Cogency Global vs Discern: which fits multi-entity compliance? (2026)

One illustrative case, a private equity fund structure with 100 entities registered in three states apiece, carries roughly 300 separate Secretary of State obligations, each with its own mix of annual or biennial report deadlines, registered agent renewals, and state tax obligations. Those obligations fail more often than most teams assume. The ACC/Deloitte LEM survey of 467 organizations found 26% had entities out of good standing in the past 24 months, and 9% reported delinquencies directly impacted business transactions or strategic initiatives, including delayed M&A.

Tooling is a big part of the problem. Legal Dive's survey coverage reports that 49% of organizations use Microsoft Excel as their primary entity management technology, and only 30% of exclusive Excel users are satisfied with it.

Cogency Global is one of the longest-running names in the first camp. This comparison covers registered agent coverage, annual report filing, Delaware franchise tax handling, payment management, and pricing, then closes with a decision framework for fund structures and multi-entity portfolios.

Two models for the same compliance work

Cogency Global sells human-delivered compliance service with an online portal attached; Discern sells software that executes filings itself. Most of the downstream differences, from pricing structure to invoice volume, follow from that split.

Discern describes itself as "a software-first registered agent that automates state filings," a self-description carried in the Las Vegas Sun report of the company's $10 million Series A on July 29, 2026. The company serves more than 800 clients, with a Discern customer profile for Vestwell among its published materials; other named clients include Accolade Partners and IA Ventures.

The platform reports:

• Registered agent coverage across the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for supported entity types

• Annual reports filed automatically using pre-filled forms in advance of due dates

• Audits of all entities at onboarding to identify and remediate historical compliance issues

Discern's published materials document no international coverage. The platform is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant.

Cogency Global: the service bureau

According to the Bertram acquisition announcement, Cogency Global was founded in 1980, is headquartered in New York, and has been backed by private equity firm Bertram Capital since February 2022. It reports providing registered agent services throughout the US, and the federal process agent database lists addresses across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Cogency's own site promises "timely responses from a dedicated, experienced person. Every time."

Its entity management system, Entity Central®, comes at no additional cost for US representation clients. Documented features include:

• Compliance calendar tracking annual report and franchise tax due dates

• Automatic notifications for entity status changes and service of process

• Virtual minute book

• On-demand report generation

Entity Central tracks and notifies; the filing work itself runs through Cogency's service teams and its Annual/Periodic Report Compliance package.

Cogency's other differentiator is international reach: services in over 90 jurisdictions, offices in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and a March 10, 2026 Elemental CoSec acquisition involving a Chambers Band 1-rated UK company secretarial, governance, and compliance firm.

Operational capability comparison

The two providers overlap on registered agent coverage but diverge on filing execution, franchise tax handling, and payment mechanics. The table below summarizes the documented differences.

Payment segregation and invoice volume

Fund structures multiply banking complexity. A Citibank Private Bank family office guide notes that "the overuse of legal entities, each of which may have multiple banking accounts, can result in several hundred bank accounts that need to be reconciled periodically." A compliance provider that bills everything to one account forces your finance team to re-allocate every charge across those accounts by hand.

Cogency invoices on 30-day payment terms under its published terms and conditions, passes through jurisdictional filing fees and third-party disbursements, and operates several payment portals accepting card or ACH, including a My Invoices tool with two years of invoice history. Cogency's published materials do not describe mapping separate bank accounts to individual entities or consolidating invoices across a large portfolio.

Discern's enterprise payments and invoicing page states that the platform:

• Can "Map any number of payment methods to any number of entities, and automate your filing payments to simplify reconciliation"

• Forecasts annual filing costs for the current and following year

Discern separately reports that this payment management runs across 250+ entities and 150+ bank accounts, keeping management company and fund expenses separated without manual reconciliation.

Delaware franchise tax for fund entities

Under the Delaware franchise tax guidance, Delaware LLCs and LPs file no annual report but owe a flat $400 annual tax, generally due June 1 each year; confirm the current year's date against Delaware's published instructions. A late payment triggers a $200 penalty plus 1.5% monthly interest on both the tax and the penalty. A typical fund structure of a Delaware LP, a GP LLC, and a management company LLC owes three separate $400 payments on that date, subject to confirmation against the current year's instructions.

The consequences of missing one are disproportionate to the amount. //: # (Editorial fact-check: Verify that Delaware LLC Act § 18-1107(h) contains each stated consequence of delinquency and loss of good standing.)
Under § 18-1107(h) of the Delaware LLC Act, a delinquent LLC ceases to be in good standing:

• The Secretary of State will not accept for filing any certificate required or permitted under the LLC Act

• The Secretary of State will not issue a certificate of good standing

• The entity may not maintain any action in Delaware courts until restored

Because many states require a recent certificate of good standing for foreign qualification (California, Florida, New York, and Delaware all do), a lapsed Delaware entity is also blocked from registering in new states. //: # (Editorial fact-check: Verify that § 18-1108(a) supports cancellation after three years of nonpayment and distinguish the cancellation trigger from the earlier late-payment trigger.)
After three years unpaid, § 18-1108(a) cancels the certificate of formation outright.

Cogency's Entity Central compliance calendar tracks franchise tax payment due dates. Discern calculates, files, and pays Delaware franchise tax automatically as part of its base subscription, running both the Authorized Shares Method and the Assumed Par Value Capital Method and paying the lower amount. Outside Delaware, the published inclusions list franchise tax alerting only; filing automation for other states is not documented.

Cost comparison

Discern publishes its base subscription and add-on pricing; Cogency Global does not publish per-entity rates for registered agent or annual report services, so budgeting a large portfolio requires a sales engagement. Cogency's site describes its services as competitive and timely, with transparent pricing, but lists no figures, and its contact form prices by "Number of Appointments" (one entity in one state).

Discern's published pricing page confirms the $350 subscription includes registered agent service, annual report filing, active standing and status monitoring, franchise tax alerting, unlimited users, automated payments, and Delaware franchise tax filing. You can model ongoing subscription spend for a 200-registration portfolio before the first sales call and separately budget the published upfront service charges, with state filing fees passed through on formations and registrations. With Cogency, both upfront and ongoing figures arrive only after a quote.

Decision framework: which provider fits your portfolio

Match the provider to your entity footprint and where your team loses time. Neither model is wrong; they fit different portfolios.

When Cogency Global fits

If your portfolio includes meaningful non-US entities, Cogency's case is strongest. Its international footprint and the Elemental CoSec acquisition give it UK company secretarial and governance capabilities that US-only platforms, including Discern, do not document. It also offers lender services, process agent services, and nonprofit services beyond the core SOS layer. And if your team wants a named human handling each filing rather than software, that is precisely the service Cogency sells.

When automation is the better fit

Automation fits US-centric portfolios where filing volume, invoice volume, and payment segregation are your bottlenecks, which describes most PE firms, hedge funds, and family offices managing 50 to 250+ domestic entities.

• Foreign registrations are filed digitally, with the certificate of good standing pulled automatically.

• Per-entity bank account mapping keeps segregated fund structures reconciled without manual re-allocation.

• Delaware franchise tax automation covers the payment generally due June 1 across LP and GP entities without manual tracking; confirm the deadline against Delaware's current instructions each year.

Automate your fund's SOS compliance layer with Discern

Mixed fixed-date, anniversary-based, and tax-only regimes such as Delaware's are the conditions in which the ACC/Deloitte survey found 30% of organizations keeping no compliance calendar at all. Discern handles the full Secretary of State layer from one platform: reported registered agent coverage across the 50 states and Washington, D.C., automated annual reports, foreign registrations with automatic certificate acquisition, and Delaware franchise tax filing, all at published per-registration pricing.

Discern reports customers with 200+ state registrations spend 5 to 10 minutes annually on compliance. Discern also automates filing payments so your finance team stops reconciling charge by charge, organizes entities with custom labels, entity groups, and org charts, and audits every entity at onboarding so historical delinquencies get fixed rather than inherited. Autofilings then run without manual initiation each cycle.

Book a demo with Discern to see how quickly your entity portfolio can move to automated filing.

This article provides general compliance information and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified legal counsel for guidance specific to your situation.