home services guide
How to verify a contractor's licence
Where to look, state by state and province by province, and what to check for once you find the record.
The short answer
Go to the issuing authority's own register rather than a directory. Confirm the licence is active, that the name matches the company on your estimate, that the classification covers your work, and that there are no open disciplinary actions.
Key takeaways
- Directories copy licence data; the issuing board is the source
- The licence holder and the trading company are often different entities
- Classification matters: a licence can be real and still not cover your job
- Some trades are not licensed anywhere, which changes what you check instead
Go to the source
Every licensing authority we work with publishes a searchable register: the CSLB in California, the DBPR in Florida, TDLR in Texas, the ESA and TSSA in Ontario, Technical Safety BC. Those are the records. A licence number printed on a website is a claim until you check it.
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About this guide
- Originally published
- August 2026
- Last reviewed
- August 2026
- Written by
- Dana Whitfield
- Reading time
- 9 min
- Sources cited
- 0
About the author
Dana Whitfield
Senior editor, home services
Dana runs the editorial side of TenBestFind. She built the research process, decides which markets get covered next, and writes the plumbing and chimney rankings herself. Before this she spent eleven years as a consumer reporter covering contractor licensing and home improvement fraud.
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