How new licenses are counted

The official licensing records that states, counties and cities in the United States publish for contractors, read daily. We read only records published openly, with no login, and we do not buy or merge lists from anywhere else.

From each record we keep what it gives: the business and owner names, the license number and type, the address and zip code, phone and email where they are published, and the issue and expiration dates where it has them. A license counts toward the state that issued it, wherever the business says it is. It appears on a county or city page only when its address is in that state.

1. By original issue date, where we can. If the record publishes an issue date that does not reset when the license renews, the license is new on that date.
2. By daily comparison, where we cannot. If the record has no such date, the license is new on the first day it appeared when we compared one day’s record with the last. These comparisons started on October 31, 2026, so those states show nothing new before then. Their count starts at zero and grows from that day; a zero in the table below can mean exactly that, and not that nobody was licensed.

Renewals are not counted under either rule, in any figure on this site.

• Licenses held by workers rather than businesses: journeymen, apprentices, registered unlicensed workers and boiler engineers. They are people with jobs, not new businesses.
• In Washington, anyone who is not a business entity. We keep business entities only, because of the state’s limit on commercial use of lists of individuals (RCW 42.56.070(8)). Sole proprietors there are not listed.

Phone and email come only from the licensing records. Many states publish neither, and we do not look them up, buy them or guess them. Of the 5,252 licenses new in the last 30 days, 3,351 have a phone and 286 have an email.

A public page shows the latest 15 licenses with these details partly hidden: a phone keeps its area code and last two digits, and an email its first letters. Street addresses are not shown. A license held in a person’s own name has that name masked. The withheld characters are removed on the server, so they are not in the page. The sample record shows both views.

This is not legal advice, and a phone number in a licensing record is not cleared for calling. We do not check numbers against Do Not Call lists, and a number on a license can be someone’s personal cell. Before you call, text or email anyone, you are responsible for the TCPA, Do Not Call rules, CAN-SPAM and any state rule on using lists of licensees. See the terms.

Every state has a page, and so does any county, city or trade with enough on record. Only those with enough going on are offered to search engines: a page enters search at 8 new licenses in 90 days, and leaves only below 5. The gap is deliberate. On a single threshold a quiet county would drop in and out of the sitemap every few days.

The verdict is recomputed daily and stored, so a page and the sitemap read the same answer.

• Whether a contractor is any good. A license appearing here is not a recommendation.
• Today’s status for certain. We show the record as we last read it. A record can lag real life by days, and the issuing office is authoritative.
• Every contractor in a state. Places that do not license a trade, or whose records we do not read, are not here. Texas and Illinois do not license general contractors at state level, for example.
• Accuracy beyond the record. Names, addresses, phones and types are as published, with their mistakes. If one is wrong, tell us.