What does an SST Certified Service Provider cost?

Short answer: nothing, for the certified services, in the full member states where you qualify. Those states pay your provider directly. Everything outside that is priced by the provider, and most of them don’t publish a price.

An SST Certified Service Provider (CSP) is an agent certified under the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement to perform a seller’s sales and use tax functions, other than the seller’s obligation to remit tax on its own purchases. Qualify as a CSP-compensated seller in a given state and that state compensates the CSP for the certified work there, so you aren’t charged for it. What you pay on top varies by provider, and one of the six publishes a complete price.

What an SST provider costs, in five points

Five of the six certified providers currently offer free CSP services to qualifying sellers. Exactor is certified but isn’t currently offering them under the program.
The free part is real, and it’s narrow. It covers system setup and integration, tax calculation, return preparation and filing, remittance, notice and audit response, and data privacy protection in the full member states where you qualify.
Avalara and TaxCloud both publish complete tier pricing, on different units. Sovos, AccurateTax, and Avior publish no pricing.
The published figures aren’t like-for-like, so you can’t compare them directly. See what this table cannot tell you.
Qualifying is per state, not per company. You can be a CSP-compensated seller in one member state and not in the one next door.

What the states actually pay for

Member states compensate CSPs directly for services provided to CSP-compensated sellers. The covered work, as the Governing Board lists it, is system setup and integration, tax calculation, return preparation and filing, remittance, notice and audit response, and data privacy protection.

Qualifying is the part people get wrong. To be a CSP-compensated seller in a state, you have to meet all five of the criteria in the CSP Operating Contract in that state, measured over the 12 months before you register there. Property and Payroll are defined terms in the contract, not ordinary words:

No fixed place of business for more than 30 days in that state
Less than $50,000 of Property in that state
Less than $50,000 of Payroll in that state
Less than 25% of your total Property or total Payroll in that state
Neither you nor an affiliate was collecting sales or use tax in that state as a condition of qualifying as a supplier of goods or services to that state

The valuation basis matters as much as the number, and it’s the part nobody quotes. Property is an average value: take what you held at the beginning and at the end of the 12 months before you register in that state, then average the two. Property you own counts at its original cost basis. Property you rent counts at eight times the net annual rental rate, a multiple of the rent rather than the rent itself.

Two things follow that surprise people. The test runs per state, so a 3PL warehouse in Ohio and nothing in Indiana can make you a CSP-compensated seller in Indiana and not in Ohio, on a condition worth stating: that the Ohio inventory takes your Property over the $50,000 compensation criterion there, or that the site is a fixed place of business for more than 30 days. Neither is automatic. The contract defines Property as real property and tangible personal property you own or rent, values it on the basis above, and never says what puts Property in a particular state. That silence is the contract’s own, and this page doesn’t fill it. And the status isn’t permanent. Stop meeting all five criteria in a state and you lose it there.

For a mid-market brand, that’s the whole story. Criteria 2 and 3 are $50,000 compensation criteria on Property and Payroll, not nexus thresholds. If you run distributed inventory, a 3PL network, or remote employees, they can bind in the states you sell into most, because that’s where inventory and people usually sit. CSP-compensated status can then apply across a minority of your footprint, which means free CSP services cover a minority of your cost. Run the CSP-compensated seller test state by state before you model any savings.

Crossing an economic nexus threshold doesn’t disqualify you by itself, and the Governing Board says so plainly: a remote seller that has to report and remit in a state only because it met that state’s economic nexus threshold qualifies for free CSP services in that state. You still have to meet the five criteria.

One date to note about the source. The contract detail on this page comes from the 2025 to 2026 edition, which is effective until December 31, 2026. Whatever a later edition says sits outside what’s cited here.

What each certified provider charges on top of the free CSP services

Pricing fetched 2026-08-18 and re-checked 2026-08-19. Prices change, so treat this as a snapshot and confirm current figures with each provider.

Table: what each of the six certified providers charges on top of the SST funded work, and what each published price covers. Checked August 19, 2026.

Provider	Free services	Published price	What the price covers	Fetched / re-checked
Avalara	Yes, to qualifying sellers	$69 per state per month, or $699 per state per year, on the Core Compliance + SST Services tier for sellers under $50M annual revenue	The Avalara compliance platform. Priced below Avalara’s $79 per state per month Core Compliance tier, and Avalara attributes the difference to state funding: state money changes the cost model, so the SST path carries a lower price for businesses that qualify. Custom quote at $50M and above. The tier also lists state-sponsored registration in participating SST states, and Avalara’s SST page says it helps qualifying businesses register in all SST-participating states for free when they enroll in the program. Registration sits outside the Governing Board’s certified free services list, so a free registration offer is a commercial choice rather than a program baseline. Avalara’s page describes coverage as “up to 25 states” (see the note below).	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19
TaxCloud	Yes, to qualifying sellers	Two plans, both required. Subscription by order volume from $199 a year (Starter) and $799 a year (Premium); filing by return count from $399 a year for 12.	Platform access and filing. TaxCloud states free services in SST states covering registration, calculation, filing, remittance, audit support, and notice management. Note that registration sits outside the Governing Board’s certified free services list, so a free registration offer is a commercial choice rather than a program baseline. Notice and audit response is on that list. See the note below on plan eligibility.	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19
Sovos	Yes, to qualifying sellers	Not published	Sovos says there are no filing or remittance fees in SST states where you qualify under the Model 1 program, because participating states compensate Sovos directly, and that fees apply “only for non-SST states, states where eligibility criteria are not met, or for additional value-added services.” No figures given.	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19
AccurateTax	Yes, to qualifying sellers	Not published	Custom quote. AccurateTax says pricing is based on the number of orders it collects information for or calculates tax on, plus optional services like filing and exemption certificate management. Directs prospects to email for a quote.	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19
Avior	Yes, to qualifying sellers	Not published	No pricing disclosed. Describes the program as covering the cost of using Avior to help qualified sellers manage sales tax. The primary call to action is a trial contact form.	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19
Exactor	No	Not applicable	Certified, but not currently offering free services under the CSP program. The Governing Board listing routes contact to Intuit.	2026-08-18 / 2026-08-19

A note on the Avalara row. Avalara’s pricing page describes its SST tier as including free state-funded services in up to 25 states for qualifying sellers, where the Governing Board lists 24 member states. Avalara’s own SST page explains the difference: 24 SST member states, plus Pennsylvania, which runs a similar state-run program. That’s a services coverage count rather than a membership count, and nothing here suggests the figure is wrong.

A note on the TaxCloud row. SST is included on all TaxCloud plans, with no tier condition, and orders from member states do not count toward a plan allotment where you’re enrolled in SST for those states and have no physical nexus in them. What is not published is the base subscription figure for either named tier, so the row shows what the plan covers rather than what it costs. No plan on any of the six grants the funded services: that is the program’s test, applied state by state. One item on the same pricing page is worth asking about: audit support appears both as a $99 per month add-on and, in the page’s FAQ, as part of free SST services in member states.

Why three of six publish no pricing

Three of the six publish no price. Custom pricing is standard in this category, where order volume, state count, and add-ons vary widely from customer to customer. A provider that quotes rather than publishes isn’t necessarily more expensive, and a published price isn’t necessarily a better deal once you match scope.

What Sovos and AccurateTax disclose is the shape of the model, which tells you what a quote will key on. Avior doesn’t disclose even that:

Sovos publishes no figures but is explicit about the boundary. Fees apply for non-SST states, for states where eligibility criteria are not met, and for additional value-added services. Sovos is a global tax compliance company whose broader business spans e-invoicing, VAT and GST, and information reporting, and its SST Model 1 page is not reachable from its homepage navigation as of the fetch date. Expect a quote scoped to a wider compliance footprint than SST alone.
AccurateTax keys its pricing to order volume, with filing and exemption certificate management as optional add-ons rather than bundled. Its product focus is United States small business ecommerce, with cart integrations rather than ERP connectors. Expect a quote that moves with transaction count.
Avior. Its sales and use tax product is one of five product lines alongside tobacco and vapor, motor fuel, beverage alcohol, and MSA scan data, and its SST content sits on a separate subdomain from its main site. It was certified effective January 1, 2024. There is no published basis on which to anticipate a quote.

You can’t shortlist on cost without contacting at least three vendors. If your evaluation is on a timeline, start those conversations early.

What free CSP services do not cover

Free CSP services are bounded. Costs that commonly sit outside them:

Non-member states. The program covers member states. Compliance in every other state is not covered, and for a multi-state seller that’s usually where most of the cost sits.
Tennessee. Tennessee is an associate member rather than a full member, and whether free CSP services apply there is unresolved. The 23 full member states are the ones you can count on.
States where you don’t qualify. Property, Payroll, or a fixed place of business above the thresholds in a given state means no CSP-compensated status there, even if you have it elsewhere.
Platform access. Providers generally charge for the software itself, separate from the free CSP services.
Your non-taxable volume, past a point. Even where you qualify, a provider is allowed to charge to process non-taxable transactions once they pass 30% of everything it processes for you in that state in a year. If you sell mostly wholesale, you clear that line without trying, and the funded part covers less of your volume than the headline suggests.
Services beyond the certified scope. Exemption certificate management, back-tax work, and voluntary disclosure agreements are typically priced separately, as is registration in member and non-member states alike, which is not on the Governing Board’s certified free services list.

How to compare providers on cost without a like-for-like number

The published prices in the table above aren’t comparable, and the units are the reason. Avalara’s $69 per state per month scales with how many states you’re in. TaxCloud’s subscription scales with order volume and its filing plan scales with return count, something differently scoped. Neither figure is the price of SST, because the SST portion is the part the states pay for. A comparison that holds up looks at total cost across your whole footprint, not the covered slice:

Count your member-state footprint separately from the rest. Free CSP services apply in the full member states where you qualify. Model those states at platform cost, not filing cost.
Price the non-member states properly. This is usually the larger number. Ask each provider for per-return or per-state pricing outside the program.
Test qualification per state. Run the five criteria state by state. A distributed inventory footprint can quietly disqualify you in the states you sell into most.
Ask what happens at your growth rate. Per-state and per-order models diverge sharply as volume grows. Ask each provider to quote at current volume and at double it.
Price the add-ons you will actually use. Registration, exemption certificates, notice handling, and audit work beyond the certified scope.

A worked example, and why it stops halfway

Take a hypothetical brand with nexus in 18 states, 11 of them full member states, qualifying as a CSP-compensated seller in 8 of those 11. On Avalara’s published rate of $699 per state per year, 18 states is roughly $12,600 annually in platform cost, and free CSP services reduce what sits on top of that in 8 states rather than 18.

That’s as far as the arithmetic goes, and the stopping point is the finding. The same calculation cannot be run for Sovos, AccurateTax, or Avior, because they publish nothing. It can now be run for TaxCloud, on its two plans together rather than either alone. Anyone presenting a full six-way cost comparison is still estimating for half the field.

What this table cannot tell you

The tiers above are not like-for-like, and this page cannot tell you which provider is cheapest for your business. A provider with no published price may well quote below one with a published price. What the table supports is a shortlist and a set of questions, not a decision. Confirm current pricing directly with each provider before you act on any of it, and see how to choose an SST certified service provider for the non-price criteria.

Frequently asked questions

Is Streamlined Sales Tax filing really free?

If you qualify as a CSP-compensated seller in a state, that state compensates the CSP directly for the certified services there, and you aren’t charged for them. Providers do generally charge for platform access and for work outside the certified scope.

Do I have to use a CSP to participate in SST?

Using a CSP is a choice, not a condition of registering. The free-service compensation applies only if you contract with a certified provider, so if you register and self-file, you don’t get it.

Does crossing an economic nexus threshold disqualify me?

No, not by itself. The Governing Board says a remote seller that has to report and remit sales tax in a state only because it meets that state’s economic nexus threshold still qualifies for free CSP services in that state. You still have to meet the five CSP-compensated seller criteria in that state.

How many states does this cover?

The Governing Board lists 24 member states: 23 full members and Tennessee, the only associate member. Free CSP services apply in the 23 full member states where you qualify. Tennessee’s associate status leaves its treatment unresolved, and provider marketing doesn’t always match the Board’s count. See what the SST program actually is for how membership works.

Can I switch providers later?

Yes. Selection is recorded through the Streamlined registration system and can be changed.