How to Check If a Contractor Is Licensed and Insured

Almost every homeowner asks a contractor whether they are licensed and insured. Almost none of them check. The answer arrives as a confident yes, sometimes with a laminated card or a PDF attached to an email, and the conversation moves on.

The verification takes about fifteen minutes and it is the highest-value fifteen minutes in the entire hiring process. Here is exactly how to do it.

Step 1: Ask for the License Number and the Certificate of Insurance

Ask for two specific things in writing:

The license number and the name it is held under.
A Certificate of Insurance, usually called a COI, showing general liability and workers compensation coverage.

A legitimate contractor produces both without friction, because they are asked for them constantly. Hesitation, delay, or a reason why this particular job does not require them is your answer, and you can stop there.

Pay attention to the name. The license should be held by the business you are contracting with, or by a person clearly connected to it. A license in an unrelated name is a common trick.

Step 2: Verify the License with the State, Not the Contractor

This is the step that matters, and the one that gets skipped. Do not verify the license against the document the contractor gave you. Verify it against the state.

Search for your state contractor license lookup, or go directly to your state licensing board site, and search by license number and by business name. Confirm all of the following:

The number and the name match what the contractor told you. A real number attached to a different company is a license that has been borrowed or copied.
The status is active or current. Not expired, not suspended, not revoked, not inactive.
The license class covers your work. This is the most commonly missed check. A general contractor license does not necessarily authorise electrical or plumbing work, and many states license those trades separately. Someone perfectly legitimate for a kitchen remodel may not be licensed to move the panel.
The expiry date extends past your project. A license lapsing mid-project is a real scheduling and liability problem.

While you are on the board site, look for a complaints or disciplinary history section. Boards frequently publish enforcement actions, and this is information that will never appear in a Google review.

Step 3: Read the Insurance Certificate Properly

A Certificate of Insurance is easy to skim and easy to fake. Read it for four things:

General liability coverage and its limit. This covers damage to your property. Coverage of at least $500,000 is a common baseline for residential work, and $1 million is standard for anything structural. If a crew puts a foot through your ceiling, this is the policy that pays.

Workers compensation coverage. This is the one homeowners underestimate. If an uninsured worker is injured on your property, you can end up personally exposed to the medical costs. Any contractor bringing a crew should carry it.

The policy dates. A certificate showing coverage that expired four months ago is not coverage. Check that the period covers your project window, not just today.

The named insured. It must match the business you are hiring, exactly. A certificate in a different company name protects a different company.

Step 4: Confirm the Coverage with the Insurer

Certificates are PDFs, and PDFs can be edited. For any project large enough to matter, take the extra step: call the insurance agent or carrier listed on the certificate and confirm the policy is active and in the amounts shown.

Two ways to raise the bar further:

Ask to be listed as a certificate holder. When you are a certificate holder, the insurer notifies you directly if the policy is canceled mid-project.
Ask for the certificate to come directly from the agent rather than from the contractor. This removes the opportunity for alteration entirely, and a contractor with real coverage will not object.

Step 5: Check Everything Else While You Are There

Verification is cheap once you have started:

Search the business name plus the word complaint or lawsuit. Court records and complaint boards surface things reviews do not.
Check reviews across more than one platform. Google, and the Better Business Bureau. A perfect record in exactly one place is less reassuring than a good record in three.
Call two references and ask a specific question. Not was it good, but what went wrong and how did they handle it. Every project has a problem. The answer tells you how this contractor behaves when things are difficult.
Confirm the business address is real. A residential address is entirely normal for a small contractor. A nonexistent one is not.

Keep Copies of Everything

Save the license lookup result as a PDF or screenshot with the date visible, save the Certificate of Insurance, and keep the contract and every payment record together in one folder.

If something goes wrong later, the fact that you verified an active license and current coverage on a specific date is enormously useful to a lawyer, an insurer, or the licensing board. Reconstructing it after the fact usually proves impossible.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if my state does not license this trade?

Licensing requirements vary widely, and some states regulate at the city or county level rather than the state level, while a handful require no license at all for certain kinds of work. If a state search comes up empty, check your county and city building departments before concluding the contractor is unlicensed. Where no license genuinely exists for the trade, insurance verification carries the full weight, so tighten that side of the check: confirm general liability and workers compensation directly with the carrier, ask to be added as a certificate holder, and lean harder on references and complaint history. The absence of a licensing requirement is not the absence of risk, it just moves where you need to look.

Does hiring an unlicensed contractor actually hurt me?

Yes, in several concrete ways beyond the obvious quality risk. Unpermitted or unlicensed work can fail inspection and have to be redone at your expense. It can surface during a home sale and either kill the deal or force a price reduction. Your homeowner insurance may decline a claim arising from work performed by an unlicensed contractor. And if the work is defective, your recourse is far weaker, because licensing boards can discipline licensees and often administer recovery funds, none of which is available against someone who was never licensed. The saving on the quote is almost always smaller than the exposure.

Is a business license the same as a contractor license?

No, and contractors sometimes blur this deliberately. A business license is a local registration allowing a company to operate and collect tax. It says nothing about trade competence, and in most places obtaining one requires only a form and a fee. A contractor license is a trade credential, typically requiring proven experience, examinations, and sometimes a bond or proof of insurance. If someone answers your licensing question by showing a business license, they have not answered it. Ask again, specifically, for the contractor license number issued by the state or local licensing board.

Skip the Legwork

Verification is worth doing, and it is still a chore. Every contractor on Win My Work is verified as licensed and insured before they can quote on your project, so the checks above are done before you ever speak to anyone.

Describe your project once and get free quotes from verified local pros, then use the steps above as a final confirmation on whoever you shortlist.