Data

Licensed trade contractors by state board

Last updated October 17, 2026

Next update November 2026

Many state and city boards publish files of the contractors they license or register. This table counts seven of them. We download those files, match the licences to companies and count them. Together they account for 255,725 company and board pairs in our database, from roofers to electricians. This table shows how many companies in our database carry a record from each board’s file, by trade, and how the counting works.

Board	Roofing	HVAC	Plumbing	Electrical	Solar	General	Other	Total
California (CSLB)	5,551	9,668	17,405	25,205	435	–	–	58,264
Florida (DBPR)	9,210	11,724	7,222	12,049	280	–	–	40,485
Iowa (contractor registration)	887	38	1,452	1,816	–	13,826	9	18,028
New York City (Buildings)	2	338	3,380	5,514	–	34,230	12	43,476
Texas (TDLR)	3	18,591	5	13,904	1	–	–	32,504
Texas (Plumbing Examiners)	–	306	8,716	101	–	–	–	9,123
Virginia (DPOR)	1,599	3,130	4,348	5,204	–	39,564	–	53,845

A dash means none in this file as we collect it. Each cell counts companies, not licences, and each row adds up to its total.

Totals by trade

Across the seven files, the trade columns add up like this.

Trade	Companies
General	87,620
Electrical	63,793
HVAC	43,795
Plumbing	42,528
Roofing	17,252
Solar	716
Other	21
All seven files	255,725

The 255,725 counts company and board pairs, not distinct companies. A Texas firm on both Texas lists appears in both rows. So does any company that turns up in two files.

How to read it

The columns depend on what each board licenses and what we collect from it. Read a dash as “not in this file as we collect it”, not as “no such companies in this state”.

California and Florida have no general count because we collect only their trade classes, not their building contractors. Virginia, New York City and Iowa do have one. There, a licence or registration outside the named trades lands in general, including Virginia’s gas-fitting and refrigeration classes.

Texas splits its trades across two boards. TDLR licenses the A/C and electrical contractors. The Board of Plumbing Examiners licenses the plumbers. We collect no roofing class from either Texas board, so neither Texas row has a real roofing count.

Iowa files plumbing, heating and A/C under one registration activity. We count that activity as plumbing, so Iowa HVAC companies registered under it sit in the plumbing column. The 38 in Iowa’s HVAC cell are explained in the methodology.

Electrical is the largest of the named trades here, at 63,793 companies. California alone adds 25,205 of them. HVAC is driven by Texas and Florida, at 18,591 and 11,724.

What a licence count says about records

A licence or registration on a state file means a company contracts that work in the state. Nobody gets a licence for the paperwork. The paperwork piles up anyway.

That paperwork is part of the operating record a buyer licenses to train AI models. Our own examples, not a buyer’s list: a roofer’s estimates, supplements and change orders. An HVAC company’s service histories and maintenance agreements. A plumber’s job notes and callbacks. An electrician’s estimates and inspection records. Say a plumbing company on the Texas list has 15 years of service tickets. Each ticket shows how a problem was diagnosed and fixed, which is the part with value.

The records are de-identified before Polyshares or any lab sees them. Polyshares says “identifying fields, customer names, emails, and account numbers are stripped by a specialist PII partner” before it sees the record. Customer names and payments are never what’s wanted. What’s wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed. Our explainer on what data buyers want from a trade business goes file by file.

Polyshares publishes a selection of its deals. Its case studies list a roofing company at $450,000, a general contractor at $300,000 and a solar company at $275,000. Each is a “perpetual exclusive license to the operational record”, “anonymized before delivery.” Those are three of the columns in the table above. A past deal doesn’t predict an offer; Polyshares prices each record after reading it.

Polyshares says “the company pays nothing and keeps its data.” For your own trade, the lane pages go deeper: roofing companies, HVAC companies and plumbing companies. How it’s safe covers what leaves your systems and when. The estimate gives you a range. Worth two minutes to see yours?

What is never included

On this page: no company names, no owner names, no addresses, no phone numbers, no emails. The boards publish those; we publish counts.

Polyshares says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” Our advice: keep payment details, card numbers and anything a client owns out of any export.

Methodology

What is counted. Each number is the count of distinct companies in our database that carry at least one record from that board’s file. We read the database on 17 October 2026. A company with several licences from one board counts once in that board’s row.

One trade per company. Our pipeline gives each company one trade, even if it holds several licences. When a company holds more than one target class on a single California licence, the order is roofing, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, solar. In Virginia it is plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing. In Virginia, New York City and Iowa, trade licences are loaded before building licences, so a firm holding both keeps its trade.

Cells from another board. A company’s trade is set by the first record that created it in our database. A later licence from another file matches the same company and never changes its trade. That is why some cells sit outside what a board licenses. The Texas plumbers’ list has 306 HVAC and 101 electrical companies. Iowa has 38 HVAC companies. The TDLR file has 5 plumbing, 3 roofing and 1 solar company. New York City has 2 roofing companies. We keep them in their trade columns. The 21 in “other” are 9 moving companies in the Iowa file and 12 auto repair shops in the New York City file, whose trade came from our motor-carrier and repair-shop sources.

De-duplication. Licences are matched to companies on the business name, state and city, or on the web domain and street address where we hold both. Unrelated businesses sharing a name in different cities stay separate.

The seven files. Each file comes from the board’s own site or open-data portal. Dates are UTC.

California, Contractors State License Board. The master licence list from the CSLB data portal, downloaded 16 to 17 October 2026. Classes C-39 (roofing), C-36 (plumbing), C-20 (HVAC), C-10 (electrical) and C-46 (solar). Only licences with a clear status and an expiry date not yet passed are kept.
Florida, Department of Business and Professional Regulation. The licensee extracts, downloaded 16 October 2026. From the Construction Industry Licensing Board: certified and registered roofing, plumbing, air conditioning and mechanical (both counted as HVAC), and certified solar. From the Electrical Contractors’ Licensing Board: certified and registered electrical. A licence naming only the qualifying individual, with no business name, is dropped. Licences are not filtered on status, so some may be inactive.
Iowa, contractor registration. The Iowa Data Hub’s Active Iowa Construction Contractor Registrations, downloaded 17 October 2026. It’s a registration, not a trade licence. The state’s description says contractors “must register and renew annually if earning at least $2,000.00 a year from construction.” The file holds active registrations only. The registration’s primary activity sets the trade: roofing contractors, plumbing/heating and A/C contractors (counted as plumbing), and electrical and wiring installation. Every other activity is general.
New York City, Department of Buildings. The DOB License Info dataset on NYC Open Data, downloaded 16 October 2026. General contractors (general), master plumbers and fire suppression contractors (plumbing), electrical firms (electrical) and oil burner installers (HVAC). The dataset lists licences of every status, expired and inactive included.
Texas, Department of Licensing and Regulation. The TDLR All Licenses dataset on the Texas Open Data Portal, downloaded 16 October 2026. A/C contractors (HVAC) and electrical contractors (electrical). A licence publishing only the owner’s name, with no business name, is dropped. Licences are not filtered on status.
Texas, State Board of Plumbing Examiners. The Responsible Master Plumber list, downloaded 16 October 2026. The board describes these as “individuals who are licensed to offer and contract plumbing work to the general public,” listed with “the last known company name.” A plumber with no company on file is dropped. Current and expired licences are both kept.
Virginia, Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. The Board for Contractors’ Class A, B and C contractor lists and the legacy Class A list, downloaded 16 October 2026. The trade comes from the licence’s specialty codes: plumbing, HVAC, electrical or roofing; a licence with none of the four is general. The individual tradesmen list is not used. Expired licences on the lists are not removed.

In Iowa, New York City and Virginia, a licence with no business name is counted under the licensee’s own name, as the board lists it.

Refresh. The table is rebuilt monthly from fresh downloads. The next update is due 17 November 2026.

Alex, TrustPast

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