ContractorRoster Editorial
Contractor licensing guides
Verifying a license, decoding state license codes, sourcing licensed trades in an unfamiliar market. Written from the same datasets that power our state-by-state contractor rosters.
Market data
Contractor market reports, state by state
Active licenses by trade and city, license density, income, and building permits. Refreshed with every ingest cycle.
Compare contractor markets head-to-head
State-vs-state comparisons: licenses, density per 10k residents, household income, permits, and trade-by-trade counts.
Cross-state
- Cross-state · 9 min readRanking the 13 State Contractor License Portals: Which Make Verification Easy, and Which Make You Work for ItFive data points define a complete verification. Exactly one state surfaces all five in a single query. The other twelve cost you two-to-five lookups, three databases, or a phone call.
- Cross-state · 13 min readEight Ways Contractor License Verification Goes Wrong (a Cross-State Checklist)Every state portal is different. The ways verification fails aren't. The state-agnostic checklist you can run against any jurisdiction in roughly ten minutes per contractor.
By state
- Florida · 6 min readHow to Verify a Florida Contractor's License (and Catch the Common Tricks)The 3-step DBPR check, what the license-status codes actually mean, and the four red flags most homeowners miss.
- California · 7 min readHow to Verify a California Contractor's License (and Read What CSLB Actually Tells You)The 3-step CSLB check, the classification trap that voids most homeowner cases, and the §7031(b) remedy nobody tells you about.
- Texas · 7 min readHow to Verify a Texas Contractor's License (Two Boards, and the Trades That Have No Board at All)Why "I'm licensed in Texas" usually doesn't mean what you think it means, the TDLR vs. TSBPE split, and the master-versus-journeyman gotcha that decides who can pull your permit.
- New York · 7 min readHow to Verify a New York Contractor's License (NYC DCWP, DOB, and the County Patchwork)There is no statewide NY home-improvement license. Where the work happens determines which board you check — and "licensed in New York" by itself is a non-answer.
- Virginia · 7 min readHow to Verify a Virginia Contractor's License (Why DPOR Asks for Two Credentials, Not One)The dual-license structure that defines Virginia, the Class A/B/C dollar caps that decide who can quote your job, and the four red flags most homeowners miss.
- Washington · 7 min readHow to Verify a Washington Contractor's License (and Read the Most Thorough Portal in the Country)Washington L&I surfaces bond, insurance, workers' comp, and open liabilities in a single search — the most consumer-friendly verification portal of any state, if you know to read past "Active."
- Arizona · 7 min readHow to Verify an Arizona Contractor's License (and Why the ROC's Recovery Fund Makes the License Check Pay for Itself)The 3-step ROC check, the Residential vs. Commercial license-class trap, and the $1,000 handyman exemption that catches more homeowners than any other Arizona rule.
- Minnesota · 7 min readHow to Verify a Minnesota Contractor's License (and Why "Licensed GC" Means Something Different Here)Minnesota's DLI runs one of the cleanest per-trade registries in the Midwest — but the state Residential Building Contractor license covers residential only. Commercial GC work has no state credential, and most buyers don't know it.
- Colorado · 6 min readHow to Verify a Colorado Contractor's License (and Why Most Trades Don't Have One)The DORA portal covers electricians and plumbers as individuals. Everything else — GC, HVAC, roofing — runs through the municipality. Here's the actual map.
- Oregon · 7 min readHow to Verify an Oregon Contractor's License (Why the CCB Endorsement Decides What the License Actually Authorizes)The CCB lookup walkthrough, the Residential vs. Commercial endorsement trap that decides license scope, and the BCD trade license you also have to verify for any electrical or plumbing work.
- Ohio · 7 min readHow to Verify an Ohio Contractor's License (and the Five Trades That Are the Only Ones Ohio Licenses at All)Ohio's OCILB state-licenses exactly five specialty trades — Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, Hydronics, and Refrigeration. Everything else, including general contractors and roofers, is unlicensed at the state level. Plus the personal-license trap that voids a company's authority overnight.
- Illinois · 7 min readHow to Verify an Illinois Contractor's License (and the Two Portals That Don't Talk to Each Other)IDFPR licenses roofers and plumbers statewide. Chicago's Department of Buildings runs its own GC, electrical, plumbing, and masonry registry inside city limits. Outside Chicago, no state GC license exists. Three different things a contractor can mean by "licensed in Illinois."
- Pennsylvania · 7 min readHow to Verify a Pennsylvania Contractor's License (and Why "PA HIC" Isn't a License at All)Pennsylvania has no state contractor's license. The number most contractors quote is a Home Improvement Contractor registration with the AG — a $50 contact-file requirement under HICPA, not a competency credential. Electrical and plumbing live at the city level.
- Nevada · 7 min readHow to Verify a Nevada Contractor's License (and Why the Monetary Limit Decides Whether "Active" Means Anything)The NSCB writes a dollar number on every license — the largest single bid that contractor is legally authorized to submit. Skip that field and "Active" tells you almost nothing.
- Utah · 7 min readHow to Verify a Utah Contractor's License (and the Two Credentials You Have to Check, Not One)The DOPL portal walkthrough, the B100 / R100 / specialty classification split, and the journeyman-certification-on-top-of-the-corporate-license trap that catches almost every out-of-state sourcer hiring electrical or plumbing work in Utah.
By trade
Trade guides launching next: electrical and HVAC first.