The US system is built to support entrepreneurship while the EU system broadly is to support the consumer and employee. The US will never be able to match the EU's consumer and employee protections and the EU will never be able to match the US's ease of doing business, because to have one you have to fundamentally give in on the other.

Depending on who you ask, one system is wildly better than the other, but at the end of they day they are just different systems with different tradeoffs.

A lot of places in Europe are around the same.

In Finland forming a non listed stock company is 240€ in fees without any requirement for capital/assets.

I think Estonia is even cheaper.

Single member LLCs provide much less protection than most people imagine.

1. Any debt the business needs will require your personal guarantee. Even something as simple as getting a business cellphone.

2. They don’t protect you from liability for your own negligence. If you’re a very small company with no employees, almost everything someone would sue you for (for which you aren’t already personal guarantor) will arguably be down to personal negligence on your part.

It’s different if you have employees or other members because an LLC protects your personal assets against liability caused by their negligence.

But I constantly hear the advice that people operating as freelance devs should start an LLC as the very first thing they do and that’s silly in most cases.

What most people who start a single member LLC are really looking for is liability insurance.

Whoa, not that fast. It will take a few days at least, depending on your state. Surely not 152 though.

Same in the uk, well it’s “same day” costing about $200. The normal approach is 24 hours and costs about $130

UK's system is very similar too, as is Estonia's.

There are not quite as easy, but still ways easier types to choose from in Germany, OP just decided to go for one of the very complex ones.