California contractor checks, before you sign and pay a deposit

Three questions decide whether a California home-improvement contract is lawful before you sign it: does the contractor’s license classification cover this job, how much may they legally ask up front, and does the work need a licensed contractor at all. All three are free here, worked out for your own job and contract price, each answer citing the section of the Business and Professions Code it comes from.

Free first

One free tool, and nothing on sale in this domain

California contractor checks

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Open the free contractor checks

Bids are on the table and a deposit is about to be paid.

For: Homeowners choosing among California bids
Deadline: Contract signing
Answers: Whether the license classification covers the job (B&P Code §7057), the legal maximum down payment (§7159.5), and whether the job needs a licensed contractor at all (§7048)
License status: CSLB’s own free Instant License Check — the live record, more current than any copy

Runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere. Every rule links the official text on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, read 15 Sep 2026.

Also free here

Official lookups, explained

Official government lookupsFree$0
Illinois daycare licensing inspections, USDA animal welfare inspection reports, public school district records and Illinois unclaimed property: who runs each official lookup, what it covers and what it does not.

Research: How many California contractors say they have no employees — workers’ compensation exemptions among licences in good standing, trade by trade, and the 2028 change in the law.

We used to sell a contractor license report. We stopped. Everything in it was the Contractors State License Board’s own record, and CSLB publishes that free and keeps it more current than any copy we could download. The per-job rules are now free instead. Read why we stopped selling it.

A college-recruiting report we decided not to build. No official source records where high-school athletes go on to play, and building one would have meant publishing named young people. We stopped rather than sell a report we could not source.

Free guides

Some checks are already free

Daycare inspections and USDA breeder records are published free by the agencies themselves, so we don’t sell reports on them. Our guides explain those official lookups instead.

Open the official government lookups

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