How to check a California contractor license before you hire

Somebody is coming out on Thursday and you have their number off a van, a neighbor or a page like this one. The check that tells you whether the state has licensed them to do the work takes about three minutes, and almost nobody does it, because it is not obvious where to look or what the answer means when you get it.

Start with the thing this page is not. We are not the check. This site prints a row read off the California register on a stated date, which is a fact about a public record and not a verdict about a business. Registers move, licenses lapse between imports, and a number that was good in July can be suspended in September. The Contractors State License Board publishes the live version, and their lookup is the authority. Go there before you agree to anything.

The check itself, on the state's own site

CSLB runs a public lookup at cslb.ca.gov. You can search by license number, by business name or by personnel name, and license number is the one that returns a clean answer, so ask for it on the phone before you look.

Read four fields and ignore the rest on the first pass.

1. 1Status. You want "active". Anything else, expired, suspended, inactive, is a stop. A suspended license usually means a bond or workers' compensation problem, and both are yours to worry about the moment somebody is working on your premises.
2. 2Classification. This is the field that decides whether the license covers your job at all, and it is the one people skip. An active license held by somebody with the wrong classification is not the answer to your question.
3. 3Bond. The lookup shows whether the contractor's bond is on file and current. A lapsed bond usually shows up as a suspension.
4. 4Workers' compensation. Either a current policy or a filed exemption. An exemption means the holder has told the state they have no employees, which is a fact worth knowing if three people turn up in the van.

If the name on the van does not match the name on the license, ask why before the work starts. Both a legitimate answer, a doing-business-as name filed with the state, and a bad one, somebody working under a license that is not theirs, look identical from the sidewalk.

The classification is the half that gets skipped

California does not issue one contractor license. It issues a general license and a long list of specialty classifications, and the classification is what says which work the holder may perform.

The ones a small business runs into most:

• C-38 refrigeration. Walk-ins, freezers, reach-ins, display cases and the sealed systems behind them.
• C-20 warm-air heating, ventilating and air-conditioning. Rooftop units, split systems, ductwork.
• C-36 plumbing. Supply, waste, drains, fixtures, gas piping, grease interception.
• C-10 electrical. Panels, circuits, motor loads, lighting, standby power.
• C-4 boiler, hot water heating and steam fitting. Commercial water heating and boilers.
• B general building. A general contractor who typically holds the job and subcontracts the trades inside it.

That last one matters more than it looks. General building licenses outnumber plumbing licenses in California by a wide margin, so a "licensed contractor" who turns up for a burst pipe may hold a license that covers holding the job rather than doing the pipework. That is a legitimate way to buy the work and a different purchase from hiring the plumber directly, and it is worth knowing which one you have agreed to.

One thing the register cannot tell you, and it is the reason this site describes equipment rather than contractors: California classifications do not separate commercial work from residential. There is no commercial license to hold and no field that records one. A C-38 holder who has only ever worked on home refrigerators and a C-38 holder who maintains supermarket racks carry the identical row. The classification proves what the state licensed. Nothing in a public record proves experience on your equipment.

"Licensed and insured" is two claims and one of them is easy to check

The phrase turns up on every van and half of it is verifiable in three minutes. The other half is not.

Licensed is the lookup above. Do it.

Insured normally means two separate things. Workers' compensation, which is the one on the lookup and the one that decides who pays if somebody is hurt on your premises. And general liability, which covers damage to your property and is not on the CSLB lookup at all, because the state does not require it to hold a license.

So for liability, ask for a certificate of insurance sent directly from the broker rather than a photograph of one, and read three things on it: the coverage dates, whether the limit is per occurrence or in the aggregate, and whether the named insured matches the business you are hiring. A certificate that expired in March is the most common problem and the easiest to spot.

The unlicensed question, and what actually happens

California requires a license for most contracting work above a low dollar threshold, and the exemption for very small jobs is narrower than people assume. The consequences of hiring outside it fall on you rather than on them, which is the part worth internalizing.

• A contract with an unlicensed contractor is, in the state's framing, a weak position for the person who paid. Chasing money back through a court is a different exercise from claiming against a bond.
• The bond and the CSLB complaint process are only available against licensed holders. Unlicensed work has neither behind it.
• If somebody with no workers' compensation coverage is injured on your premises, you are the party most likely to be looking at that claim.
• Permits and inspections follow the license. Work that needed a permit and did not get one surfaces later, at a sale, a lease renewal, an insurance claim or a health inspection.

The pattern that should end a conversation: a demand for a large cash deposit up front, no written scope, no license number offered when asked, and a preference for starting tomorrow. Any one of those on its own can be innocent. All four together is the shape of the problem.

Two questions on the phone, before anyone drives out

Ask for the license number and the classification. Somebody who holds both answers in a second. Somebody who talks around it has told you something.

Then ask what is on the written price and what is not: the callout, the diagnostic time, parts at cost or at markup, and what happens if the fault turns out to be something else. A business that will put that in writing before the visit is one that expects to be judged on the invoice.

What this site does, precisely

We read public license registers and print what they publish: the business, the classification, the license number, the issuing authority and the date we read it. We link back to the register entry so the state gets the last word rather than us. Nothing on this site is vetted, checked out, approved or recommended, we have never contacted any business listed here, no one pays to appear, and there is nothing to buy.

That is deliberately a smaller claim than a directory usually makes. A license row is a fact on a stated date, which is worth having and is not the same thing as a verdict. The lookup at cslb.ca.gov is the live version, and it is the one to run before Thursday.