How do I check if a contractor is licensed in California?

Use the free licence lookup at cslb.ca.gov, the Contractors State License Board's own database. You can search by licence number, by business name or by a person's name. Take the number from the written bid or contract, type it in yourself rather than following a link you were sent, and read four things: the status, the classifications, the bond and the workers' compensation entry. DPOC's licence is #999194 if you want to practise on a live record first.

What does a C-8 licence cover?

C-8 is CSLB's concrete classification — flatwork, foundations and related concrete work. It is not a general licence, and it does not extend to roofing, electrical, plumbing or the rest of a multi-trade project. Every classification has a published scope on the CSLB site, so match the codes on the record against the work in your contract and read the code's scope on cslb.ca.gov rather than inferring it from a company name.

What happens if the contractor turns out to be unlicensed?

Work without a licence is permitted only below a low statutory dollar limit that covers labour and materials together, and not where a permit is required — check the current figure on cslb.ca.gov. Above that limit you are carrying risks you cannot see: no bond, usually no workers' compensation, and a much harder time recovering anything if the work fails or has to be redone. Stop before money moves, and report it to CSLB, which handles both complaints about licence holders and reports of unlicensed activity.

Does a contractor need workers' comp in California?

A business with employees has to carry workers' compensation, and the CSLB record shows either the policy or an exemption stating there are no employees. Roofing is treated differently: C-39 holders are required to carry it whether or not they have employees. Confirm the current rule on cslb.ca.gov. An exemption on file combined with a multi-person crew on your property is a contradiction worth resolving before work begins, because an uninsured injury on your property can become your problem.

What is a contractor bond and does it protect me?

It is a fixed sum posted with the state as a condition of holding an active licence, and the record shows the surety and the dates. It is not insurance for your project. Claims against it are shared across everyone who claims — homeowners, employees owed wages, suppliers — so on a job of any size it is a small backstop, and it may already be partly spent. Read it as evidence that the licence is in good standing, and rely on liability insurance, workers' compensation, a written contract and a sane payment schedule for real protection.

The licence number on the truck is real. Is that enough?

No. A number can be copied out of a public database, which is exactly why the database is public. What matters is that the business name and entity type on the CSLB record are the same legal entity that appears on your contract and takes your money. A clean record attached to a name that does not match your paperwork is not reassurance — it is the thing you were checking for.

How to check a contractor's licence before you hire

Five minutes on the state board catches most of what goes wrong. Here is exactly what to type, what to read, and the three fields almost everyone skips.

August 6, 2026 · 8 min read

Anyone can print a licence number on a truck. The number only means something once you have looked it up, and looking it up is free, public and takes about five minutes.

This is the walkthrough: where to go, what each field on the record means, and the ones people skim past. You can follow along on a live record rather than a hypothetical — DPOC's own licence is CSLB #999194, and it reads the same way as anyone else's.

Where to look

The Contractors State License Board publishes every licence it issues, and the free licence lookup at cslb.ca.gov is the only source worth trusting. A certificate in a binder, a PDF, a screenshot or a badge on a website is not verification — it is a picture of one.

There are three ways to search:

By licence number — fastest and least ambiguous, if you have the number.
By business name — for when you were given a company and no number. Common names return several records, so read them all before you pick one.
By personal name — finds the licences a named individual is attached to. This is how you catch someone operating through a business you were never told about.

Get the number in writing first. California requires a contractor to put the licence number on contracts, on bids and on advertising, so a proposal with no number on it has already told you something. Then type the number into CSLB yourself. Do not scan a QR code, follow a link or open an app that someone handed you — that step is exactly where a faked record gets in.

What the record actually says

A CSLB record is short. A handful of fields on it decide whether you keep going.

Status

The record says whether the licence is active, and if it is not, why. Inactive generally means the holder has voluntarily stopped operating under it. Expired means it lapsed at renewal. Suspended means the board has restricted it — often for exactly the missing bond or missing workers' compensation filing that would otherwise have protected you. Revoked means it is gone.

Read the dates as well as the word. A licence issued last month is not disqualifying, but it changes what "twenty years in business" means. CSLB also shows the licence's history, so a number that has moved in and out of good standing is worth asking about before you sign anything.

Classifications — the check almost everyone skips

A licence is not generic. CSLB issues it in specific classifications, and the classification is the scope. A C-8 concrete licence is not a licence for your roof. A C-39 roofing licence does not cover your driveway. A painting classification does not cover the stucco underneath the paint — even when the same crew is standing in front of you offering to do all of it.

So read the classification codes on the record and match them against the work you are actually buying, not against the trade the company is named after. CSLB publishes what each code covers. If a code on the record is not one you recognise, look it up on the same site rather than inferring it from the company name.

"B" causes the most confusion. A B general building licence is built around projects involving at least two unrelated trades — a remodel, an addition — rather than being a universal permission slip for any single-trade job. The scope rules have real detail and exceptions to them, so if B is the only classification on the record and your project is one trade, ask which classification the work will run under and check that answer against CSLB rather than accepting it at face value.

Multi-trade projects are where this breaks quietly. Concrete plus drainage plus a fence may not sit under one classification. Either the holder carries all of them, or another licensed business has to hold the part it does not cover — and you want to know which, and look that one up too, before work starts rather than after.

The bond

An active licence has to have a contractor's licence bond on file, and the record shows the bond, the surety company and the effective dates. A cancelled or missing bond is one of the usual reasons a licence shows as suspended. Some records also list a bond of qualifying individual, which relates to the person who qualified the licence rather than to your project.

Be clear about what a bond is not. It is not insurance for your job, and it is not a promise that you will be made whole. It is a fixed sum posted with the state that claimants can claim against — homeowners, employees owed wages, suppliers — and it is shared across all of them. On a project of any size it is a small backstop, and if claims have already been paid against it there may be very little left.

Read the bond as evidence that the licence is in good standing. Your actual protection is general liability insurance, workers' compensation, a written contract with a real scope, and not paying ahead of the work.

Workers' compensation

The record shows either a workers' compensation policy, with a carrier and an expiry date, or an exemption on file stating that the business has no employees. Read which one it is. This is the field homeowners underestimate most, because the downside does not land on the contractor — it lands on you.

If someone is injured on your property and there is no workers' compensation behind them, the question of who their employer was becomes a live one, and one available answer is the homeowner who hired and directed them. Medical bills and lost-wage claims from a serious fall are not small, and a homeowners policy may do far less with an injured worker than people assume. Ask your insurer what your policy actually covers before you need to know.

An exemption is not a red flag by itself — plenty of one-person businesses genuinely have no employees. An exemption on file plus a three-person crew on your driveway on Tuesday is a contradiction, and it is one to resolve before the work starts. Roofing is treated differently: C-39 holders are required to carry workers' compensation whether or not they have employees. If roofing is your job, confirm the current requirement on cslb.ca.gov.

Complaints, citations and disciplinary history

CSLB discloses certain complaint, citation, legal action and arbitration history on the record, along with prior suspensions or revocations. What is disclosable, and for how long, is set by the board's own rules — so an empty history means "nothing currently disclosable", not "nothing ever happened".

Read what is there rather than counting it. One resolved citation from six years ago is a different fact from an open legal action, and either is a different fact from the same complaint appearing three times.

The name on the licence has to be the name on your contract

The most common version of this fraud is not a forged record. It is a real, active, spotless licence that belongs to somebody else.

A number on a truck door, a yard sign, a flyer or a website is just printing. Anyone can copy a good number out of a public database — the database is public precisely so that you can check it. So when the record loads, compare it against the paperwork in front of you:

The business name on the CSLB record and the business name on your contract are the same legal entity, not a similar-sounding one.
The entity type matches. A contract with "Smith Concrete LLC" against a licence held by John Smith as a sole owner is a mismatch, not a technicality.
The person signing is listed on the record, or is plainly acting for the business that is.
The address and status line up with what you have been told about who you are hiring.

If the names do not match, stop there. You do not have to prove intent, reconstruct how it happened, or accept an explanation. The entire reason you look the number up instead of trusting the printed name is that the printed name is the part that can be lied about.

One related check: if you were sold the job by a salesperson rather than by the business itself, CSLB maintains a separate register for home improvement salespeople, and that registration is checkable on the same site.

Unlicensed work is legal only below a low threshold

California permits work to be performed without a licence only below a small statutory dollar limit, and that limit covers the total job — labour and materials together, not labour alone. It is a low number, it is set by statute, and it has changed over time, so check the current figure on cslb.ca.gov rather than trusting a figure quoted to you. Including this page: read it from the board.

Two things people get wrong about it. The limit applies to the whole project, so a job cannot be sliced into several small contracts to stay underneath it. And it does not apply where the work requires a building permit — so if someone is telling you the job is under the limit while also pulling a permit, those two statements do not sit together.

Separate but adjacent: on a home improvement contract, the deposit that may be taken before work begins is capped at $1,000 or 10% of the contract, whichever is less. A large upfront ask is its own warning sign, independent of anything on the licence record.

If it does not check out

Do not pay a deposit and do not let work start. Everything is easy to walk away from until money moves.
Ask directly. Sometimes it is a typo, a renewal in progress, or a licence held by a parent company. An answer you can verify on CSLB is fine; an answer you have to take on trust is not.
If the licence is expired or suspended, wait until the record reads active. That is not paperwork pedantry — a suspension is often for the missing bond or missing workers' compensation filing that mattered to you specifically.
If the classification does not cover your work, ask which licensed business will hold that part of the contract, and look that business up too.
If the names do not match, walk. You have just found the thing you were checking for.
Report it. CSLB takes complaints about licence holders and reports of unlicensed activity through its own site, and it runs an investigative unit for the second. It takes minutes, and it is what keeps the record useful for the next person.

Keep what you found. A dated screenshot of the record costs nothing and is worth a great deal if there is a dispute months later.

How DPOC handles this

DPOC holds CSLB #999194. Every job runs under this licence — ours, not a subcontractor's. Your contract is with one licensed, insured company that stays responsible for the outcome, rather than with whichever crew happened to be free that week.

Not every crew in the network holds a licence of its own, and we do not claim otherwise. A crew without its own active licence works under DPOC's, and carries a higher platform fee for that coverage — because DPOC's licence and bond are what stand behind the job. When a crew adds its own verified, active licence, that premium comes off from then on.

Which means the check in this post works on us. Search 999194 at cslb.ca.gov and read the record exactly the way you would read anyone else's: status, classifications, bond, workers' compensation, history. If you are being asked to let a stranger into your home, the company doing the asking should be the easiest name on your list to verify.

Common questions

How do I check if a contractor is licensed in California?: Use the free licence lookup at cslb.ca.gov, the Contractors State License Board's own database. You can search by licence number, by business name or by a person's name. Take the number from the written bid or contract, type it in yourself rather than following a link you were sent, and read four things: the status, the classifications, the bond and the workers' compensation entry. DPOC's licence is #999194 if you want to practise on a live record first.
What does a C-8 licence cover?: C-8 is CSLB's concrete classification — flatwork, foundations and related concrete work. It is not a general licence, and it does not extend to roofing, electrical, plumbing or the rest of a multi-trade project. Every classification has a published scope on the CSLB site, so match the codes on the record against the work in your contract and read the code's scope on cslb.ca.gov rather than inferring it from a company name.
What happens if the contractor turns out to be unlicensed?: Work without a licence is permitted only below a low statutory dollar limit that covers labour and materials together, and not where a permit is required — check the current figure on cslb.ca.gov. Above that limit you are carrying risks you cannot see: no bond, usually no workers' compensation, and a much harder time recovering anything if the work fails or has to be redone. Stop before money moves, and report it to CSLB, which handles both complaints about licence holders and reports of unlicensed activity.
Does a contractor need workers' comp in California?: A business with employees has to carry workers' compensation, and the CSLB record shows either the policy or an exemption stating there are no employees. Roofing is treated differently: C-39 holders are required to carry it whether or not they have employees. Confirm the current rule on cslb.ca.gov. An exemption on file combined with a multi-person crew on your property is a contradiction worth resolving before work begins, because an uninsured injury on your property can become your problem.
What is a contractor bond and does it protect me?: It is a fixed sum posted with the state as a condition of holding an active licence, and the record shows the surety and the dates. It is not insurance for your project. Claims against it are shared across everyone who claims — homeowners, employees owed wages, suppliers — so on a job of any size it is a small backstop, and it may already be partly spent. Read it as evidence that the licence is in good standing, and rely on liability insurance, workers' compensation, a written contract and a sane payment schedule for real protection.
The licence number on the truck is real. Is that enough?: No. A number can be copied out of a public database, which is exactly why the database is public. What matters is that the business name and entity type on the CSLB record are the same legal entity that appears on your contract and takes your money. A clean record attached to a name that does not match your paperwork is not reassurance — it is the thing you were checking for.