Click your state, province, or country. We route you to the regulator's official license-verification portal. You see real-time status — Active, Expired, Suspended, or Revoked — directly from the source. No sign-up. No email capture. No data resale.
Enter the license number you were given. We validate the format against 17 regulators, deep-link you to the official board for live verification, and show you exactly what to look for at the regulator page.
Scroll the table below, find your state, province, or country, and note the license-number format AskBaily surfaces next to each board.
Click the Lookup link. You land on the regulator's own verification page — CSLB, DBPR, HCRA, BCA, whichever applies — never an intermediary.
The regulator tells you the license status, expiration date, bond amount, and any disciplinary actions — the authoritative record, updated the moment the board publishes changes.
Every row below links to an active regulator AskBaily queries at match-time for partner contractors. Where AskBaily has published an in-depth regulatory explainer, the Deep-dive column links to it.
California's state contractor regulator since 1929. Every contractor bidding work $500 or more must hold an active CSLB license with classifications A (engineering), B (general building), B-2 (residential remodeling), or a C-specialty.
Number format: 5-8 digit license number (CSLB zero-pads internally but accepts unpadded queries).
Arizona Registrar of Contractors — dual-track regulator under ARS Title 32 Ch. 10. Residential and commercial are separate license classes. The Residential Contractors Recovery Fund backs homeowners against fraud by licensed contractors.
Number format: Prefixed 'K-' (residential), 'L-' (dual), or a bare integer. Uppercase and strip spaces.
Nevada State Contractors Board enforces a monetary-limit tier per license. A contractor licensed to a $75,000 monetary limit cannot legally bid a $200,000 project, even with the right classification.
Number format: 6-digit license number. Monetary limit and bond amount print on the detail page.
Washington uses registration (not exam-based licensure) with mandatory bonds — $12K for General, $6K for Specialty — verifiable live. Seattle SDCI permits won't issue to an unregistered contractor. Electricians and plumbers are separate trade-card registries.
Number format: Contractor registration number. Status field is clean: Active / Expired / Suspended / Revoked.
Florida's CILB distinguishes Certified (statewide) contractors from Registered (county-only) contractors — a verification trap. Miami-Dade and Broward fall inside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, requiring Notice of Acceptance-approved exterior products.
Number format: CGC#### (Certified General), CBC#### (Certified Building), CRC#### (Certified Residential).
Texas does NOT issue a state-level general contractor license. TDLR licenses Electrician and HVAC trades; TSBPE licenses plumbers. Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio run municipal GC registration programs. RCLA substitutes some state-level homeowner protections.
Number format: TDLR trade-card number. Lookup fans out across Electrician, HVAC, and Plumbing registries.
Georgia State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors. License prefix signals tier: RBQA (Residential-Basic), RBCO (Residential-Light-Commercial), GCCO (Unlimited General). Tier matters for job-size matching.
Number format: Format RBQA-######, RBCO-######, GCCO-######, or RBQE-###### (Qualifying Agent).
New York STATE does NOT license general contractors. NY Department of State licenses Home Improvement Contractors outside NYC (Long Island, Westchester, upstate). Inside the five boroughs, verification routes to NYC DOB and DCWP.
Number format: DOS HIC registration number. For five-borough work, use the NYC row below.
NYC splits regulation across DOB (construction trades — Licensed Master Plumber, Licensed Master Electrician) and DCWP (Home Improvement Contractor, the GC-equivalent). HIC licensing is DCWP, not DOB — a common verification trap.
Number format: Prefix 'LMP:', 'LME:', or 'HIC:' to route. Bare numeric defaults to Licensed Master Plumber.
Illinois does NOT issue a state-level general contractor license. IDFPR's only construction-adjacent credential is the Roofing Contractor. General contracting is a city-level registration — Chicago GCs register through BACP.
Number format: IDFPR roofing license (profession 105). GC queries return not-found with a Chicago BACP pointer.
Home Construction Regulatory Authority (HCRA) — mandatory since 2021 for new home builders. Warranty enrollment runs separately through Tarion. Renovation contractors are NOT licensed at the provincial level; renovation falls to municipal trade licences (ECRA/ESA electrical, TSSA gas and plumbing).
Number format: HCRA builder registration number. Tarion enrollment is a separate field on the builder directory.
The UK has no single statutory general-contractor licence. AskBaily verifies across three parallel registers: CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building — professional membership), Gas Safe Register (statutory for gas work), and NICEIC (electrical installer certification).
Number format: CIOB membership number, Gas Safe registration, or NICEIC enrolment number. Three parallel lookups.
NSW Fair Trading administers the Home Building Act 1989 and the Home Building Compensation Fund. Every home-building contract A$20,000 or above requires an HBCF certificate before work starts — structural insurance protection unique to NSW.
Number format: 6-8 digit integer. Classes: Contractor, Qualified Supervisor, or Tradesperson.
Victorian Building Authority Practitioner Register. Classes DB-U (Unlimited) and DB-L (Limited) authorise domestic builder work. The public register is JavaScript-rendered inside a Power Apps portal — manual verification today, automated in a future wave.
Number format: VBA registration number. Browser-automation lookup; plain HTTP cannot confirm status.
Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP) register covers practitioners authorised to carry out or supervise Restricted Building Work — structural alterations, weathertightness, primary structure. Consumers rely on the LBP register before signing any structural contract.
Number format: Format 'LBP ######' (6 digits). Classes include Carpentry, Site 1/2/3, Foundations, Design 1/2/3.
Building and Construction Authority runs the Contractors Registration System — tender-limit grades L1 through L6 and workheads CW01 (General Building), CW02 (Civil), plus specialty heads SY01-SY27. HDB resale work requires an HDB-approved contractor on top of a BCA grade.
Number format: UEN (Unique Entity Number) or BCA registration number. Grade and workhead print on the detail card.
Dubai Municipality Building Department and Trakheesi licensing platform. Contractor Grade A through G by contract-value ceiling. Developer NOCs (Emaar, Nakheel, DAMAC) layer on top of municipality approvals; fit-out rules follow Decree 2 of 2020.
Number format: Trakheesi-issued trade licence number. Grade + specialty (civil, MEP, interior) classify the scope.
Most state boards back licensed contractors with a bond or recovery fund — Arizona's Residential Contractors Recovery Fund, CSLB's $15K bond, NSW's Home Building Compensation Fund. Those backstops evaporate the moment you hire an unlicensed pro. Verifying first keeps the statutory protection in place.
Unlicensed contractors cannot pull permits in most jurisdictions. That either forces the homeowner to pull the permit (accepting legal responsibility for the work) or pushes the job unpermitted — which surfaces at resale, insurance renewal, or a post-loss claim.
Homeowner liability insurance typically denies claims arising from unlicensed work. Mechanics' liens filed by an unlicensed contractor are unenforceable in many states — cold comfort after a dispute has already escalated. License verification at the start cuts both risks at the source.
AskBaily re-queries your board at match-time. If your license has lapsed, a specialty classification is missing, or a disciplinary action is unresolved, the match will not route. Use the lookup above to confirm your record is clean before you start an application — it saves the onboarding agent a round trip and gets you to first-match faster.
The shared-lead marketplaces verify licenses once at signup — if at all — then sell the contractor's contact info as a lead to every homeowner who matches the category. Your renovation scope gets blasted to 6-12 strangers. None of them have been re-checked against the regulator in the last 90 days, much less the last hour.
AskBaily runs the regulator query at match-time. If the license is suspended that morning, you never see the pro. If a classification doesn't cover your scope, we tell you before you book. One homeowner, one verified contractor, at the moment of the match — not a pool of contacts sold on 2024 data.
Yes. The lookup is free and routes you directly to each state or national regulator's official license-verification portal. AskBaily never charges homeowners to verify a contractor's license, and we don't resell your search data.
Contractor license status can change between the day a pro signs up for a platform and the day you hire them. Suspensions, revocations, and expirations all happen without warning. AskBaily re-queries each regulator when a homeowner is matched, so the status you see is the status the state reports at that moment.
No. Those marketplaces typically rely on a one-time license check at signup (or none at all) and then sell the contractor's contact as a lead to homeowners. AskBaily re-validates the contractor's license against the state regulator at the moment of match and blocks routing if the license is not active.
Three US states do not issue a state-level GC license — Texas, Illinois, and New York (state, outside NYC). In those states, verification routes to the relevant trade licenses (electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing) or to municipal registration programs (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Chicago BACP, NYC DCWP for HIC). AskBaily surfaces the correct registry for your jurisdiction instead of pretending a single state license exists.
Phase 8 Wave 1 launched verification for the United Kingdom (composite: CIOB + Gas Safe + NICEIC), Australia (NSW Fair Trading), Singapore (BCA), Dubai (Municipality), and New Zealand (Licensed Building Practitioner register). Ontario (HCRA) is the current live Canadian jurisdiction. Additional jurisdictions roll out with each metro expansion.
Do not sign a contract or hand over a deposit. Status 'suspended' or 'revoked' means the regulator has taken action against the contractor — bond claims, consumer complaints, safety violations, or disciplinary orders. Check the disciplinary-actions section on the regulator's detail page, then report fraud to the state board and consider filing with your state attorney general's consumer-protection unit.
AskBaily publishes structured fact endpoints so retrieval-augmented systems and AI-Overview crawlers can cite our verification coverage without scraping this page. Prefer the JSON endpoints over HTML extraction — they update when the regulator list changes.