State fact page

Home-service contractors in Florida

Florida has 90,638 home-service contractors on record across 11 trades, or 40.09 per 10,000 residents.

Florida is in the verified-license layer. Every license fact on a Florida page comes from DBPR-CILB and DBPR-ECLB bulk files as of September 2, 2026, and each one links back to the board’s own record. A license record is a fact about a filing, not a judgment about the work.

That count is the sum of the trade rows further down, and it is the full deduplicated set for Florida. Each business is counted once, under its primary trade, and the Florida total includes records that are unpublishable or residentially screened. Florida records that are closed, flagged, or missing a city sit inside that number but do not publish as pages. Every figure below carries the date it was true and the file it came from.

The facts

Home-service contractors in Florida: 90,638
Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026
The sum of this state’s trade rows. Each row’s own universe, as the facts table defines it: All deduped entities whose primary trade is this trade, including records that are unpublishable or residential-screened; each entity counted once, so the trade rows partition the area entity total.
Per 10,000 residents: 40.09 per 10,000
Population 22,610,726, Census Bureau Vintage 2023 population estimates, as of July 1, 2023
Records first appearing in the last 12 months: 2,621
Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026
This counts records first appearing in Foursquare Open Source Places, not Florida businesses first opening. A record can appear years after a business does. Our own first-seen series becomes the primary measure after three snapshots.
Records flagged closed in the last 12 months: 460
Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026
This counts Florida records flagged closed in Foursquare Open Source Places, not confirmed closures of Florida businesses. The flag is a soft signal contributed upstream.
Independent, franchise, corporate: 87,390 independent, 1,050 franchise brand, 1,607 corporate owned, 591 awaiting chain review
Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026
Chain status is computed from how many locations a normalized name holds nationally. Brands at the threshold that our seed list does not cover sit in the review bucket and are labeled that way, never as independent.
Active licenses with no public listing: 14,917
State license files, as of September 2, 2026
Active, trade-covering, business-level FL licenses in this state with no matching record in open place data. This is the home-based tail, deduplicated on the license. Verify any single record at the board: DBPR, licensee search.
Universe quality: 0.66% of source records merged as duplicates, 2.04% carry no street address
Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026
Both figures are for Florida, weighted across its trades. A Florida record with no street address still publishes when a city and coordinates are present.

Metro areas in Florida

The metro fact pages Florida owns, by residents. Each one carries the same counts for one trade in one metro area, and a city page wherever a city inside Florida stands on its own.

Contractors by trade

Ordered alphabetically by trade. Each row is a distinct set of entities: a Florida business is counted once, under its primary trade, so the rows add up to the Florida total above.

Trade	Contractors	Per 10,000 residents	Licensed share	BLS occupation, title as published
Cleaning	4,513	2.00	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Electrical	3,364	1.49	No license source for this trade in FL	Electricians (SOC 47-2111)
Flooring	4,307	1.90	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
HVAC	5,659	2.50	9.9%	Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (SOC 49-9021)
Landscaping	7,046	3.12	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Other home services	49,724	21.99	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Painting	3,125	1.38	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Pest control	2,818	1.25	No license source for this trade in FL	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Plumbing	4,504	1.99	9.7%	Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152)
Pool	1,933	0.85	7.5%	No BLS occupation mapped to this trade
Roofing	3,645	1.61	10.6%	Roofers (SOC 47-2181)

Employment and wage figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics are published by metropolitan area in the extract loaded here, so they appear on Florida’s metro pages rather than on this one. The occupation title above is the Bureau’s own, reproduced exactly. Licensed share is computed within Florida only, never across states, and its numerator counts Florida entities with an active link to a license that covers the trade in that row. Florida issues both individual and qualified-business records, and qualified-business rows carry no trade code of their own. Only 12.4% of them resolve to a trade through the qualifying agent, so the Florida share is built in practice on individual certified licensees.

What these numbers say about Florida

Every sentence below is read off the rows above and off the same rows for the other fifty states. Nothing here is written about Florida by hand: the wording is chosen by where Florida’s own measurement falls, so a state that is ordinary on a measure says so.

Florida's largest trade by record count is other home service, and it is dominant rather than merely first: more than a quarter of every home-service record this site holds for Florida sits in that one trade, with landscaping the next largest. A concentrated mix like this usually says more about how the source data categorises a business than about how Florida homeowners spend.

In order, Florida's four largest trades are other home service, landscaping, HVAC and cleaning. Other home service alone account for half of every record on this page, which is a narrow base for a statewide figure.

Every one of the eleven trades this site counts carries at least one record in Florida, which is not true of every state. The smallest of them here is pool, and a small row is a small row: it is not evidence that Florida is short of that trade, only that few businesses in it were categorised that way.

At the other end of the same ordering, Florida's three smallest trades are pool, pest control and painting. Between them they still hold a workable share of Florida, so most of their metro hub pages clear this site's publish floor and publish.

Measured against the national mix, Florida is heaviest in pool: that trade takes a far larger share of Florida's records than it takes of the country's. Climate, housing stock and how a state's own businesses describe themselves all feed that, and this page separates none of them.

Electrical is thinner in Florida than it is nationally, the mirror of the lean above. Read it as a difference in how businesses here are categorised before reading it as a difference in what they do.

Per resident, Florida carries more home-service records than the country does, in the middle of the fifty-one this site counts. The margin is real but unremarkable, and it moves with housing age as much as with anything about Florida itself.

By raw record count Florida is one of the five largest states in this corpus, so its pages carry more names than most and its metro hubs page further.

Florida's split between independent, franchise-brand and corporate-owned records is close to the national one, so the chain mix on this page is typical rather than distinctive.

More of Florida's records carry no street address than the national average, which usually means a larger share of the state's businesses run from a home rather than a storefront.

Almost none of Florida's records are waiting on chain review, so the independent, franchise and corporate counts on this page describe nearly the whole state rather than most of it. Pest control holds what little of the review bucket Florida has.

Read per resident rather than by count, the ordering does not change at the top: other home service is both the largest trade in Florida and the one with the most records per ten thousand residents, and pool has the fewest.

Over the last twelve months more Florida records first appeared than were flagged closed, so the file for this state grew; cleaning added the largest share of new records and pool lost the largest share to closed flags. A record appears when the source learns about a business, which is not the same event as a business opening.

Cleaning, Flooring, Landscaping, Other home service, Painting, Pest control and Pool carry no Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation in the extract loaded here, so those Florida rows have no employment or wage series to sit beside them. Every other Florida row does, by metropolitan area rather than statewide.

The metro fact pages Florida owns are Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford and Jacksonville, and 12 more. Each carries the same counts for one trade in one metro area, and a metro that crosses a state line is listed under the state its name leads with, not under every state it touches.

Ordered by records per resident, Florida sits between Colorado above it and North Carolina below it. Those two are the states this page's per-resident rate is closest to, and they are named because a rank on its own says less than the company it keeps.

Ordered by total records rather than by rate, Florida's neighbours are California and Texas. A state can sit high on one of these two orderings and low on the other, and reading both is the point of naming them.

Of the Florida records that are not independent, corporate-owned locations outnumber franchise brands, and they concentrate in other home service; the most franchised trade in Florida is flooring.

Within Florida, electrical is the most independently held trade and pest control the least. That gap is the reason the statewide independent share is a summary rather than a description: a homeowner hiring in pest control meets a different market from one hiring in electrical.

Other home service is the Florida trade whose records most often carry no street address, and HVAC the one whose records most often do. A missing street line usually means the business runs from a home, so the list on an other home service page in Florida is thinner in addresses than an HVAC one and no less real for it.

Among the Florida trades with a measured licensed share, roofing links to an active state licence most often and pool least often. That spread is a measurement of how well two files join in Florida, the licence file and the place file, and it is not a statement about whether the businesses in either row hold a licence.

Cleaning, Electrical, Flooring, Landscaping, Other home service, Painting and Pest control have no business-level licence source in Florida, so those rows show no licensed share rather than a share of zero. Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) issues what it issues, and a trade it does not licence at the state level cannot have a state licensed share here.

Taking the largest row on its own: other home service is about as large a part of Florida as it is of the country, so Florida leads with that trade for the same reason the country does.

License classes in scope

The classes below are the ones this site reads as covering each trade in Florida. The list is generated by the ingest pipeline, not written into this page, so a class cannot appear here that the data does not actually map. Classes outside the list still exist at the board; they are simply not counted toward a trade here.

DBPR

Class, as the source spells it	Counted as
all other codes	Other
CAC	HVAC
CCC	Roofing
CFC	Plumbing
CMC	HVAC
CPC	Pool
EC	Electrical
ER	Electrical
RC	Roofing

DBPR's official code table defines CPC as Certified Pool/Spa Contractor, so CPC is pool, not plumbing.
Multi-class licenses retain every match in all_trades and select primary_trade by the priority list.

How to read a Florida license number

DBPR-CILB numbers: 4 to 12 characters, most carrying a letter prefix
Measured across 256,036 DBPR-CILB records, as of September 2, 2026
The prefixes that appear most often are CGC (33,631), FRO (19,201), CBC (16,841), CAC (10,834), CCC (9,804), CFC (8,336). The prefix is the license class the board issued, so it is the fastest way to tell what a number is for. 127,387 of these records carry no published number at all. Those are qualified-business rows whose number the extract leaves blank, so this site holds an internal key for them and publishes no number. Type the number into DBPR, licensee search to see the board’s live record, which is authoritative over anything reproduced here.
DBPR-ECLB numbers: 5 to 11 characters, most carrying a letter prefix
Measured across 19,196 DBPR-ECLB records, as of September 2, 2026
The prefixes that appear most often are EC (11,801), CRS (1,911), ES (1,687), ER (1,502), EF (1,396), EG (498). The prefix is the license class the board issued, so it is the fastest way to tell what a number is for. Type the number into DBPR, licensee search to see the board’s live record, which is authoritative over anything reproduced here.

Bond and workers’ compensation

Bond: Not published by Florida
State license files, as of September 2, 2026
Florida’s bulk file carries no bond column, so no bond fact appears on a Florida profile. That is an absence in the source, not a finding about any contractor. A bond may still exist and be visible at the board itself.
Workers’ compensation: Not published by Florida
State license files, as of September 2, 2026
Florida’s bulk file carries no workers’ compensation column, so no coverage fact appears on a Florida profile. Absence of the column is not evidence either way about a contractor’s coverage.

Where these records come from

DBPR-CILB: 256,036 records, 244,302 active
DBPR-CILB bulk file, released September 2, 2026
0 business-level, 127,387 qualified-business, and 128,649 individual-practitioner records. Only business-level and qualified-business records can link to a listing here. 3,897 of these are county-limited registrations, shown only within the county that issued them.
DBPR-ECLB: 19,196 records, 18,013 active
DBPR-ECLB bulk file, released September 2, 2026
0 business-level, 0 qualified-business, and 19,196 individual-practitioner records. Only business-level and qualified-business records can link to a listing here. 1,687 of these are county-limited registrations, shown only within the county that issued them.
Status vocabulary: 3 normalized values in use
State license files, as of September 2, 2026
Only active counts toward licensed share or the verified tier. The state’s own wording is printed beside every status on a profile. active 262,315 records, from C, C | A, P | A; inactive 12,659 records, from C | I, P | I; suspended 258 records, from S, S | A, S | I.

What licensing looks like trade by trade in Florida

Where a Florida rule changes the answer for one trade in particular, it is set out below, trade by trade. Some of those rules are a licence and a board that issues it; others are the absence of one. The rest of a trade’s explanation, which is the same in Florida as anywhere else, is on that trade’s own page.

Electrical

Certified and registered electrical contractors in Florida

Florida licenses electrical contractors through the Electrical Contractors Licensing Board, which issues a certified licence valid statewide and a registered licence valid in the jurisdiction that qualified it. Alarm and specialty electrical classifications sit alongside the general one.

Both certificate types appear in the state file this site reads, and both count toward the licensed share on this page.

Source: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, licensee search

Everything else about electrical work is on the electrical page.

HVAC

Class A and class B mechanical licences in Florida

Florida certifies air conditioning contractors through the Construction Industry Licensing Board at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and the class decides the equipment ceiling: a class A certificate carries no tonnage limit, a class B certificate is limited to smaller equipment. A separate mechanical certificate covers the wider set of mechanical work including boilers and process piping.

Florida also issues registered licences that are valid only in the jurisdiction that qualified them, alongside certified licences valid statewide. Both appear in the state file this site reads, and a registered licence is not a smaller credential, only a more local one.

Source: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, licensee search

Everything else about HVAC work is on the HVAC page.

Plumbing

Certified and registered plumbing contractors in Florida

Florida certifies plumbing contractors through the Construction Industry Licensing Board, and the certified plumbing contractor certificate is valid statewide while a registered licence is valid only where it was qualified. Florida also issues qualified-business records that carry no trade code of their own, so only a minority of them resolve to a trade at all.

The practical effect on this page is that Florida's plumbing share is built on individual certified licensees rather than on business records, and the page says so rather than presenting a business-level share it cannot support.

Source: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, licensee search

Everything else about plumbing work is on the plumbing page.

Pool

Certified pool and spa contractors in Florida

Florida certifies pool and spa contractors through the Construction Industry Licensing Board, and the certificate code for a certified pool and spa contractor is CPC. That code is easy to misread as a plumbing code; the board's own table defines it as pool and spa, and this site counts it that way.

Florida also sets residential pool barrier requirements in statute, which is unusual: in most states that rule lives entirely in the local building code.

Source: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, licensee search

Everything else about pool work is on the pool page.

Roofing

Florida roofing: what this site will not do

This site never routes a homeowner request for roofing work in Florida, to any contractor, regardless of relationship. Florida Statute 489.147 prohibits a contractor from offering or accepting compensation for a referral tied to services for which property insurance proceeds are payable, and it imputes a compensated non-employee's soliciting acts to the contractor. Rather than draw a line through the middle of that statute, this site draws it around the whole category.

What a Florida reader gets on this page instead is the same neutral alphabetical list published to everyone, built from public records, with nothing sold and no placement paid for. In plain words: the law makes a paid roofing lead in Florida a legal problem for the roofer who buys it, so this site does not create one.

The statute also shapes what a Florida roofing solicitation may say to you. A written notice about insurance claims is required in some solicitations, and an offer to pay, waive or rebate your deductible is prohibited.

Source: The Florida Senate, Statute 489.147, prohibited property insurance practices

Everything else about roofing work is on the roofing page.

Every rule stated above links the public page that states it: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, licensee search; The Florida Senate, Statute 489.147, prohibited property insurance practices.

Where to check a contractor in Florida

Licensing body: Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR)
Florida state agency, linked directly
Consumer protection: Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Consumer Services
Florida consumer-protection resource, linked directly
This site takes no complaints and resolves no disputes. It is a directory built from public records, and this is where a Florida homeowner takes a problem with a Florida contractor.
Complaint process: DBPR, file a complaint
Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), linked directly
A complaint against a Florida licensee goes to the board that issued the license, not to this site. The board is the only body that can act on it.

Nothing on this page is a rating, an endorsement, or a recommendation, and no figure here is an assessment of any individual Floridabusiness. How every Florida number is counted, and where every source comes from, is on the methodology page.