St. Louis contractor license lookup: the City business license, trade boards and the permits

Which license each job needs in St. Louis

The License Collector's contractor license page says "Your business requires a Construction Industry Contractor Graduated Business License (GBL)", that "All general contractors are required to furnish a list of the sub-contractors on any job to the License Collector", and that the City must see a workers' compensation certificate or a signed exemption before it issues one (RSMo 287.061, quoted on that page). The Building Division's boards of examiners cover mechanical contractors and pipefitters, plumbers and drainlayers, electrical certification, and sprinkler contractors; none covers remodelers or roofers (read 23 October 2026).

Electrical permits go only "to licensed electrical contractors certified by the City of St. Louis, and to owners of single-family homes who fulfill certain requirements", and the application fee is $25 (Electrical Permit).

How to run the lookup in five minutes

1. Ask for the legal business name and, for electrical, plumbing or HVAC work, the City trade license number. The City issues business licenses under legal names, not trade names.
2. Business license: search the Business License Search by name or by address or parcel. It shows only Graduated Business Licenses for the current fiscal year (1 June to 31 May) and is updated nightly, so a firm that did not renew in June will not appear.
3. Trade license: the boards publish no list of holders. Call the Building Division on 314-622-3313.
4. Permits: look your address up on the City's permit search (below) and check that the contractor named on past permits is the one you are talking to.
5. Track record: open the firm on our St. Louis remodeler list, fence list or deck and porch list.

How to search St. Louis permit records

The Building Division's Building Permits Search by Address says: "Enter a City address to find past permits issued for that property." It takes a street address or parcel number. Applications themselves go through STL City Permits, which also handles mechanical and plumbing inspection requests.

Before you take a contractor's word that no permit is needed, read the City's permit criteria. A permit is needed for porches, decks and retaining walls, foundation and footing repair, "all new fences of any type, except the replacement of existing fencing, of the same height, material and location in the rear or side yard", and "an entire new roof, when roof work is not replacement of like material, and/or when more than 25% of the roof sheathing is removed and replaced". Window replacement in an unchanged opening and like-for-like re-roofs do not need one, which is why our roofing and window counts are small next to the work done.

The portal is organised by address. Ours is organised by firm: each firm's St. Louis permits, its usual job value and how many it completed, on the St. Louis permit statistics page and the compare lists.

What 5,943 St. Louis permits show

"Completed" is the share of permits a year or more old with a City completion date. Remodel is the thinnest market: 72.9% of remodel firms pulled one permit in three years and the five busiest held only 8.4% of the work, so for most remodelers the business license is nearly all the record there is. Among the 22 remodelers with 10 or more permits, the completed share runs from 29.3% at the 10th percentile to 91.0% at the 90th; 12 of them are under 70%. Garages are the opposite: one firm filed 34.1% of garage permits.

See every St. Louis remodeler by permits completed →

Red flags in St. Louis

• No current Graduated Business License. Subcontractors need one too, and a general contractor must give the License Collector a list of its subs.
• An electrician, plumber or mechanical contractor with no City license number.
• A request that you pull the electrical permit. A homeowner permit is for an owner-occupied single-family home only, and "You may not apply for permits for service changes, rehab, or new construction."
• "No permit needed" for a new fence, a deck, foundation work or a re-roof that changes material. The City's criteria say otherwise.
• A firm that has gone quiet: 18 remodelers and 5 roofers with 5+ permits filed none in the last 12 months of our data.

What this lookup does not tell you

The City's business license search works one name at a time and the trade boards publish no list, so our St. Louis pages show no license status; a blank there says nothing about the firm. Electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits after 2018 are not published in bulk, so we have no electrician, plumber or HVAC pages for St. Louis. Trades are read from the permit description, so a mixed job sits under one trade. A "St. Louis" mailing address can be in St. Louis County, which licenses separately. County rules, the optional state electrical license and the STL Recovers registry are in How to check a contractor's license in Missouri. Our data stops at September 2026.