Colorado contractor license verification API

Look up any Colorado contractor license by number or by business name and get one normalized JSON record back, sourced from the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA), Division of Professions and Occupations.

Try a free lookup — no signup, right here on this page. For programmatic access, take a free API key — 250 requests a month, no card. Also on RapidAPI and, if you would rather not write code at all, the Apify Store.

Look up a license by number

curl "https://contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com/v1/licenses/CO/EC.338" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com"

EC.338 is a real CO license (A & H Electric Co), so you can run that call as written.

Search by business name

curl "https://contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com/v1/licenses/CO/search?name=ACME&limit=10" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com"

Partial, case-insensitive match. A search hit returns the same full record as a lookup by number, so there is no second call to make.

What Department of Regulatory Agencies publishes

• License status, plus DORA's own raw wording
• Disciplinary actions with case number, action and effective date
• Licence type and its full name — electrical and plumbing contractors, masters, journeyworkers, residential and apprentices
• Issue and expiration dates
• City, state and ZIP
• A link straight to DORA's own record for that licence

What it does not

• General contractors — Colorado does not license them at state level
• Street address
• Surety bond
• Workers' compensation
• General liability insurance
• The qualifying individual behind a licensed company

Every response carries a data_completeness map saying which fields this source actually supplies, so an absent bond reads as “not published” rather than “no bond”. Records are never padded with guesses.

Before you build on it

Colorado has no state-level general contractor license. General contracting is licensed by each city — Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora — and none of them publishes an open register, so a Colorado GC will not be found here and no state license exists to find. What DORA licenses in construction is the electrical and plumbing trades, and that is what this covers. Second: a Colorado license number is not unique on its own. The number 4176 belongs to an electrical contractor, a plumbing contractor, a master electrician and an apprentice at the same time, so a license is addressed with its type prefix — EC.4176. A bare number is accepted and resolved when it is unambiguous, and refused with the candidates named when it is not, rather than returning an arbitrary one of four unrelated holders.

Other states

How do I check if a contractor is licensed in Colorado?

Enter the Colorado license number — or the business name if you don't have it — in the free lookup above or the API. Swanum reads the Department of Regulatory Agencies record and returns license status, classifications and expiration date as one JSON object.

How do I check if a contractor is licensed?

Give this API the license number if you have it, or the business name if you don't. Both return the same normalized record, so nothing downstream needs to know which one you used.

Can I look up a contractor license by company name instead of a number?

Yes — the search endpoint does a partial, case-insensitive match and can return multiple matching licenses per name.

Does this include contractor complaints or disciplinary actions?

Colorado, Illinois and California. Their feeds carry the case number, action and date — Illinois adds IDFPR's own reason — and when the state has nothing on a license you get an empty list rather than a null, so you can tell 'clean' from 'unknown'. For the other six the field is null, meaning this source does not report it — not that the contractor is clean. Oregon CCB, Washington L&I and Connecticut eLicense all publish disciplinary history on the record's own page; it just isn't in the extract they publish for bulk use, so follow source_url for those three.

Is there a free way to try contractor license verification?

Yes — the free lookup page needs no signup at all, and a free API key gives you 100 requests a month with no card. The API also has a free tier on RapidAPI.

Which states does this cover?

CA, CO (electrical and plumbing trades only), CT, FL, IL (roofing contractors only), NYC, OR, TX, and WA. New York is New York City only; New York State itself issues no statewide contractor license.