Contractor license requirements by state

A fifty-row table is the wrong shape for this question, because states do not differ fifty ways. They differ three ways, and everything else is a detail inside one of them.

In a board state the second question is always: at what job value does the license become compulsory? Below the threshold, the same work is legal unlicensed. Above it, the same work is a misdemeanour in some states and a bar to enforcing your own contract in others.

North Carolina’s board states the rule plainly: a project valued at $40,000 or more needs a state-licensed general contractor. Other boards set the line lower — Georgia draws its residential line far below it — and a handful set none at all: the license is required for the activity, not the amount. In Arizona a permit can decide it as well as the price: the Arizona contractor license requirements make any job that needs a building permit a licensed job, whatever it costs. Where the small-job line sits in each case is the subject of handyman vs contractor license.

Each state below has its own sheet on this site, read from the issuing regulator on the date in the last column, with the fee and bond detail we could verify. They span all three models: a single general license, trades only (Ohio), and a supervisor license beside a business registration (Massachusetts, New Jersey). The Washington contractor license is a registration too, but statewide: one agency, a bond and insurance, and no exam for a general contractor.

We are deliberately not printing a fifty-row fee table. A fee copied from a third-party summary and left to rot is worse than no fee at all — it is the thing people budget against. Every figure on this site carries the regulator page it came from and the date we read it, and the sheets above are the ones we could read in full. We could not read this figure from the issuing board on our last check, so it is not printed here. Confirm it with the board before you budget for it.

Whatever state you are in, the same four questions settle it, in this order:

1. § 1Is there a state board for generals? If yes, its site is the only authority that matters for the license itself.
2. § 2What triggers it — value, or activity? A value threshold means you can work under it; an activity rule means you cannot.
3. § 3Which trades are licensed separately? Electrical and mechanical often are, at state or local level, even where the general is not — and roofing is the trade the states disagree about most.
4. § 4What does the permit counter want? Registration, a local bond, and a certificate of insurance naming the city as additional insured are all common.

Our license lookup directory answers the first question for every board it lists, because a board that runs a public license search is a board that issues licenses.