General contractor vs handyman: where your state draws the line

Where each state draws the line

Every figure below is from the statute or the board's own page, read 20 October 2026. "Labour + materials" means the limit counts the whole price.

Not in the table because we could not read the official rule on the day: Hawaii, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, New York, Illinois and Vermont. For those, ask your city's building department which license the job needs.

1. "Per job" limits are low. The line is $1,000 in California, Arizona and Nevada, $2,500 in Florida and $500 in Washington, counting labour and materials together (CSLB; F.S. 489.103(9); RCW 18.27.090(9)). California adds that the job must need no permit, and Florida's DBPR says permitted work is "typically not considered minor". Splitting one project into small contracts does not count: both the Florida and Washington statutes say so.
2. Annual limits are a different thing. Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Iowa measure what the person earns in a year, not the size of your job. A handyman under Pennsylvania's $5,000-a-year line can do your $4,000 job unregistered; one over it cannot do your $400 job unregistered.
3. Washington adds paperwork, not a higher line. On a residential job of $1,000 or more, a contractor must hand you a written disclosure statement before starting work, keep a signed copy for three years, and without proof of it cannot file a lien for that contract (RCW 18.27.114). If you are not handed one, ask for it before work starts.
4. North Carolina and Tennessee set the general contractor line high ($40,000 and $25,000). The usual filed value of a Greensboro remodel permit is $35,000, under North Carolina's line, so the general contractor license often does not apply; the plumbing, heating and electrical work inside the job still needs licensed trades. In Davidson County (Nashville), Tennessee's $3,000 home-improvement license applies first.

Can a handyman build a new house in Texas?

The state does not stop it. Texas has no state license for general contractors, home builders or handymen: TDLR's list of the programs it licenses has electricians and air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, not builders (TDLR, read 21 October 2026). The trades inside the house are licensed: electrical and A/C work through TDLR, plumbing through the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, where a company offering plumbing must have at least one Responsible Master Plumber and a certificate of insurance on file (TSBPE). Cities add their own rules. Austin says "trade contractors, general contractors, and homeowners acting as contractors must register as a Contractor" with the City, through an Austin Build + Connect account, before they can be assigned to a building or trade permit; it adds that a general contractor needs no state license in Texas (City of Austin, read 21 October 2026).

What a new house looks like in the record: in Austin, 645 firms filed 4,352 new-home permits from October 2023 to September 2026, and the usual one took 356 days from issue to final inspection. A builder without a run of finished new-home permits on the Austin home builder list has no record here to check; ask for the addresses of houses it finished and look them up on the City's permit search.

When to hire which

Common jobs, and who they need

Usual filed values are what contractors told the city for that kind of permit in one of our cities; the right-hand columns apply California's rule ($1,000, and no permit job) and the permit rules of the cities named. Check your own city's list of work exempt from permit.

The pattern: once a job needs a permit or touches wiring, gas or pipes, the dollar line stops mattering, and the usual permit job in every row above is already over California's $1,000.

What the file shows: electrical and plumbing firms with a license match

In the trades no handyman exemption covers, this is the share of permit-pulling firms we matched to an active state license on the snapshot date.

The usual job in these trades is small: $3,000 for an Arlington plumbing permit, $1,701 for a Seattle EV charger, $925 for an Elk Grove one. Price is not the test here: these are permit jobs in licensed trades, which California, Arizona and Nevada exclude from the exemption outright and Washington sends to L&I's electrical license.

A firm with "no match found" is not unlicensed. We match by business name, and a permit often carries a shortened or trading name. Check the board yourself.

The two-minute check

1. Ask the handyman whether your job needs a permit in your city. If the answer is yes, or "it depends", you need a licensed trade.
2. Add up labour and materials. Compare with your state's line in the table above.
3. If it is electrical or plumbing, look the firm up on your city's list (for example Seattle firms or Miami firms) and on the state board: Washington L&I, CSLB, Florida DBPR, Oregon CCB.

What this does not tell you

Our file contains only permitted work, which by the rules above is mostly licensed work. Handyman jobs that legitimately need no permit never reach it, so we cannot rank handymen or say how many there are. License status is the register's on the snapshot date, matched by name. And the lines move: California's doubled from $500 on 1 January 2025, and the Utah text we read took effect on 7 May 2025, so check the date on whatever page you are reading, including this one.

See every Seattle electrician with license status →

See every Elk Grove EV-charger installer →

See every Miami plumber with license status →