Checking a contractor's license
Four minutes. Free. Last updated 4 October 2026
Every state publishes its license records, and looking one up costs nothing. Almost everyone who checks still misses the thing that matters, because they check the wrong field.
Check whose name is on it, not whether there is one
A license number comes back active, in good standing, no complaints — and the contract on your table is in a different name. Same man, same phone number, a business name he switched to last year and never moved the license over to. He will explain it in eight seconds and he will not be lying.
That gap is the whole difference. Most states run a guaranty or recovery fund that reimburses homeowners for losses caused by a licensed contractor. The test is not whether somebody with a license stood in your kitchen. It is whether the party named on the contract held the license. Claims that fail that test are dismissed, not reduced.
Finding your state's official lookup
Search for <your state> contractor license lookup. You want the state board's own site, and there are three reliable tells:
- The address ends in .gov, or belongs to the board itself (several boards are independent agencies on their own domains — North Carolina's is nclbgc.org, Nevada's is nvcontractorsboard.com).
- It asks for nothing. No email, no account, no "get your report". A real lookup takes a name or a number and returns a record.
- It returns the license, not a profile. Status, classification, the exact legal name the license is issued to, and usually bond and insurance.
Sites that want an email address before showing you anything are selling leads to contractors. They are not the board.
Direct links
These are the boards we have opened and checked by hand. We add states as we verify them rather than copying somebody else's list, which is why there are four and not fifty — a directory of dead links is worse than no directory.
- California — Contractors State License Board: Check a License
- Nevada — State Contractors Board
- North Carolina — Licensing Board for General Contractors
- Washington — Labor & Industries: Verify a Contractor
What to do with what you find
Print the page. Write the date on it in pen. Staple it to your copy of the contract.
That sounds like nothing and it is the entire point. A record you make before the work starts, on a day when nothing is wrong, is a fact. The same information gathered after a dispute begins is your side of the story, which is worth considerably less. The printout is not for you — it is for whoever reads the file in fourteen months.
And if the name on the license does not match the name on the contract, the fix takes a minute: ask for the contract to read the way the license reads, before you sign. A contractor who is who he says he is will shrug and retype it.
What this page is not
It is not legal advice, and licensing works differently in every state — some license general contractors, some license only specific trades, some leave it to counties and cities entirely. We do not tell you what your state does, because we would get it wrong somewhere. We tell you where to look and what to look at.