How to Check a California Contractor License

A license number on a van, a business card or a website is a string of digits. It tells you nothing by itself. It might belong to the person quoting you, or to a company that dissolved in 2019, or to somebody else entirely, or to nobody.

California gives you a free, public, five-minute way to find out which. Here is exactly how, and — more usefully — what the fields on the record actually mean once you are looking at them.

Where to check

Three routes, all free, all the same underlying record:

• cslb.ca.gov — the Contractors State License Board's own site. Search by license number, by business name, or by personnel name.
• CheckTheLicenseFirst.com — CSLB's consumer-facing shortcut to the same lookup.
• 800-321-CSLB (2752) — the toll-free line, if you would rather ask a person.

Search by name as well as by number, and check that the two match. A number that resolves to a different business name than the one on your estimate is the single most useful thing this check turns up.

The six things worth reading on the record

1. Status — is it current and active?

You are looking for a license that is current, active and unrestricted. "Expired", "suspended" or "inactive" each mean something different, and none of them mean "fine, nearly sorted". A suspended license can be suspended for an unpaid judgment, a lapsed bond or a workers' compensation gap — and a contractor cannot lawfully contract while suspended.

2. Classification — does it cover your job?

A license is not generic. Class A is engineering work, Class B is general building, and the C-classifications are specialty trades — C-10 electrical, C-36 plumbing, C-20 heating and air, and so on. The question is not "is this person licensed", it is "is this person licensed for what I am asking them to do". A C-33 painting contractor is properly licensed and still the wrong license for moving your kitchen plumbing.

3. Bond — is it posted and current?

Every licensee has to post a contractor's bond. Since 1 January 2023 that bond is $25,000, raised from the previous figure by Senate Bill 607. If the license is qualified by someone other than the owner, there is a second $25,000 bond of qualifying individual. The license detail page will also show a blanket performance and payment bond if one exists.

4. Workers’ compensation — and how to read it

This is the field people misread most often, in both directions. See the section below.

5. Personnel — whose name is on it?

The record names the qualifying individual: the person whose experience and exam the license actually rests on. If that name has nothing to do with the business you are talking to, or the person in your kitchen is "working under" somebody else's license who is never on site, you have found something worth asking about directly.

6. Disciplinary history — which is not on the web page

The license detail page shows some actions, but CSLB runs a separate Legal Action Disclosure line for pending and prior actions. For Northern California that number is (916) 255-4041. Southern California is (562) 345-7656. It is a phone call almost nobody makes, and it is the one that turns up things a website will not.

Reading the workers’ compensation field properly

Most guides tell you that "workers' compensation exempt" is a red flag. That is wrong often enough to be worth correcting, and it is also sometimes exactly right, which is why it needs a paragraph rather than a bullet.

California requires employers to carry workers' compensation insurance — with even one employee. A licensee with no employees may instead file an exemption with CSLB certifying that. So a genuinely solo contractor showing as exempt is in order, not in breach.

Where it stops being in order:

• Five classifications must carry coverage whether or not they have employees: C-8 concrete, C-20 warm-air heating and air-conditioning, C-22 asbestos abatement, C-39 roofing, and C-61/D-49 tree service. Exempt on one of those is not a grey area.
• An exemption plus a crew is the real problem. If the record says exempt and three people turn up to work on your house, either they are subcontractors with their own coverage — ask, and ask for certificates — or somebody is uninsured on your property. CSLB requires proof of coverage within 90 days of a hire, and a lapse in coverage suspends the license.
• An exemption is also unavailable if the license is qualified by a responsible managing employee.

One more thing, stated carefully: California has legislated a future requirement forall licensees to carry coverage regardless of employees, and the compliance date has been moved by subsequent legislation. The figures circulating online disagree with each other, and CSLB's own page currently states no universal date. If that date matters to your decision, read it on CSLB's site rather than from anyone's summary, including this one.

The $500 line

A contractor must be licensed for any job valued at $500 or more, combined labor and material cost. Below that figure the licensing requirement does not apply.

Almost nothing in a remodel is under $500. The threshold matters mainly because it is the line someone is standing on when they tell you a licence is not necessary for "a small job like this".

Separately — and at the same figure — a written contract is required for any home improvement project over $500. A handshake on a bathroom remodel is not an informal arrangement between trusting adults. It is a missing document, and the person it protects is you.

What has to be in that contract

These are requirements, not courtesies, and you can check every one of them against a piece of paper on your kitchen table:

• The down payment cannot exceed $1,000 or 10% of the contract price, whichever is less. Read that twice, because the "whichever is less" is the part that gets quietly dropped. On any remodel large enough that 10% of the price comes to more than $1,000 — which is most of them — the cap that applies is the flat $1,000, however big the contract. A request for a third of the price up front is not a negotiating position.
• A written payment schedule, with no payment exceeding the value of work actually performed to that point. The down payment is the one exception.
• Change orders in writing, signed by both of you, before the change.Verbal change orders are how a project's price becomes a matter of opinion.
• Written direction on who obtains the permits — seewho issues your remodel permit in Contra Costa for why that is worth settling early.
• A completion date.
• Notice of your right to cancel.

Your right to cancel

You have three days to cancel a home improvement contract. If you are 65 or older, you have five.

One catch worth knowing: both rights are waived if you sign a service and repair contract, which is a different and narrower contract type. If someone presents a service-and-repair agreement for what is plainly a remodel, that is a question to ask before signing, not after.

What the bond does — and does not — do for you

The $25,000 contractor's bond exists for the benefit of consumers damaged by defective construction, employees owed unpaid wages, and certain other license law violations. That is real protection and it is worth confirming is in place.

It is also $25,000 total, not $25,000 for you — and it is not insurance against a job going badly in the ordinary way. Treat a current bond as a box that must be ticked, not as a reason to relax about the other five fields.

Now check ours

It would be odd to write this page and not hand you the number.

Excove Builders holds California CSLB #1123274, aClass B general building contractor license. Search1123274 on cslb.ca.gov and read the status, the classification, the bond and the personnel. Then ring the Northern California Legal Action Disclosure line on (916) 255-4041 and ask about us too.

We would rather you did. A homeowner who has checked is a homeowner having a different kind of conversation — about the work, instead of about whether we are who we say we are.

If that conversation is one you want to have:ask for a walkthrough, or call(510) 407-3343. You can also see a job we have completed, photographed before and after, on ourprojects page.