Coverage
Three places today.
Washington State, Texas with Austin permits, and New York City. Every source is an official open-data feed, and every response says when it was last refreshed.
Record counts as of November 10, 2026. Live counts and timestamps: GET /v1/coverage.
Washington
Every contractor license, plus Seattle permits.
Washington requires every construction, electrical, plumbing, and elevator contractor to hold an L&I registration or license.
| Data | Source dataset | Records | License | Publisher cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | WA L&I Contractor License Data, General | 161,614 | PDDL | Nightly (observed) |
| Insurance | WA L&I Contractor License Data, Insurance | 76,769 | PDDL | Nightly |
| Bond | WA L&I Contractor License Data, Bond | 137,853 | PDDL | Nightly |
| Permits | Seattle Building Permits (rows naming a contractor company) | 27,363 | Public Domain | Daily |
What you get
- License status, expiry, and suspension date
- General-liability insurance and surety bond on file
- Seattle permits that name the contractor
Limits
- Open data has suspension dates only; there is no infraction feed
- Seattle names a contractor on few permits, so zero permits says little
- Permit attribution is by normalized name
Texas
Trade licenses, plus Austin permits.
Texas has no statewide general-contractor license, so license coverage is limited to the trades TDLR licenses.
| Data | Source dataset | Records | License | Publisher cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | TDLR All Licenses (contractor-type licenses only) | 58,580 | None stated; Texas open-data portal terms | Not stated (observed about weekly) |
| Permits | Austin Issued Construction Permits, 2023-01-01 on | 204,133 | Public Domain U.S. Government | Daily |
What you get
- TDLR electrical, A/C, sign, appliance-install, elevator, and well-driller licenses
- Austin construction permits issued since 2023-01-01, with the contractor company on each
Limits
- TDLR publishes no status or discipline fields; status is derived from the expiry date
- No discipline data for Texas
- Plumbing (TSBPE) is not covered
New York City
Home improvement licenses, charges, and DOB permits.
New York has no statewide general-contractor license. NYC requires a DCWP Home Improvement Contractor license for residential work.
| Data | Source dataset | Records | License | Publisher cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | NYC DCWP Issued Licenses (Home Improvement Contractor, Construction Labor Provider) | 19,221 | NYC Open Data Terms of Use | Weekly |
| Discipline | NYC DCWP Charges for those categories | 581 | NYC Open Data Terms of Use | Monthly |
| Permits | NYC DOB Permit Issuance, job types A1/A2/A3/NB since 2023-01-01 | 62,207 | NYC Open Data Terms of Use | Daily |
What you get
- DCWP Home Improvement Contractor and Construction Labor Provider licenses
- DCWP charges and outcomes, the one published enforcement feed in the three places
- DOB permits for job types A1, A2, A3, and NB since 2023-01-01
Limits
- Only DCWP licenses are covered, not other NYC trade licenses
- The DOB feed is the legacy BIS dataset; much work has moved to DOB NOW, which does not expose a clean permittee name
- Licenses cover NYC only, not the rest of New York State
How matching works
Names are messy, so every match shows its confidence.
- Names are normalized: accents folded,
&becomesAND, punctuation and legal suffixes such as LLC and INC are dropped, andDBAtails are removed. - Candidates are found with a typo-tolerant search, then re-scored by name similarity.
- An exact license number, phone number, city, or website-domain agreement raises the confidence. A name alone never exceeds 0.95.
- Permits are attributed to a contractor by normalized name, or by license number where the permit carries one. Common names can over-match;
permits.match_basissays how.
Publishers’ own license terms apply to each dataset; the license shown above is copied from each dataset’s metadata. A request for any state other than WA, TX, or NY returns out_of_coverage and is not charged.
Check a contractor in WA, TX, or NYC.
20 free checks, then $0.15 per check.
# Get a key (20 free checks, no card). The key is shown once.
curl -s -X POST https://api.bettervetters.com/v1/keys \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"label":"my-agent"}'