Cyprus trust registration costs

What registering a Cyprus trust actually costs

An annual subscription of 250 euro, paid by the trustee, where the trustee has between one and five trusts registered. There is nothing else to pay to either register.

That figure is set by paragraph 10 of the directive governing the register of beneficial owners of express trusts, and it is banded by the number of trusts a trustee holds rather than charged per trust. A trustee with three trusts pays the same 250 euro as a trustee with one.

One point in the same paragraph is easy to miss and occasionally costs money. Where a trustee registers further trusts during a year already paid for, and the total moves past the band paid for, an additional one-year subscription becomes payable for the trusts not covered. Growing within a band costs nothing. Growing past one does.

The stamp duty on the trust instrument no longer exists

Section 12(2) of the International Trusts Law charged 430 euro on the instrument creating the trust. Law 240(I) of 2025 deleted that subsection with effect from 1 January 2026. There is no duty on the instrument.

The figure has a longer history than the current one suggests. The 2012 amendment to the International Trusts Law replaced a charge expressed in Cyprus pounds, a currency withdrawn in 2008, with the 430 euro figure. That figure was correct until 31 December 2025.

Registration, renewals and the extract a bank asks for are free

Paragraph 10(2) of the directive is explicit. Beyond the annual subscription, a trustee pays no fee or subscription for any of the following.

Registering a trust, or renewing its registration. The subscription covers it.

Submitting or having examined any request concerning the trust.

Notifying a change in the information already registered.

The issue of a registration certificate, or of an extract of the beneficial owner information. This is the document a bank or other obliged entity requires before it will open an account in the name of a trust, so it is the one most likely to be assumed chargeable. It is not.

The trustee's own access to the data of the trusts it has registered. Also free, by an express proviso.

There is no further government charge on the other side either. A trust is not an entity registered at the Registrar of Companies, so no fee arises there. And the trusts register kept by the trustee's own supervisory authority under article 25A of the law regulating administrative service providers carries no fee in the statute.

What other people pay to look

The figures below are not costs to the trust. They are worth knowing because they answer a different question, which is how easily a stranger can look at the register at all.

An obliged entity, such as a bank carrying out its own checks, pays 4 euro per trust for a written report of the information registered at that time. This replaced an annual subscription running from 250 to 3,000 euro when the directive was amended in 2025.

A person demonstrating a legitimate interest pays 75 euro per trust. Before paying it, that person has to satisfy the Commission that their interest relates exclusively to, and contributes to, combating money laundering and terrorist financing, supported by evidence of what they have previously done to that end, and the application is decided case by case.

The practical consequence is that nobody browses this register. What it costs to look is a small part of why, and the test that has to be passed first is the larger part.

What is not a registration cost, and is often quoted as though it were

The trust instrument itself. A Cyprus trust deed is drafted to the facts of the particular trust, and the cost of drafting it and of having it reviewed is professional time rather than a registration charge. No statutory certification requirement attaches to a trust deed. The requirement that a practising advocate draft and certify a document, on pain of the document being void, applies to the memorandum and articles of a company and not to a trust instrument.

Anything paid to a custodian, a bank or a valuer. Those are the arrangements the trust makes, not the cost of registering it.

The annual administration of the trust. Keeping the records the law requires in the Republic, making the filings on time, and accounting for what the trust has done is ongoing professional work, and it is where the real recurring cost of a trust sits. The 250 euro subscription is a small part of an annual figure, not the whole of it.

Trust accounts, tax returns and asset valuations, none of which are registration costs and each of which is a separate service.

What it costs to get the filings wrong, which is the number nobody publishes

Registration is cheap. Failing to register, or failing to keep a registration current, is not.

On the beneficial ownership register. Failing to produce the information required for registration attracts a charge of 100 euro, and a further 50 euro for each day the failure continues, capped at 5,000 euro. That cap was reduced from a higher one in 2024. Separately, non-compliance with the article or the directives issued under it carries an administrative fine of up to 500,000 euro, and up to 1,000,000 euro on repetition, according to the gravity of the breach. Refusing, failing or neglecting to submit the information is also a criminal offence.

On the supervisory authority's trusts register. Three periods of fifteen days run: from the creation of the trust or the adoption of Cyprus law as its governing law, from a change in the name of the trust or in a trustee's name or address, and from a termination or a change of governing law. Failing to comply with that article is a criminal offence punishable by up to five years' imprisonment or a fine of up to 350,000 euro or both, and criminal liability extends to a director, manager or secretary of a legal person proved to have consented to or participated in the failure.

Where the figures come from

Every figure on this page is taken from the directive governing the register of beneficial owners of express trusts, in its consolidated Greek text, and from the statutes linked above. The directive is also published in an English version, which at the time of writing is not current on the fee provisions, so the Greek consolidation is the text to read where money is involved.

If you have been quoted a figure that does not appear here, the quotation is either out of date or includes professional time described as a registration cost. Both are worth asking about before you accept it.