Illinois contractor license verification API

Look up any Illinois contractor license by number or by business name and get one normalized JSON record back, sourced from the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR).

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/IL/104000018" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com"

104000018 is a real IL license (ANDERSON AND SHAH ROOFING INC), so you can run that call as written.

Search by business name

curl "https://contractor-license-verification2.p.rapidapi.com/v1/licenses/IL/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 Financial and Professional Regulation publishes

• License status, plus IDFPR's own raw wording
• Disciplinary actions with case number, type, date and reason — one of two states in this API that publishes them, and the only one that gives a reason
• Issue and expiration dates
• City, county and ZIP

What it does not

• Street address
• Surety bond
• Workers' compensation

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

Illinois covers roofing contractors only. Roofing is the single construction trade IDFPR publishes as open data, so a general contractor or electrician licensed in Illinois will not be found here.

Other states

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

Enter the Illinois 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 Financial and Professional Regulation 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 (general contractors from the CCB, plus electricians, plumbers and the boiler and elevator trades from the Building Codes Division), TX, and WA. New York is New York City only; New York State itself issues no statewide contractor license.