Texas does not have a state contractor's license. Not for general contractors, not for roofers, not for painters, landscapers, concrete crews, drywall, or framing. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation licenses exactly two construction trades — electrical and HVAC — and plumbers run under a separate agency entirely.
So when a contractor tells you "I'm licensed in Texas," the honest follow-up is: licensed by whom, for what scope, and at what level? Half the time the answer is a city registration in Houston or Dallas, not a state license at all. The other half, the answer is real — but the license is for a trade that doesn't cover the work you're hiring for.
This guide walks the two state portals you actually need (TDLR and TSBPE), the master-versus-journeyman distinction that decides who can legally pull your permit, and what to do about the trades Texas doesn't license at all.
The Texas licensing map: two boards, three trades, everything else local
Most states license general contractors at the state level. Florida does. California does. Texas does not. The legislature has repeatedly declined to create a state GC license, and the result is a patchwork that catches out-of-state buyers and homeowners alike.
Here's the actual map.
TDLR licenses electricians and HVAC technicians. Electricians fall under the Texas Electrical Safety and Licensing Act (Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1305), with license classes that include Master Electrician, Journeyman Electrician, Residential Wireman, and several apprentice and sign-electrician tiers. HVAC contractors fall under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1302, with Class A (unlimited tonnage) and Class B (residential / light commercial up to specified tonnage and voltage) license classes.
TSBPE licenses plumbers — the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, a separate agency from TDLR. Plumbing falls under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1301. License classes include Master Plumber, Journeyman Plumber, Tradesman Plumber-Limited Licensee, and a handful of endorsements (medical gas, water supply protection, multipurpose residential fire sprinkler).
Everything else is unlicensed at the state level. General contractors, roofers, painters, landscapers, concrete contractors, masons, drywall, framing carpenters, flooring installers — none of them hold a Texas state license, because Texas does not issue one. They may be registered with a city (Houston has a General Contractor Registration; Dallas requires building-contractor registration for certain scopes; Austin has its own program), or with a county, or with neither. They may belong to a trade association. None of that is a state license.
The one near-exception worth flagging: roofers can hold a voluntary credential through the Roofing Contractors Association of Texas (the RCAT registration program). It is not a state license. It is a trade-association credential. Useful as a signal, not legally equivalent.
Verifying a TDLR license (electrical, HVAC)
Step 1 — Open TDLR's license search. Go to tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch. You can search by license number, by name, or by license type within a city or county.
Step 2 — Confirm the license type matches the work. A Class B HVAC contractor cannot legally do unlimited-tonnage commercial refrigeration work. A Residential Wireman cannot do commercial electrical. Read the license class field, not just the license-holder name.
Step 3 — Check the master/journeyman distinction. This is the Texas gotcha that catches the most people. A Journeyman Electrician can legally perform the work. A Master Electrician is required to pull the permit and to serve as the licensed individual for a contracting business. If you're hiring a one-person electrical shop and the only license on file is journeyman-level, that person cannot legally operate as a contractor — they can only work as an employee under a master's license. Same structure exists for HVAC (Class A and Class B contractor licenses are distinct from the individual technician registration that an employee holds).
Step 4 — Read the disciplinary section. TDLR is unusually transparent compared to most state boards: disciplinary actions are listed inline on the license record. Settled complaints, administrative penalties, license suspensions, and revocations all surface in the public detail view. A clean active license with a $4,000 administrative penalty from 2024 for working without a permit is a different risk profile than a clean license with no history. Read it.
Verifying a TSBPE license (plumbers)
Plumbing has its own portal because plumbing has its own agency. Go to tsbpe.texas.gov and use the License Search link on the home page (the path has moved over the years — start at the home page and click through rather than bookmarking a deep URL).
The verification beats are the same in shape, different in detail:
License class matters. A Tradesman Plumber-Limited Licensee can perform plumbing work in one- and two-family dwellings only. A Journeyman Plumber can work on any structure but cannot operate independently as a contracting business. A Master Plumber is required to serve as the Responsible Master Plumber (RMP) for a plumbing-contracting company that pulls permits.
Endorsements matter for specialty work. Medical-gas piping, water-supply protection (backflow), and multipurpose residential fire-sprinkler work all require specific endorsements on top of the base license. A Master Plumber without the medical-gas endorsement cannot legally install a hospital's oxygen lines.
Status codes. TSBPE records show Active, Expired, Suspended, and Revoked. Expired plumbing licenses are not work-eligible during the lapse, period. Texas does not have a soft "delinquent but findable" status the way Florida does — expired means expired.
The trades Texas doesn't license: what verification looks like instead
If you're hiring a general contractor, roofer, painter, or any of the other dozen trades Texas leaves alone at the state level, the state-portal step doesn't exist. The verification chain shifts to three other places.
City or county registration. Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and most other major Texas municipalities run their own contractor or building-permit registration programs. The scope varies — some require registration for any contractor pulling permits, others only for specific trades, others only above a project dollar threshold. Call the city's building or permits department and ask whether the contractor is registered for your jurisdiction and scope.
Insurance and bonding. Texas does not centrally track contractor insurance. Ask for a current Certificate of Insurance naming your property as the certificate holder, and call the insurer to confirm coverage is active. For larger projects, ask whether the contractor carries a performance bond — and verify it through the surety, not through a copy the contractor hands you.
The contract and small claims. For unlicensed trades, your statutory recourse if work goes bad is the contract you signed and Texas civil court. There is no state recovery fund the way Florida has under F.S. §489.143, and no licensing board to lodge a complaint with. The protection lives in what you wrote down before work started: scope, payment schedule, milestones, lien waivers from subs, and a written warranty. A weak contract on an unlicensed trade in Texas is a weak position, full stop.
If a contractor in an unlicensed trade tells you they're "licensed in Texas," treat it as either shorthand for a city registration (ask which city, then verify) or as a red flag for evasion. There is no third option.
Red flags specific to Texas
"Licensed in Texas" for a trade Texas doesn't license. A roofer or painter claiming a state license is either confused or evasive. Either way, ask which board issued it and verify before signing.
Journeyman pretending to be a contractor. A journeyman electrician or plumber working solo without a master on the license isn't legally operating as a contractor. They may do clean work; they cannot legally pull a permit, and if something goes wrong your enforcement path is limited.
Class B HVAC running unlimited-tonnage commercial. The scope cap on a Class B license is statutory. A Class B contractor doing 30-ton rooftop commercial work is out of scope, regardless of how competent the install looks.
Out-of-state contractor citing "reciprocity" that doesn't exist. Texas has limited reciprocity agreements with some neighboring states for specific trades. Most of them don't apply to most situations. If a contractor claims their Oklahoma or Louisiana license covers Texas work, ask which reciprocity agreement and check it on TDLR's site directly.
City registration framed as a state license. A Houston General Contractor Registration is real and useful — and it's not a state license. Anyone presenting a municipal registration as state-level credentialing is either careless about distinctions you should care about, or hoping you won't ask.
What state portals don't tell you
Worth being honest about the limits, same as anywhere.
City and county registrations aren't on TDLR or TSBPE. Each municipality runs its own database, and there is no statewide aggregation.
Insurance status isn't tracked centrally. TDLR and TSBPE collect proof at licensing milestones; they do not maintain live coverage status.
Mechanic's lien history is filed at the county clerk's office, not at a state board. If you want to know whether a contractor has filed liens against past clients, you're searching county records — Harris County for Houston, Dallas County for Dallas, and so on.
Subcontractor relationships aren't tracked. A licensed Master Electrician serving as the qualifier for a contracting company tells you nothing about who will actually be in your attic on Tuesday morning.
Sourcing licensed Texas contractors at scale
ContractorRoster mirrors TDLR and TSBPE's active records — 33,987 licensed electrical, HVAC, and plumbing contractors across Texas — with phone, email, website, and Google ratings layered in. For one-off verification, the TDLR portal and the TSBPE portal above are the right tools — they're the source of truth.
For sourcing multiple licensed contractors at scale, our $39 CSVs at /texas pull the same TDLR and TSBPE data pre-enriched with the contact info neither board publishes. One caveat worth stating plainly: because Texas does not license general contractors, roofers, painters, landscapers, or most other trades at the state level, those trades are not in the Texas dataset — there is no central registry to mirror. For unlicensed trades in Texas, sourcing has to happen city-by-city.
The verification rules above don't change either way. Even from a pre-enriched roster, the last check before you sign is to pull the license up on TDLR or TSBPE and read the status and class yourself.
Next step
Browse licensed Texas electricians, plumbers, or HVAC contractors — every record sourced from TDLR or TSBPE, with the contact info the boards don't publish.
Or run a one-off check at the official TDLR license search or the TSBPE license search.