We read Florida's public license and permit records every day, so a homeowner can check a contractor before hiring one, and a contractor can see where the work is going before the competition does.
Type in a name or a license number and you get the contractor's Florida license straight from DBPR records: the license type, the status, when it expires, and any discipline on file. Below that sits their permit history, pulled from the county and city building departments that issued the permits.
That second part is the one people skip, and it's the one that tells you the most. A license says the state let someone work. The permit record says what they actually built, where, and when. A roofer with a clean license and no roofing permits in five years is telling you something.
It's free. No account, no email, no "unlock the full report."
The status you want to see is Current, Active. A few others you'll run into:
Status is only half of it. Make sure the license type fits the job, too. A general contractor license and a roofing license are not the same thing, and Florida cares which one pulled your permit.
Start with the license block, then scroll to the permits. Look at the dates (are they still working?), the kinds of work (do they do what they're bidding on you?) and the places (have they worked in your city?). If the permit list is empty, read the note about coverage before you draw a conclusion. Some building departments don't publish the contractor's name at all.
Why bother? Because in Florida:
Every permit a homeowner looks at on your profile is also a data point about your market. Who's pulling roofing permits in your county. Which builders keep hiring the same electrician. Which houses in your ZIP had their last water heater permit twelve years ago. That's what the contractor side of this site is.
It comes in two plans, and they split cleanly: one is for reading the market, the other is for acting on it.
Market Intel is the reading. Permit search across the counties we cover. Statistics on permit volume in your area, month by month. The Weekly Edition, which tells you on Monday where work picked up and where it went quiet. Competition, so you can see who's taking the volume and where you rank. Crew, which shows who builds with whom: the general contractors in your area, the subs they've used in your trade, and how often. And Your Book, which flags the jobs you already did when the system you installed comes due again.
Nothing in Market Intel reaches out to anybody. It's the part you read before you decide where to spend the week.
Growth is the same data with the actions switched on. Project Leads shows you master permits a general contractor has already pulled where your trade has no permit on record yet, and Ask to bid sends that GC a note with your license and your permit record attached. Alerts tell you the day a new one posts in your counties. Territory gives you one ZIP for your trade, and while you hold it nobody else here gets the residential addresses in it: the houses whose last permit for your system is past its useful life. The CRM comes with both plans; Growth adds the board view for working a pipeline you can actually see.
Commercial contractors don't farm a ZIP, so Growth Commercial sells a county seat instead, limited to 5 bidders per trade per county. And Estimates & Invoices is an add-on on top of Growth: build the estimate from the permit or the job, send it for signature, turn it into an invoice.
Plans, what's in each one, and what they cost are all on the contractor plans page. If you'd like the long version of why we think a permit on record beats a shared lead, we wrote that up.
Your license is probably already here, because it came in with the DBPR records. Claiming it is free. Put in your license number and an email address, finish a couple of short verification steps, and we review the claim. That usually takes about a business day, and then we email you a login. A claimed profile lets you add your logo, service areas and description, reply to reviews, and turn on License Watch, which shows you the permits filed under your license number so you can spot somebody using it who isn't you.
Claim your profileLicenses. Straight from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), synced daily. That's 138,000+ Florida license holders, active and inactive.
Permits. From the building departments themselves. We collect public permit records from Florida county and city portals, and where the record names the contractor we match it back to a state license. We hold more than 30 million permit records from 289 Florida building departments.
Coverage varies by jurisdiction, and we'd rather tell you that than paper over it. Some counties publish years of history with the contractor on every permit. Some publish only recent permits. Some leave the contractor's name off entirely, so the permit shows on the city's page but can't be tied to anybody's license. A handful of city feeds run weeks or months behind their own counter.
So one rule matters more than any other on this site: a missing permit isn't proof that nothing was done. It can mean the city doesn't publish that kind of record, or hasn't yet. If a permit matters to a decision, call the building department.
Every source we use is listed on Data Sources, and the path from raw government record to a contractor profile is on How It Works.
FloridaContractorCheck is run by Contract Advantage LLC, a Florida company.
We built it because the two things you need to judge a contractor live in different places. The state will tell you a license exists. The permit history, which is what the contractor actually builds, is spread across hundreds of county and city portals that don't talk to each other, and most people never look. We put the two side by side.
The homeowner side is free. The contractor plans pay for it. Questions, corrections or a record you think is wrong: contact us.
FloridaContractorCheck.com is an independent service and is not affiliated with the State of Florida or the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR). We are not a licensing authority. We work to keep the data current, but records can lag or contain errors, so for legal or financial decisions always verify license status directly with DBPR and permit details with the building department that issued them.
A free, independent tool for checking a Florida contractor's license and permit history. License data comes from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), and permit records come from county and city building department portals. Homeowners, businesses and property managers use it to confirm a contractor is licensed, in good standing, and actually pulling permits for the work they do. Contractors use the same records to see their market.
No. FloridaContractorCheck.com is an independent service and is not affiliated with the State of Florida or the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. We take our license data from DBPR's public records and keep it current, but for any decision that matters, check license status directly on the official DBPR site at myfloridalicense.com.
License records sync with DBPR daily, so status, expiration dates and discipline reflect the latest official data. Permit records come from county and city portals, and how fresh they are depends on the jurisdiction: some publish within a day, others batch weekly, and a few run weeks or months behind. DBPR is the authority on license status and the issuing building department is the authority on permit details. For legal or financial decisions, check with them directly.
Market Intel is for reading your market: permit search, statistics, the Weekly Edition, competition, Crew and Your Book. Nothing in it contacts anyone. Growth includes all of that and adds the actions: Project Leads, Ask to bid, alerts when a new project posts in your counties, and an exclusive residential ZIP for your trade. Prices for both are on the contractor plans page.
From master permits general contractors have already pulled. When a GC files for a new house or a commercial build, every trade on that job still has to get done, and on the day the permit posts most of them have no permit of their own on record. Project Leads shows you the ones in your counties where your trade is still open. Nobody filled in a form and nobody sold your name. It's the public permit record, read early.
Your license is, because DBPR publishes it. So are the permits filed under it, because building departments publish those. What you add when you claim your profile (logo, description, service areas) shows on your public profile. What you do inside the portal doesn't: your pipeline, your estimates, your notes and your customer list stay in your account.
Find your license on the claim form, give us an email address and finish the short verification steps. We review each claim, usually within about a business day, and email you a login when it's approved. Claiming is free.
No. We don't reach out to homeowners on our own. Anything that gets to a homeowner through the portal is something you sent or switched on yourself: an estimate for signature, a review request, a mailing you ordered.
As fast as the building department publishes it. Some portals post permits within a day of filing, others batch them weekly, and a few lag by weeks or months. Status changes (issued, finaled, expired) come through the same way, when the jurisdiction records them. That's why the portal calls every count a floor: at least this many on record, in the places we cover.
