The HVAC license exam is the test a state board — or a city, where licensing is local — requires for an HVAC license, and that body decides everything on it.
It is usually two tests, not one: a trade exam on your state's mechanical codes, plus a separate business-and-law exam for contractor licenses.
Most are open book, built on the code editions your state has adopted, and delivered by a testing vendor such as PSI, Prov or Pearson VUE.
Who administers the HVAC license exam?
There is no national administrator.
Each licensing board picks who delivers its exams and how candidates book them, so which vendor you get is state-specific and has to come from your own state's rules.
The states we researched split across four kinds of provider.
- PSI — the most common vendor in our research, delivering state HVAC and/or plumbing licensing exams in Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana (LSLBC), Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada (NSCB), New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas (TDLR ACR) and Virginia, plus plumbing exams in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington. Booking runs through the board first: Texas ACR applicants apply to TDLR, then receive an eligibility email from PSI, and Maryland sends all of its HVACR license exams to PSI, with test centres in Baltimore, College Park, Hagerstown, Lanham and Salisbury.
- Prov — delivers HVAC and/or plumbing exams in Arkansas (HVACR), Delaware, Tennessee (contractor exams from July 1, 2026), Utah and West Virginia, plus Indiana's and New Hampshire's plumbing exams; Vermont delivers its ICC exams through Prov. Utah's Prov exams run in person at ProV testing centres or online through ExamRoom AI.
- Other vendors — Pearson VUE runs the Florida CILB exams and Texas TSBPE's written exams; Prometric runs Hawaii's exams, Indianapolis's HVAC exam and one of Kansas's designated exams; ICC exams serve Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Denver, Casper/Cheyenne and New Orleans; IAPMO tests Montana's plumbers; NITC handles Nevada's NBOPE plumber cards.
- The board itself — Minnesota's DLI, New York City's DOB, Omaha's plumbing board and Massachusetts's OPSI run their own exams. Massachusetts's OPSI schedules its refrigeration exams directly and emails candidates a Notice to Appear.
Who gives the exam can matter beyond scheduling.
Kansas designates ICC, IAPMO or Prometric exams as the standard HVAC competency exams for its local jurisdictions, which must set a 75% passing score and may not add questions of their own — and a Kansas license built on a designated exam is valid in every other Kansas county or city that licenses HVAC, while a license based on a city's own exam is valid only in that city unless a reciprocal agreement says otherwise.
Which test you sit can decide where the license works.
Vendors change — confirm yours before you book
Trade exam vs business and law exam: which do you take?
The license exam is usually two exams with different jobs.
The trade (or technical) exam tests the codes and installation knowledge for the work itself; the business-and-law exam tests the rules of running a contracting business, and it sits on contractor licenses.
Which rungs carry which exam follows from the license ladder itself — our guide to HVAC license requirements covers which states license workers, masters or contractors at all.
North Carolina makes the split legible: its individual Technician license requires passing the technical exam only — a technician has not taken the business & law exam, and the license is not a contracting license.
Contractor candidates there sit both, a 4-hour technical exam plus a 1.5-hour Business and Law exam, with the business exam waived only for applicants already holding an active contractor license who passed the board's business exam after August 2003.
The two halves also trade off in both directions: a North Carolina technician who passed the technical exam can upgrade to a contractor license in the same category by passing only the business portion, and a contractor candidate who passes technical but fails business can request the technician license.
Each board slices the split its own way.
Hawaii's contractor exam is one sitting in two parts — Part I business and law, Part II trade knowledge — each passed at 75%.
Ohio passes both parts at 70% and lets a passed business-and-law part count toward another trade license for three years.
Utah requires the Utah Contractor Business and Law exam plus the Utah HVAC written exam, at 70% or better.
Nevada's qualifier takes a Business and Law (CMS) exam and the trade exam for the classification, both through PSI.
Arizona splits the law side into an online, open-book Statutes and Rules course and exam through Gmetrix, taken alongside the PSI trade exam.
Louisiana replaces the sitting entirely: its Business and Law requirement is a one-hour online course ending in an exam, with a $150 course fee (as of the form revised 01/30/2026).
What is on the business exam?
New Mexico's is a worked example: 50 questions, 130 minutes, open book, 75% to pass, built on the NASCLA Contractors Guide to Business, Law and Project Management, 14th edition.
The split also shapes moving between states — most HVAC and plumbing reciprocity is a trade-exam waiver only: Tennessee, Mississippi, California and North Carolina waive the trade exam for licensees from agreed states but still require their own business-and-law exam or application.
The trade exam is the part states will trust from elsewhere; the business exam is not.
Which code books are allowed in the exam room?
Your board's exam bulletin names the references, and they differ more than most candidates expect.
Fargo, North Dakota's HVAC exams are open book, allow four hours, and from January 1, 2026 are based solely on the 2024 International Mechanical Code and the 2024 International Fuel Gas Code.
New Mexico's JR journeyman refrigeration exam is open book — 50 questions in 120 minutes, 75% to pass — with references including the 2021 Uniform Mechanical Code and the New Mexico Mechanical Code, per PSI's bulletin.
Alabama's HACR exam is open book and built on references including the 2021 International Residential Code, ACCA Manual D and Manual J, and the NASCLA Contractors Guide to Business, Law and Project Management, 12th through 14th editions.
Closed-book portions are real, too.
Sioux Falls's Master Mechanic exam mixes closed- and open-book portions, drawing on the International Mechanical Code, the International Fuel Gas Code, SMACNA HVAC standards and ACCA manuals, and Nevada's trade exams are closed book except for certain code references listed in the content outline.
Editions lag differently in every jurisdiction: Washington, D.C.'s refrigeration/AC exams list the 2012 International Mechanical Code and Modern Refrigeration and Air Conditioning (2004) among their references — your state tests the edition it has adopted, not the newest printing.
The room rules are strict about the books themselves.
North Carolina requires candidates to bring their own approved reference books — hard-bound, spiral- or ring-bound originals, with highlighting and permanently attached commercial tabs only — and heating and cooling candidates bring their own ductolator.
Idaho lets the Contractors' Business and Law Reference Manual come in as a binder, with pre-highlighting allowed but no writing during the exam.
What you may write or insert in your books is exactly the kind of detail the bulletin settles, so read it before you tab anything.
How do you prepare for the HVAC license exam?
Start from your board's candidate bulletin, because it is the syllabus: it names the vendor, the exact references and editions, the pass score, the time limit and what you may carry in.
Prep classes and a study guide for the HVAC license exam can help, but any course built on a different state's code list is rehearsing the wrong material — the reference list in your own bulletin is the one that counts.
Open-book does not mean easy.
ICC's own bulletin tells candidates they will not have time to look up every answer in an open-book exam and must know their references well; there is no guessing penalty, so it pays to answer every question.
That is the trap a practice test at home will not reproduce: practice the lookup itself, at pace — Fargo gives four hours per exam, New Mexico's JR gives 120 minutes for 50 questions — with the books tabbed the way you will actually bring them, within the tabbing and highlighting rules your bulletin allows.
If you are taking a contractor's test, split your study the way the exam does: the code side from your bulletin's mechanical references, and the business side from the named reference — in New Mexico's case, the NASCLA Contractors Guide, 14th edition.
Oklahoma's journeyman exams are a reminder that the trade side follows your state's adopted codes, which the board — not the vendor — chooses.
What happens if you fail? How retakes work
There is no national retake rule; the wait, the fee and the paperwork are the board's.
The verified waits range widely.
Maryland allows a retake after 30 days.
Oklahoma's mechanical licenses wait 30 days after the first failure and 90 days after later failures, and Fargo's exams use a 30-day wait.
New Jersey makes a candidate who fails the Master HVACR exam wait six months before retaking it.
Indianapolis's heating and cooling exam passes at 70% and imposes a one-year wait after a second failure, per its 2025 board policies.
Structure matters as much as the wait.
North Carolina charges a failed exam a 90-day wait, a Re-Examination Application and a new fee — but a failed portion can be retaken within six months without retaking the portion you passed, and the technician license gives a candidate who keeps failing business a fallback credential.
Utah allows three attempts 30 days apart, then 180 days between further retakes.
Texas TDLR lets failed contractor exams be retaken until the application expires one year after filing, while Massachusetts's OPSI requires failing candidates to reapply.
Two practical consequences follow from those rules.
Retake fees are real money on top of the first attempt, so the cheapest attempt is the first one, prepared against the bulletin.
And where the exam splits into portions, you are usually defending the failed part only — check whether your board scores by portion before you rebook anything.
Once the license is in hand, the work it qualifies you for is on our HVAC technician jobs board.
This page is career information, not legal or licensing advice. Licensing exams are set by state boards and, where licensing is local, by city and county offices — confirm the current vendor, references, fees and retake rules with the authority for where you work before you book.