How to Check Whether a Contractor Is Licensed in North Carolina

Look up an NC general contractor license

1. Work out which license the job needs

North Carolina licenses construction trades through separate boards, and a contractor can be licensed by one and not another.

General contractor (building, remodeling, additions, new homes): the NC Licensing Board for General Contractors (NCLBGC). A license is required for any project with a total cost of $40,000 or more (G.S. 87-1). Below that, no general contractor license is required, though the trade licenses below still are.
Electrical: the State Board of Examiners of Electrical Contractors. Required at any dollar amount.
Plumbing, heating, air conditioning, fire sprinkler: the State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating & Fire Sprinkler Contractors. Required at any dollar amount.
Home inspector: the NC Home Inspector Licensure Board (Department of Insurance). Look up a home inspector.
Landscape and irrigation contractors have their own boards; roofing, painting, flooring and similar work has no state license of its own and falls under the general contractor rule when the job reaches $40,000.

2. Get the legal name or the license number

A business often trades under a brand that is not the name on the license. Ask for the license number, or read it off the contract or the proposal; licensed contractors are used to the question. If you only have the brand, the lookup also searches trade names ("trading as") on the roster.

3. Search the roster

Type the company, the trade name or the number into the NC contractor license lookup. It searches every active NCLBGC license, more than 33,000 of them, and shows the same facts the Board publishes, plus any disciplinary action the Board has reported. For electrical and plumbing licenses, use each board's own lookup linked above until those rosters are on this site.

4. Read the result

Status and expiration. Every NC general contractor license expires on December 31 and must be renewed each year. "Active" with a current expiration date is what you want.
Classification. Building covers most construction; Residential is limited to one- and two-family dwellings and related work; Highway and Public Utilities are what they sound like; specialty classifications such as Roofing, Grading & Excavating or Swimming Pools cover only that work. A Residential licensee cannot take a commercial job, and a Roofing licensee cannot build your addition.
Limitation. Limited licenses may take single projects up to $500,000, Intermediate up to $1,000,000, Unlimited any size (G.S. 87-10). This is not yet in the roster we hold; the Board's portal shows it.
Board actions. Revocations, suspensions, stayed suspensions, probation, reprimands and voluntary surrenders, as published in the Board's quarterly case summaries. A license with no action listed has nothing published in the summaries we hold, which begin in late 2024. That is not a clean-history statement.
Qualifier. Behind every license is a person who passed the Board's exam. Permits are sometimes filed under the qualifier's name rather than the company's, which is why a name search can come up empty while the number finds it.

5. Ask for what the roster does not show

The roster carries no insurance information. Ask for a certificate of general liability insurance issued directly to you by the insurer, and for proof of workers' compensation coverage if the contractor has employees. The county permit office will also require the license number on any permit application for work of $40,000 or more (G.S. 87-14), so a contractor who asks you to pull the permit yourself is telling you something.

If the lookup finds nothing

Try the legal name instead of the brand, fewer words, or the number alone. No match on the active roster can mean no license, a lapsed one, or a license held under a different entity. Confirm on the Board's own lookup before you decide. If the contractor is working above the threshold without a license, see what the law says about unlicensed contractors.