How to Register a Company Directly with CIPC (2026 Guide)

You do not need an agent to register a company in South Africa. CIPC, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, runs the company register, and its BizPortal site lets you register a private company yourself for R175. BizPortal's own banner promises registration in one day. Sometimes that's true. This guide covers the real process: the documents, the steps, where it goes wrong, and the four filings the R175 does not include.

One honest note before we start. Govchain registers companies for a living. Our company registration package is R950 and includes the SARS, bank account and B-BBEE paperwork that the DIY route leaves to you. If you'd rather do it yourself, this guide is everything we know about doing it properly.

What you need before you start

A valid South African ID number for the person doing the registration. BizPortal verifies it against Home Affairs in real time.
ID numbers, full names, email addresses and cellphone numbers for every director.
Certified ID copies of all directors. Any police station or post office certifies them free; banks and attorneys do it too.
A physical address for the company.
One to four proposed company names, in order of preference. Optional: you can also register with your enterprise number as the name and pick a proper name later.
A bank card for the R175 fee.

Foreign nationals can't transact on BizPortal because the ID check runs against Home Affairs. If any incorporator holds only a passport, use CIPC's older e-services platform instead. The steps are similar but the document upload rules are stricter.

Pick your portal: BizPortal or e-services

CIPC gives you two official routes, and first-timers regularly pick the harder one. E-services is the older transactional platform. It works, and you will use it later for things like director changes, but the interface assumes you already know CIPC's process. BizPortal is the newer site built specifically for new businesses: company registration, your SARS income tax number, and optional extras like a domain name registration in one flow.

If you have a South African ID, use BizPortal. CIPC publishes a step-by-step PDF guide for the e-services route if you're forced down it.

Step-by-step: registering on BizPortal

Go to bizportal.gov.za and create an account with your ID number. You'll get a one-time PIN on your cellphone.
Choose Company Registration, then Private Company. This is the standard Pty Ltd that suits almost every small business.
Enter the proposed names, in order of preference. CIPC checks them one at a time and registers the first one that clears.
Add each director's details exactly as they appear on their ID. A single digit out and the Home Affairs check fails.
Enter the company's physical address and choose a financial year end. February is the common choice because it matches the tax year.
Take the add-ons you actually want. BizPortal offers a business bank account application and a domain name during the same flow. None of them are compulsory.
Pay the R175 by card.
Wait for the confirmation email. Your registration certificate, form CoR 14.3, and your Memorandum of Incorporation arrive as PDF attachments. Your income tax number is issued automatically by SARS at the same time.

How much does CIPC registration cost?

R175 on BizPortal: R50 for the name reservation and R125 for the incorporation itself. If you skip the name and register with your enterprise number, it's R125. That is genuinely the whole upfront fee. The costs that surprise people come later, and they are mostly time, not money: re-doing a failed name application, chasing certified copies, and the compliance filings covered below. Budget for annual returns too, which start at R100 a year once your first anniversary comes around.

A realistic timeline, day by day

Here's how a clean registration filed on a Monday tends to run. Monday: create the BizPortal account, complete the application, pay the R175 before lunch. Tuesday: the name application clears (your first choice, because you read the next section) and the registration moves to processing. Wednesday or Thursday: the CoR 14.3 certificate and MOI land in your inbox, with the SARS income tax number following automatically.

Now the version nobody advertises. Monday: file with four names that all resemble existing companies. Thursday: all four rejected. Friday: pay another R50, propose new names. The following Wednesday: name clears, registration processes. Week three: certificate arrives. Same R175 fee plus R50, but fifteen working days instead of three. The difference between the two timelines is almost always the name, which is why it gets its own section.

The name game

Name reservation is where most DIY registrations stall. CIPC rejects names that are too close to an existing company, that include restricted words, or that clash with a registered trademark. You propose up to four names per R50 application; if all four fail, you pay again and wait again.

A small digression, because it's interesting: we once analysed 276,000 South African company names and the patterns are striking. Trading names built from two surnames, places, and the word "projects" dominate, which is exactly why so many first-choice names are already taken. Pick something distinctive and your odds improve a lot.

If the name matters to you, check it before you file. Search the register on CIPC's e-services first, and search the trademarks register too. A name CIPC accepts can still infringe a trademark.

Where DIY registrations go wrong

ID verification failures. The Home Affairs check rejects details that don't exactly match the ID book or smart card. Married directors whose surname changed are the classic case.
All four names rejected. Each new application is another R50 and another wait. Distinctive beats descriptive.
Picking the wrong financial year end, then discovering the first tax return is due months earlier than expected.
Uploading uncertified or expired ID copies on the e-services route. Certification stamps older than three months get bounced.
Stopping at the certificate. The CoR 14.3 feels like the finish line. It isn't, and the next section is the part of this guide we most want you to read.

What the R175 does not cover

The registration fee buys you a registered company. It does not make that company compliant. Four obligations land on every new Pty Ltd, and CIPC and SARS don't bundle them into the BizPortal flow.

Beneficial Ownership filing

Every company must file a Beneficial Ownership declaration with CIPC, naming the real people who own or control it. CIPC's current guidance gives newly registered companies 10 business days from incorporation to file, and it blocks your annual returns until the filing is in. The rules around BO have shifted more than once since they arrived in 2023, so check CIPC's site for the current deadline before relying on this paragraph.

SARS Registered Representative

BizPortal gives the company a tax number, but a company can't log into eFiling by itself. A human being must be appointed as its registered representative with SARS, usually a director. Until that appointment is done, you can't file the company's returns or get a Tax Clearance PIN, and SARS appointments involve document uploads and sometimes a virtual booking. SARS explains the role on sars.gov.za. This is the single most common piece of admin new owners discover only when a tender or a client asks for tax clearance.

Annual returns

From its first anniversary, your company must file an annual return with CIPC every year in its anniversary month, with a fee starting at R100. Skip it and CIPC eventually starts deregistration, which can freeze the company's bank account. This catches dormant companies especially: no trading doesn't mean no filing.

Share register and share certificates

The Companies Act requires every company to keep a securities register recording who holds its shares, and to issue share certificates to shareholders. Nobody from CIPC will chase you for this one. Your bank will, the moment you open a business account and FICA asks who owns the company, and any future investor or buyer will ask for it on day one.

FAQ

Can I register a company without an agent?

Yes. That's the whole point of this guide. CIPC built BizPortal for exactly this.

How long does CIPC company registration take?

BizPortal advertises one day, and clean applications with a clear name often do come back in one to three working days. A rejected name or a failed ID check restarts the clock, which is how a one-day registration becomes a three-week one.

Where do I get my CIPC registration certificate?

CIPC emails the CoR 14.3 certificate and MOI to the address on the application. You can also re-download documents from e-services under your customer login, and if you add the company to Govchain we store them with the rest of your records.

Already registered, or rather not do this yourself?

If you've registered your company directly with CIPC, you can add it to your Govchain account for free. We'll show whether your CIPC and SARS records are up to date and remind you before the Beneficial Ownership and annual return deadlines bite. No card needed.

And if you've read this far and decided the DIY route isn't worth your weekend, our registration package handles the company, the SARS representative appointment, the share certificates and the bank account paperwork in one go, for R950. Either way, the full guide to registering online covers the broader decisions, like choosing between a Pty Ltd and operating as a sole trader.