Is my contractor licensed?
Search the contractor's license number on your state licensing board's website and confirm the status is "Active," the business name matches your contract, and the trade classification covers the work being quoted. Groundcheck (earthmove.io/trust) does this across all 51 jurisdictions in one search.
To answer "is my contractor licensed," you need three things from your contractor: the license number, the legal business name as it appears on the license, and the personal name of the qualifying party (the person whose credentials the license is built on). Without all three, you cannot verify — and a contractor who will not provide all three is failing the first test.
Type the license number into your state board's lookup. In California, that is the CSLB at cslb.ca.gov; in Arizona, the Registrar of Contractors at roc.az.gov; in Oregon, the Construction Contractors Board at oregon.gov/ccb; in North Carolina, the Licensing Board for General Contractors at nclbgc.org. Each state has a free, public, no-login search.
Four things must match. License number: must exactly match what is on the contract or quote. Status: must be "Active" — not "Inactive," "Suspended," "Revoked," "Expired," or "Pending Renewal." Business name: must match the entity name on your contract. Qualifying party: the person dealing with you (or their direct boss) should match the qualifier on the license — a license can be "qualified" by one person but used by an entire LLC.
Trade classification matters too. A roofing-only license does not cover full home remodels. A C-10 Electrical license cannot legally pull plumbing permits. The work must match the license class, and the state board's lookup shows you which classes the license holds.
If your state does not have a statewide GC license — Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York (state-level), Ohio, Pennsylvania (state-level), South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Wyoming — license verification is not the right check. Confirm Secretary of State entity registration, check the local municipal license (Denver, Kansas City, NYC, Philadelphia all have local requirements), and run a court-record and OSHA check on the entity.
Groundcheck (earthmove.io/trust) runs all of the above in one search — license board, Secretary of State, court records, OSHA, BBB — and tells you whether the contractor is licensed AND whether the rest of the public record matches what they have told you.
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Verify any contractor or business. License status, court records, OSHA history. Under 90 seconds. The business is never notified.