How to check a contractor's licence in California

Regime

State-licensed

⚠️ This rests on two secondary sources agreeing. WE DID NOT RECORD WHICH TWO, so we cannot now check whether they are genuinely independent or whether one restates the other — and regime aggregators commonly draw on a shared compilation. If they are derivative, this is one source counted twice rather than two agreeing. We have not established independence, and on this record we cannot. A 2026-08-12 re-run on three states found NO fixed pair of sources and a recurring class of commercial licensing-service sites — a population with an obvious motive to copy one another. Note also that any re-survey identifies the sources it finds, not the two originally used, so this tier can become checkable going forward but cannot be validated backwards.

two independent secondary sources agree; no primary has been read for this state

How we know · two independent secondary sources agree; no primary read · established 2026-08-11

Threshold

$1,000 aggregate contract price, including labour and materials.

Every one of these must also hold:

• the work must not require a building permit
• you must not employ anyone else to perform or assist in the work
• it must not be part of a larger or major operation, and an operation must not be divided up to get under the figure
• you must not advertise or hold yourself out as a contractor

Below this a contractor is LAWFULLY UNLICENSED, but only if every condition above holds — this is a narrow exemption, not a general small-job allowance.

⚠️ As retrieved 2026-08-12, CSLB's own Building Official Information Guide still stated $500. That figure is superseded. If you check CSLB and see $500, the statute above is the current law.

Cal. Business & Professions Code § 7048. The $1,000 figure was set by AB 2622 (Stats. 2024, Ch. 240); the section's current text carries the amendment stamp of AB 1170 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 67, Sec. 12), a maintenance-of-the-codes measure approved 2025-07-28 and effective 2026-01-01. Confirmed CHAPTERED AND IN FORCE on 2026-08-12 — not vetoed, delayed or superseded.

How we know · read from the enacted statute, cited with its amendment and effective date · established 2026-08-11

Agency holding the register

Contractors State License Board (CSLB)

this project fetches the register from this agency

How we know · verified by collecting the register from this agency · established 2026-08-11

Public lookup

https://www.cslb.ca.gov/onlineservices/checklicenseII/checklicense.aspx

How we know · verified by collecting the register from this agency · established 2026-08-11

Scope of the contractor licence

Covers residential work at least; commercial coverage not established

classification-schedule reading

How we know · read from the licence classification schedule · established 2026-08-11