How Much Does It Cost to Open and Run a Company in Serbia?

Three buckets, and why blending them costs you money

Most cost pages for Serbia give you one figure and leave you to meet the rest at a notary's counter. The three buckets behave completely differently, so a single all-in number tells you almost nothing.

State fees are fixed, published, and the same for a local founder and a foreign one. Third-party charges vary by your country, your provider and how many pages you need translated, and nobody in Belgrade can quote them for you. A service fee is payment for work, and it should arrive with a written scope.

When you receive any quote, ask which bucket each line sits in, and ask what is excluded. If the answer is vague about the exclusions, that is the answer.

• The state: APR registration, and the official filings that follow it. Paid to the state.
• Third parties: court interpreters, notaries, the authority that issues an apostille, the provider of your qualified electronic signature, and your bank. Priced where you are.
• The service fee: the formation work, and monthly bookkeeping afterwards. Quoted before you start.

Bucket one: what the state charges

APR, the Business Registers Agency, charges 2,500 RSD to register a sole trader and 8,000 RSD to register a d.o.o. Those are the 2026 fees, and they go to the state rather than to whoever files the application for you.

A d.o.o. also records share capital of at least 100 RSD. That is not a fee at all. It is the company's own money, it stays with the company, and it does not have to be paid in immediately, so it belongs in a different line of your budget from the APR charge.

Two state-side steps are easy to forget when you plan the money. The application is filed electronically and signed with a qualified electronic certificate, which is a cost of its own and is covered on our page about electronic signatures for foreign directors. A d.o.o. then records its beneficial owners in the central register, another filing that needs a qualified signature, described under beneficial owner registration.

Every Serbian fee here is set in dinars. Your euro or dollar equivalent moves with the exchange rate, so convert on the day you budget rather than trusting a conversion someone published last year.

Bucket two: the third-party costs we will not price for you

We do not publish numbers for them, because the numbers depend on your country, your provider and the page count of your documents. What we do instead is tell you exactly which document needs which treatment, so you can collect written quotes before you commit to anything.

• Certified translation into Serbian by a court interpreter, which arises when the founder is a foreign company: the register extract and the constitutive documents need an apostille and a court interpreter's translation.
• Notarisation of the power of attorney in your own country, and an apostille where your country's documents need one.
• A qualified electronic signature, because the APR application is filed electronically and has to be signed.
• Notary certification of the OP signature form for the bank. Serbia's official guidance says this requirement depends from bank to bank, so confirm it with your bank before you pay for it.
• Bank charges for opening and running the account.
• A registered address in Serbia, if you do not already have premises here.
• Courier and postage for originals, which is small per item and less small once documents start travelling both ways.

Bucket three: our fee, and what sits inside it

Our formation fee is €500. The state fee stays visible next to it so the two are never confused: the APR amount goes to the state, while our fee pays for preparation, filing and follow-through to the registration decision, company number and tax number. If a D visa is required, preparation and coordination are an additional €500. The company formation service page sets out the formation scope.

Monthly bookkeeping is published rather than quoted from scratch: from 6,900 RSD a month for a flat-rate sole trader and from 18,500 RSD a month for a company. Those are starting prices. The final figure depends on document volume, headcount, VAT status and activity, which is why we confirm it after looking at your numbers instead of before. The full price list is on the site.

Whoever you buy from, ours or anyone else's, get the scope and the exclusions in writing before you pay. For a founder buying services in a country they do not live in, that is the cheapest protection available.

The bank account, and one cost you should not pay

Serbia's official guidance says that after registering the company you open a business account at a bank, and that you will most often need the registration decision, the tax number certificate, a notary certified OP form, a card of deposited signatures and a signed contract. The same page qualifies its own list: the OP form requirement depends from bank to bank, and you are told to check your chosen bank's website for the necessary documentation before you go in.

It also says something that is worth money to you. Companies and entrepreneurs do not need a stamp to open a bank account, and if a bank insists on one, that can be reported to the Government or the National Bank contact centre. Do not buy a company stamp because somebody told you the bank requires it.

We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment. The bank decides. The official page on opening accounts for residents and non-residents, which deals with individuals rather than companies, states that a bank freely chooses its clients and independently decides whether to enter a business relationship, under its own business policy and its anti-money-laundering obligations. Budget for the possibility that one bank declines and you approach another, and read banking as a foreign owner before you book travel around a branch appointment.

A first-year picture, using only published numbers

This is what we can stand behind: entry pricing, twelve months, nothing estimated.

• Flat-rate sole trader: 2,500 RSD to APR, plus bookkeeping from 6,900 RSD a month, which is 82,800 RSD across twelve months. Published total from 85,300 RSD.
• D.o.o.: 8,000 RSD to APR, plus bookkeeping from 18,500 RSD a month, which is 222,000 RSD across twelve months. Published total from 230,000 RSD, and separately 100 RSD of share capital, which is the company's money rather than an expense.

What those totals leave out

They are a floor, not a forecast, and the gaps are real money: certified translation, notarisation and apostille, the qualified electronic signature, bank charges, a registered address, our formation fee, and the tax the business itself pays.

Tax is the line founders most often forget. A flat-rate sole trader pays tax and contributions as a fixed monthly amount set by a tax decision, so nobody can print that figure for you in advance. A company pays tax on its profit, and a withholding tax applies when profit, interest or royalties are paid abroad, often reduced by a double taxation treaty between Serbia and your country. That is a subject of its own, covered under taxes for foreign-owned companies.

If you put yourself or anyone else on the payroll, the salary is a monthly cost these totals do not carry: the gross figure plus the employer-side contributions on top of it. You can estimate a salary before you fix a gross figure.

Anything on the visa, residence or permit side sits outside this budget entirely, has its own fees, and is decided by authorities rather than by us.

What moves the numbers later

Year one is not the steady state. Three thresholds and one variable do most of the moving, and all four are worth watching before they arrive rather than after.

• The flat-rate limit: a sole trader stays on flat-rate tax up to 6,000,000 RSD of annual turnover. Past it you keep full books, which moves you into the company bookkeeping band. You can track both thresholds as the year runs.
• VAT: turnover above 8,000,000 RSD in 12 months means entering the VAT system, which adds monthly returns and e-invoice work. The mechanics are in our guide to entering the VAT system.
• Employees: the company bookkeeping package covers payroll for up to five people, and more than that moves the monthly fee up.
• Volume: more invoices and more documents each month raise the fee. This is the ordinary reason a quote changes, and it should be visible in the price list rather than arriving as a surprise.