretary | required. Only where there is one shareholder and one director may the director also act as secretary |
| Registered office | in the Republic of Cyprus, and not a mailbox. Changes must be notified within 14 days |
The company’s registers — members, directors, charges — are kept at the registered office, and the address appears publicly in the electronic register.
Directors and shareholders do not have to live in Cyprus. The Registrar names a minimum age of 18 as the only condition. Anyone who does move to Cyprus faces an entirely separate procedure: registration as an EU citizen runs through the migration authority, not the Registrar, and the detail is in the guide to the Yellow Slip. The company comes into existence regardless.
What runs after incorporation
Tax register — 60 days. The Registrar puts it without qualification: every company is obliged, within sixty days from the date of its incorporation, to apply for registration with the Tax Department.
That the company is taxable at all already follows from incorporation: under the Income Tax Law a company incorporated in Cyprus is tax resident in Cyprus regardless of where it is managed — detail in the guide to tax residency.
UBO register — 90 days. Beneficial owners are filed electronically no later than ninety days after incorporation. Changes follow within 45 days, and every year between 1 October and 31 December the entry must be confirmed.
The fine here is the largest in this article: €100 for the first day of non-compliance, €50 for each further day, up to a total of €5,000.
VAT registration. Compulsory once taxable supplies exceed €15,600 over twelve consecutive months, or when you expect to exceed that within the next 30 days; for intra-EU acquisitions the threshold is €10,251.61. The detail is in the article on VAT registration.
Social insurance. Only if there are employees. The employer registers in the employers’ register before the first hire, and every recruitment must be notified no later than one day beforehand through the ERGANI system. The contribution rates are in the article on payroll contributions.
The ongoing obligations
Annual return HE32 — €20. The reference date of the first return is the day after eighteen months from incorporation have elapsed. It is filed within 28 days of that date, together with the financial statements. In later years the reference date is one year after the previous one.
A postponement is possible if requested before the deadline — for no more than three months, and never beyond 31 December of the same year.
Late filing costs €50 on the first day and €1 for each further day, capped at €150. The Registrar provides a calculator for it.
Accounts and audit. Companies do not fall under the threshold that applies to individuals but under Article 152A of the Companies Law. The default is audited accounts — expressly for every private company, whatever its size or activity. A review under ISRE 2400 is available instead where net turnover and the balance sheet total do not exceed €300,000 and €500,000, across two consecutive years. Either way only a licensed statutory auditor may do the work — and that is the largest recurring cost of a Cyprus limited company. The detail, including the turnover definition that pushes holdings out, is in the guide to annual accounts.
The deadlines for the tax return and provisional tax are in the overview of Cyprus tax deadlines.
Limited company or sole trader?
Incorporation is one half of the decision; the running burden is the other. A shareholder-director counts as self-employed for social insurance and falls into the category with the highest coefficient — paying more than twice the catch-all category, regardless of what the company earned. The comparison is in the guide for self-employed people in Cyprus.
What we could not verify
- Processing times, neither for name approval nor for incorporation, neither standard nor accelerated. The Registrar publishes none. Provider estimates range from two to ten working days and contradict one another.
- The section of Cap. 113 that reserves the work to lawyers. The official English translation would not open.
- Whether a residency requirement for directors is expressly excluded. No official page states one — but none expressly states that there is none either.
- Whether legal persons may serve as directors.
- Any court fee for swearing HE1 now that stamp duty is gone. It is reported to survive; we do not know the amount.
- From when the €300,000 turnover threshold for a review applies. The figure itself is in the statutory text; only secondary sources date the increase.
- How long a bank account takes and what it costs. In practice this is often the slowest step, but nothing official supports a figure.