Pricing
One flat monthly fee for the whole company — never per seat. Government fees at cost. Outside-counsel work quoted and approved first.
$199 a month is what a startup firm bills in about twenty minutes.
At a common $600 hourly rate. FinePrint runs the recurring work for the whole month; outside counsel is quoted separately, and only when a matter needs judgment.
Three plans
Everyone at your company is covered. Charging you per seat would be a strange way to run a legal department.
For companies getting their legal house in order.
The full legal department — the standard endpoint library running.
For companies with real legal surface area.
Every company starts on the free check. You move to Pro when you want the work done rather than only diagnosed.
The billing promises
Two things sit outside the monthly fee, and you see both before they happen.
Illustrative statement, not a rate card. Outside-counsel work is scoped and quoted per matter.
You will never get a legal bill you did not approve.
How this compares
The real choice a founder makes in year one. All four are legitimate; three of them we bring in or build on.
| Comparison | A startup law firm, hourly | A formation service | Doing it yourself | FinePrint |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Real legal judgment from an experienced attorney, and representation when it counts. You get it when you ask for it, and only then. | Incorporation done correctly, a registered agent, and reminders about the filings the service itself handles. | Templates, a Delaware account, and whatever you can reason out at 11pm. Careful founders get further than people expect. | FinePrint — a legal function that knows what your company legally is, runs the routine work end to end, and brings in outside counsel when judgment matters. |
| What it costs | An hourly rate, billed after the work. Many firms defer fees until you raise, which moves the bill rather than shrinking it. | A one-time fee plus an annual registered agent charge. Cheap, and priced honestly. | Free, plus the state's fees, plus your time, plus the cost of the one thing you get wrong. | From $199 a month. Government fees at cost. Outside counsel quoted and approved before it starts. |
| Who holds the company's legal state | The firm keeps a minute book; you keep the email thread. Change firms and the record has to be moved by hand. | Your entity and its filings — not your equity, your contracts, your IP, or your board record. | A Drive folder, a stack of signed PDFs, and your memory of what happened in 2024. | The Company Legal Graph — entity, people, ownership, governance, contracts, IP, compliance and memory, in one live record you can export at any time. |
| What happens when something is missed | Nobody is watching between matters. The unsigned IP assignment surfaces in diligence, two years later. | It reminds you about the filings it files. Everything else is invisible to it. | You find out when an investor's diligence list finds it, at the worst possible moment. | FinePrint watches continuously. A missing assignment, an unrecorded SAFE, a filing due in 21 days — surfaced with the fix attached, before it's urgent. |
The first column is irreplaceable for the exceptional matter — which is why FinePrint brings it in. The difference is the rest of the time.
Outside-counsel work
The matter arrives prepared, and the quote arrives before the attorney touches it.
No retainers. No hourly meter running in the background. No invoice you haven't already read.
Illustrative quote. Every real one names the actual attorney and the actual fee before work starts.
Questions
If it isn’t here, ask us directly →
No. Pro and Scale are billed monthly and you can cancel from inside the app. No minimum term, no annual commitment, no exit fee — and you keep everything.
One of the 41 endpoints in the library — hiring someone, issuing a SAFE, passing a board consent, filing the annual report — running at the Green level: the facts are complete, the terms are standard, the approvals are in place.
Your subscription does not change. Outside-counsel work is quoted per matter and you approve each one, so a heavy month is visible before it happens rather than after.
Never per user. Pro is priced per company — from $199 a month for a single Delaware entity under 25 people — and scales with headcount, contract volume and filings.
Whatever you decide. Export everything at any time on any plan, including the free one: the documents and a machine-readable copy of your Company Legal Graph. Or delete it permanently.
That is the normal path. Run the free check, stay on Startup as long as you like, and upgrade when you want the work done rather than only found.
The legal department every startup should have.
Four minutes. Free. You keep the report either way.