Coverage / California

CA · contractor licenses

Verify a California contractor license

82,248 licenses from the official CA source, normalized to one schema — check status, expiry and classification in one call. partial coverage.

82,248
licenses covered
77,963
currently active
2026-06-18
data as of
Los Angeles
top city

Source: CA CSLB — Master List of California Licensed Contractors (License Master). Every record carries this source_url and the as_of date above.

Coverage note: PARTIAL ingest: 82,248 records — the first slice of the CSLB Master file in file order (lowest license numbers = oldest-issued cohort). The full Master file is ~90 MB and the source streams it with no HTTP Range/resume and no gzip, so it exceeds the Engine's bounded ingest window. Re-running the SAME script in an unbounded environment completes the full ingest. Coverage is stamped honestly here and never represented as complete (integrity red line).

Verify a license

Pre-scoped to California (CA). Type a business or principal name.

Searches the live dataset by business or principal name (straight from /v1/search — nothing here is mocked). A non-match returns an honest empty result.

License status

How the 82,248 covered CA records break down by normalized status.

StatusRecordsShare
active77,96394.8%
suspended4,2855.2%

Top classifications

The most common license types / trade classifications in coverage.

ClassificationRecords
General Building25,271
Electrical6,617
Painting & Decorating4,448
Plumbing4,326
Landscaping3,104
HVAC (Warm-Air Heating, Ventilating & A/C)3,071
General Engineering1,801
Flooring & Floor Covering1,767
Ceramic & Mosaic Tile1,496
Roofing1,409
C-71,278
C-61,118

Where California contractors are based

Top cities by number of covered licenses.

CityLicenses
Los Angeles2,668
San Diego2,193
San Jose1,943
Sacramento1,566
San Francisco1,198
Riverside1,062
Bakersfield1,041
Fresno963
Anaheim819
Santa Rosa714
Escondido657
Santa Ana614
Corona564
Irvine545
Oakland545

How to verify a California contractor

By license number (the exact check) 
curl "https://license-verify.pages.dev/v1/lookup?state=CA&license=<number>"

Returns the matching record with status, expiry and classification, or an honest found:false.

By company name 
curl "https://license-verify.pages.dev/v1/search?q=<name>&state=CA&status=active"
For an AI agent (MCP)

Call lookup_license / search_licenses at /v1/mcp with state="CA" — no glue code.