Data sources.

We believe a public registry should be transparent about where its data comes from, how often it's updated, what's included, and what's not. This page lays out exactly that.

Primary source: Florida DBPR

Every active contractor license on this site comes from a single source: the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), specifically its Construction Industry Licensing Board (CILB) database.

DBPR is the state agency that licenses, regulates, and disciplines contractors in Florida. Every certified contractor working legally in this state has a record in DBPR's licensing system. That record is public information under Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes, the state's Public Records Act.

DBPR publishes a weekly data extract of all active contractor licenses. That extract is the source for everything you see on this site.

What's in the data

Each contractor record from DBPR includes the following fields. All of these are publicly disclosed by the State of Florida — we republish them as received:

• License number and license type code
• Business name (for qualifying business records) or licensee name (for individuals)
• Qualifying agent name (the licensed person backing the business)
• Mailing address (city, county, state, ZIP)
• License status — Current, Delinquent, Null and Void, or similar
• Original license date and expiration date
• Any disciplinary action codes attached to the license

DBPR does not include personal phone numbers, personal email addresses, or photos in its public extract. The business website, contact email, photo, and About text shown on a claimed profile are added by the contractor themselves after they verify ownership.

What's NOT in the data

Several things you might expect to find on a contractor directory are deliberately absent here, because DBPR doesn't publish them in its public extract:

• Insurance information. Workers' compensation insurance status (separate Florida workers' comp database)
• Customer reviews. Reviews are a separate moderation layer we may build in the future; they require an entirely different infrastructure (claim verification, response handling, moderation) that we don't want to launch poorly
• Surety bond information. Florida doesn't centralize bond data the way some states do; bonding is typically transaction-specific
• Project portfolios. Past project history of any kind
• Pricing information. Pricing data

Where one of these matters for your contractor decision, our hiring checklist explains how to ask for them directly.

How current the data is

DBPR updates its public extract weekly. Our system pulls the latest version every Sunday at 2:00 AM Eastern Time. This means:

• Most data on this site is between 0 and 7 days old
• A newly issued license may take up to a week to appear here
• A recently revoked or expired license may still appear here for up to a week after the status change

Every page on this site shows a "Last refresh" timestamp in the header strip. If you need real-time, official confirmation of a license status, the State of Florida's verification tool at myfloridalicense.com is the authoritative source.

Legal basis for republication

Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes — the Florida Public Records Act — establishes that records held by Florida state agencies are presumed to be public, available for inspection by anyone, and may be redistributed without permission unless a specific exemption applies. Contractor licensing records do not have such an exemption. They are public records, fully and lawfully available for republication.

This legal foundation is what allows us to operate. It's also what allows any contractor to publish their own license information on their own website, and what allows news organizations, researchers, and other directories to do the same.

Corrections and removals

If you're a licensed contractor and your profile contains an error — wrong address, misspelled name, wrong license type — the fastest path to a correction is to claim your profile, then contact us. We'll fix the error within one business day.

If the error is in DBPR's record (and not just on our site), you'll need to update it with DBPR directly through their licensee portal. Once you've made the correction with the state, it will appear here at the next weekly sync.

We cannot remove a profile while a license is active and on the DBPR public extract. The information is in the public record. Removing it from our site wouldn't remove it from the state's record or from anyone else who chooses to publish it. What we can do is correct factual errors, suppress historical addresses you've moved away from, and make sure the information shown is accurate.