You look up a plumbing license through the official search tool of whoever issued it — a state licensing board, or a city or county office where licensing is local.
There is no single national lookup: the issuer keeps the record.
Below is the state-by-state list of verified official portals, the cities that keep their own records, and how to read what a search tells you.
How to check a plumbing license in any state
Every plumbing license has one issuer, and the issuer keeps the authoritative record.
In the seven states with no state plumber license, that issuer is a city or county office, or an industry board; everywhere else, it is the state board or agency named on the license.
So checking a license — yours or someone else's — is a two-part task: identify the issuer, then use that body's own lookup.
Find the issuer
The license itself, or the paperwork from when it was issued, names the board or office that keeps the record. For a state license, that is the plumbing board or licensing agency; where licensing is local, it is the city or county licensing or building office.Open that body's official lookup
Use the issuer's own site — the verified portals in the table below. Third-party directories republish board data; when a result matters, the issuer's lookup is the record that counts.Read the record before you rely on it
Match the person, the trade and the license class to what you expect, and note the status and expiration the record shows. If anything looks wrong or missing, contact the issuer directly — the board or city that keeps the record can explain it.
As of September 29, 2026, our research verified an official online lookup in these states.
Each row names the state's tool and what it covers for plumbing — a few states run separate searches for individual plumbers and for plumbing contractors.
| State | Official lookup | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | alpgfb.igovsolution.net — the state plumbing and gas board (PGFB) | Individual and business lookups |
| Alaska | professionallicense.alaska.gov — the state MY LICENSE portal | Contractor registrations and professional licenses; lookup and renewal |
| Arkansas | adhplumbinghvacrlookup.arkansas.gov — Department of Health public plumbing search | Plumber licenses |
| Connecticut | elicense.ct.gov — state eLicense | Trade licenses |
| Florida | myfloridalicense.com — DBPR "Verify a Licensee" | State-licensed contractors; individual plumber licenses are local |
| Georgia | goals.sos.ga.gov — Secretary of State licensee search | State licenses |
| Idaho | DOPL's eDOPL online services — "Search for a License" | HVAC and plumbing licenses |
| Louisiana | public.spbla.com — SPBLA public roster; contractor licenses via the LSLBC public search | Licensed plumbers; contractor licenses, including a search by qualifying party |
| Montana | ebizws.mt.gov — DLI Licensee Lookup System | Montana licensees |
| Nebraska | dol.nebraska.gov/conreg/Search — Department of Labor contractor search | Registered contractors; plumber licenses are issued by cities and villages |
| New Hampshire | forms.nh.gov/licenseverification | Mechanical licenses |
| New Jersey | newjersey.mylicense.com/verification — Division of Consumer Affairs | HVACR and plumbing licenses |
| New Mexico | rld.nm.gov — "Verify a License" (CID) | State licenses |
| New York | NYC Department of Buildings "Check License Status" (nyc.gov/buildings); Westchester County Trade Licenses Search | City and county plumber licenses |
| North Carolina | public.nclicensing.org/Public/Search — state licensing board | Plumbing, heating and fire sprinkler licenses |
| North Dakota | ndplumbingboard.gov — State Plumbing Board (Licensing, then License Lookup) | Plumbing licenses |
| Ohio | elicense4.com.ohio.gov — OCILB eLicense Center | Contractor licenses — Ohio licenses plumbing contractors, not individual plumbers |
| Oregon | oregon.gov/bcd/licensing — BCD license holder search | State license holders |
| Texas | tsbpe.texas.gov/find-a-licenseregistration — TSBPE "Find a License / Registration" | Plumber licenses |
| Vermont | data.vermont.gov — DFS Licensing MasterList | Trade license and certification holders |
| Washington | L&I "Verify a Contractor, Tradesperson, or Business" tool | Contractor registrations and plumber certificates |
| West Virginia | Division of Labor licensing pages | Certified HVAC technicians and certified plumbers |
A second group of states — Arizona, California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee — has a lookup tool linked from an official page that our research logged but could not open and confirm.
We don't publish links we haven't verified.
For these states, start from the state licensing agency's own website and use the license search it offers; if you can't find it, the agency's contact page will point you to it.
A lookup tells you where a license stands.
What each license level legally does — apprentice, journeyman, master, contractor — is the job of our plumbing license requirements guide.
Portals move — confirm with the issuer
City and county portals: where licensing is local
Kansas, Missouri and Wyoming have no statewide plumbing license lookup, because they have no state plumber license — cities and counties do the licensing.
Kansas licenses journeyman and master plumbers and plumbing contractors locally, under uniform statewide standards in K.S.A.
12-1508 to 12-1511.
Missouri's Division of Professional Registration lists no plumbing, mechanical or HVAC board, so licensing is city and county work.
Wyoming's state licensing agency licenses electricians but runs no plumbing or HVAC license program.
In these states, the verification step is the city: the research names Kansas City, St. Louis County and Casper as the local offices to check.
The other four states in that seven do not read the same way: Florida and Nebraska have statewide contractor registries you can search, New York's verified lookups are the city and county tools in the table above, and Nevada's lookup is in the unconfirmed group.
For a few of the states in the table, the verified record is city or county government, not a statewide portal.
New York is the clearest case: it has no statewide plumber license, and its verified lookups are the local ones — New York City's Department of Buildings "Check License Status" and Westchester County's Trade Licenses Search.
In Nebraska, state law requires anyone installing or repairing sanitary plumbing to be a master plumber licensed by the city or village nearest the job site, with employees licensed as journeymen by that same city or village — so the city's records, not a state portal, are the record that matters; the state's searchable list covers registered contractors.
Florida licenses plumbing contractors at the state level — the CILB plumbing contractor licence is certified (statewide) or registered (local) — verified through DBPR's "Verify a Licensee"; individual plumber licensing is local.
Illinois is the reverse case: the state licenses plumbers — its two levels are the licensed apprentice plumber and the licensed plumber — but our research did not confirm an online lookup for those licenses, so start from the issuing agency.
Ohio sits at the other extreme: the state licenses plumbing contractors — the businesses — only, with no individual plumber license, so the OCILB lookup is the record that matters for the trade.
Pennsylvania appears to run on local licensing as well, but the research flags that as unconfirmed.
Checking your own plumbing license status
The same searches work on you.
Run your own name through the issuer's lookup before an interview, a bid or a renewal date, so you know exactly what a customer, a general contractor or a hiring manager will see.
If the record shows anything you can't explain — a status, an expiration, a license class you've moved past — resolve it with the issuer before someone else finds it.
Where your state wires renewal into the same portal, the lookup doubles as your renewal desk.
Alaska's MY LICENSE portal handles lookups and renewals for contractor registrations and professional licenses.
Oregon licenses can be renewed online within 45 days of expiration, and a license that has been expired more than one year must be retested.
Texas's board links its "Find a License / Registration" search directly from its own site.
If your record is missing or wrong, contact the issuer — the state board, or the city or county office that issued the license.
Keep your license number and your renewal confirmations where you can find them; the lookup is public, but the fastest fix for a bad record runs through the issuer's own office.
What employers check when they verify your license
An employer verifying a plumbing license runs the same public searches you just read.
They confirm the license is active, that it belongs to the person on the application, and that its class matches the work — and where the state licenses contractors rather than individuals, the check runs through the contractor registry instead: Ohio's OCILB lookup, Louisiana's LSLBC search with its search by qualifying party, Florida's DBPR "Verify a Licensee".
A gap between what a resume says and what the issuer's record shows is easy to spot, because the record is public.
From your side, that public record is your reputation with the board's name on it.
Keep it current: renew on time, keep your contact details with the issuer up to date, and check your own listing the way an employer would.
The full employer-side process — what to collect from an applicant, contractor registrations, red flags — is its own guide, which we're building for the hiring section of this site.
With a record that's clean and current, the next step is the job itself: browse plumber jobs on our board.
Career information, not legal advice. License records are kept by the board or city that issued them; confirm what any lookup shows with the issuer before you rely on it.