How to check a contractor's licence in Virginia

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 per contract (the floor of the Class C licence).

• Class C — a single contract over $1,000 and under $30,000, or under $250,000 of work a year
• Class B — $30,000 to $149,999, or $250,000 to $999,999 a year
• Class A — $150,000 or more, or $1 million or more a year

Below this a contractor is LAWFULLY UNLICENSED — absence from the register is not evidence of wrongdoing.

⚠️ The statute sets the Class C floor at 'over $1,000'. That no licence is required at or below $1,000 is an INFERENCE from that floor, not wording the statute states directly.

Code of Virginia § 54.1-1100 et seq.

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

Agency holding the register

Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR), Board for Contractors

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.dpor.virginia.gov/LicenseLookup

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

Scope of the contractor licence

Covers both residential and commercial work

18VAC50-22-20 defines RBC=Residential and CBC=Commercial Building Contractor; 18VAC50-22-30 defines HIC=RESIDENTIAL and CIC=COMMERCIAL improvement. Observed: RBC 22,263 rows, CBC 18,044, both 10,698. A published regulati

How we know · read from the regulation · established 2026-08-11