Check a contractor's license before you write the check

Browse the register

Why this matters

Around 17% of the licensed tradespeople listed here are carrying an expired license today. Most of those are ordinary lapses, someone forgot to renew. But hiring one still exposes you: permits pulled under an invalid license can be rejected, and an insurer can contest a claim on work performed by an unlicensed contractor. The check takes ten seconds and it is free.

Where the data comes from

Every record here is public record published by a state licensing board: the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and the California Contractors State License Board and the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries and the Oregon Construction Contractors Board and the Régie du bâtiment du Québec and the Arizona Registrar of Contractors and the Queensland Building and Construction Commission. We download their files, compute each license's status against today's date, and keep a history so we can see when a license is issued, lapses, or disappears from the register entirely. We are not affiliated with any state agency, we do not sell leads, and we do not rank contractors. Read the methodology.

What each state licenses

• Texas: Texas licenses individual trades at state level. There is no Texas general contractor license, so a general contractor here is regulated by the city, not the state.
• California: California licenses general contractors as well as individual trades, and publishes bond and workers' compensation status, so records here carry more detail than Texas.
• Florida: Florida licenses general contractors as well as trades, and grades them by scope: a Certified General Contractor is unlimited, a Building Contractor is capped at three storeys, and a Residential Contractor is limited to houses.
• New York City: New York State does not license home improvement contractors statewide; licensing is done by the city. This covers New York City's register, which is the large public one, and it is limited to the five boroughs.
• Washington: Washington registers construction contractors with L&I rather than licensing general contractors by trade, and publishes a live status for each. Around a third of the register is expired or suspended at any time, so the status matters more here than the expiry date alone.
• Oregon: Oregon licenses through the CCB and splits contractors into residential and commercial, general and specialty. The CCB also publishes bond and liability insurance details, so an Oregon record shows more than most.
• Quebec: Quebec requires an RBQ license for construction work and publishes the full active list as open data. It is organised by administrative region rather than by county, and licenses renew annually rather than carrying a multi-year expiry.
• Arizona: Arizona licenses through the Registrar of Contractors, which splits every license into a residential, commercial or dual scope and a specific trade class. The ROC publishes only its current active licenses, so a contractor whose license has been suspended or revoked drops out of the list entirely rather than appearing here marked as such.
• Queensland: Queensland licenses building work through the QBCC, which grades a license as a builder, a trade contractor or a supervisor and then names the classes it covers. The register lists current license holders only and publishes no expiry date at all, so a Queensland record shows what someone is licensed to do rather than when it runs out. Electricians are licensed separately by the Electrical Safety Office and are not in this register.