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How much does a company in Bulgaria cost? The real running costs

Everyone hears about the 10% flat corporate tax. Almost nobody hears about the running costs. Here's an honest breakdown for a simple Bulgarian EOOD: setup, monthly bookkeeping, the annual closing, and the fee nobody mentions until spring.

← Blog · 5 June 2026

The one-time setup costs

Before we get to accounting, let's cover what it actually costs to set up the company. An EOOD (a single-member limited liability company, the standard structure for a small Bulgarian business) involves three separate payments:

the state fee for electronic filing with the Commercial Register: about €30;
notary certification of your signature and power of attorney: €10–25;
a bank fee to open the temporary deposit account where you park the founding capital: €10–25, depending on the bank.

That's roughly €50–80, one time. If you're not physically in Bulgaria, add the cost of a certified translation of your ID and, in some cases, an apostille on documents from your home country. These vary widely and are worth asking about upfront, not after you've already committed. If a formation agency or law firm handles the process for you, their service fee sits on top, and this is where quotes vary the most: the end result (a registered company) is identical, but the price for the paperwork around it is not.

This cost only happens once, in the year you incorporate. Everything after that is recurring, and it's the part almost nobody spells out honestly before you sign up.

Monthly bookkeeping: what the market actually charges

Here's the real question: what does an accountant cost, month after month. The market rate for a "traditional" Bulgarian accountant on a small company commonly runs €100–150+ a month, regardless of whether the company issued five invoices or none.

Why doesn't the price track the workload? Because the traditional model bills for the accountant being on retainer, not the actual hours spent on your paperwork. For a company with a handful of invoices a month and no employees, the real monthly work is limited: booking income and expenses and, if the company is VAT-registered (VAT is Bulgaria's value-added tax, charged to your customers and passed on to the state), filing a monthly return with the NRA (the National Revenue Agency, Bulgaria's tax authority).

Not every accountant prices this way, and fairer offers for small companies do exist. But the dominant market pattern is a flat monthly package regardless of activity, which is why owners of dormant or barely-active companies routinely pay as if they were running a retail chain.

The fee nobody mentions until spring

This is the cost foreign founders are least prepared for: the "13th invoice." That's the market's own nickname for the extra bill that shows up every spring for the annual closing, on top of the monthly retainer you've already been paying all year.

Here's what actually has to happen each spring: the company files its annual corporate tax return and pays any tax due by 30 June (Art. 92(2) of the Corporate Income Tax Act), along with an annual activity report to the National Statistical Institute. By 30 September, the company must also publish its annual financial statements: the balance sheet, income statement and notes, in the Commercial Register, as required by the Accountancy Act.

Around this exact set of filings, many accounting practices add a separate "extra" fee: offers we've seen commonly range €100–300, on top of the monthly retainer. The justification is usually "extra workload." In reality, if the bookkeeping was done properly all year, closing is a reconciliation, not a new project, but the market widely bills it as one anyway.

Bank fees, and what changes once you register for VAT

Two costs almost nobody counts when adding up "what does my company cost me":

Bank account maintenance. After incorporation, the temporary deposit account converts into a normal current account, and Bulgarian banks charge a monthly maintenance fee on it, whether or not any money moves through it. Even a fully dormant company keeps paying this fee as long as the account stays open.
VAT registration. The mandatory threshold is €51,130 in annual turnover (Art. 96(1) of the VAT Act). Once registered, you file a return every single month, by the 14th (Art. 125(5) of the VAT Act), not once a year. That extra monthly filing is exactly why accounting quotes for VAT-registered companies tend to run noticeably higher than for unregistered ones.

Neither of these usually appears in the first quote you get. They show up in the bill after month one.

Three realistic annual totals

Add it all up, and here are three ranges we commonly see quoted on the market (excluding the first year, which also carries the one-time setup cost):

Dormant company (no activity): accounting offers typically run €15–35 a month, plus bank maintenance: roughly €250–550 a year just to keep the company "on ice."
Small non-VAT company (freelance-style consulting, a property-holding structure, a handful of invoices a month): €100–150+ a month, plus the spring "13th fee," plus bank maintenance: roughly €1,400–2,200+ a year.
VAT-registered company (including companies that bought property through the company to reclaim VAT): higher monthly quotes because of the monthly filings, plus the "13th fee," plus bank maintenance: roughly €2,000–3,500+ a year.

These are market observations, not fixed tariffs: your actual quote depends on the city, the practice, and how much real activity there is. But lined up side by side, they show something the "10% flat tax" headline never mentions: the gap between a dormant company and an active, VAT-registered one is large, and the traditional model bills both the same way.

So what does it actually cost with FreeMe.bg?

FreeMe.bg is live now, with an honest pricing structure: no smoke, no hidden spring bills. Five plans: "Start" for companies and freelancers not registered for VAT at €45/month + VAT, "Start VAT" for VAT-registered ones at €65/month + VAT, "Business" for companies with 16–50 documents a month at €75/month + VAT, "Business+" for more than 50 documents at €159/month + VAT (100 documents included, then €15 per additional 10), and "Dormant Company" at €100 a year, annual billing only. Pay annually and you pay for 10 months instead of 12. There is no "13th fee": the annual closing and the publication of your financial statements are included in the subscription, and so is the social insurance of one working owner.

If you have employees, the Payroll module costs €10 + VAT per person a month: the payroll, payslips, declarations form 1 and 6 and the NRA notifications.

If you need something outside the normal scope, an in-depth tax consultation, an unusual case, you pay for that specific service, quoted upfront, not as a hidden add-on to your monthly bill.