How it works

How a Better Vetters contractor check works.

A check takes a contractor’s name (and optionally state, city, license number, phone, or website), finds the best match in official license records, attaches insurance, permit, and discipline records where they exist, and returns a verdict, a 0 to 100 trust score, and the reasons behind it. Everything comes from official open-data sources, and every response says when each source was last refreshed.

The steps

From request to verdict.

You send a request. POST /v1/contractor/check with a Bearer API key. name is required; state is strongly recommended.
We normalize the name. Accents are folded, & becomes AND, punctuation and suffixes such as LLC and INC are dropped, and DBA tails are removed.
We find candidates. A typo-tolerant search over the license records finds likely matches, which are then re-scored by name similarity.
We score the match. An exact license number, phone, city, or website-domain agreement raises confidence. A name alone never exceeds 0.95.
We attach the records. Insurance and bond (WA and OR), permits (Seattle, Austin, NYC), and discipline (WA suspension dates, NYC DCWP charges), each with a link to the source record where available.
We score the contractor. A weighted trust score and a verdict, with reason codes that show how the score was built.
You get one JSON response including data_freshness and billing.

Verdicts and score

How the trust score and verdict are built.

The score is a weighted sum, normalized to 100 over only the components that can speak to this contractor.

Component	Weight	Notes
License status and expiry	50	Active scores full; expiring within 60 days scores less; expired, suspended, or revoked score little or none.
Insurance and bond	12	Washington and Oregon only. Insurance 8, bond 4.
Discipline	13	WA suspension on record, or NYC DCWP guilty findings in the last 3 years.
Permit activity	25	Only counted when permits are found. Zero permits is neutral, because permit coverage is one city per state.

Caps: a suspended or revoked license caps the score at 15, an expired license at 45, and an ambiguous match at 70. A fuzzy name-only match below 0.8 confidence, with no license-number or phone match, returns needs_review and is capped at 50.

Verdict	What it means
trusted	Confident match (confidence 0.8+) with a score of 80 or more. License in good standing in the covered sources.
likely_ok	Mostly clean, score 60 to 79. Worth a glance, not a blocker.
caution	Needs a human look, score 35 to 59. For example an expired license or enforcement findings.
high_risk	License suspended or revoked, or a score under 35 in the covered sources.
needs_review	The closest record is only a fuzzy name match: confidence below 0.8 with no license-number or phone match. The score is capped at 50. Confirm it is the right business before relying on it.
unknown	No reliable match to score, so no judgment either way.
not_found	No matching record in the covered sources. A missing record is not proof of a problem.
out_of_coverage	The contractor’s state is outside current coverage (WA, TX, NY, OR, CT, PA). Not charged. In Pennsylvania only Pittsburgh is covered.

Compared with doing it by hand

One call instead of one portal per place.

The issuing agency’s own site is always the authoritative record, and every license result includes a link to it where one exists.

	Looking up each source by hand	One Better Vetters call
Sources	A separate portal or dataset for each state and city	Nine official datasets from WA, TX (with Austin), and NYC behind one endpoint
Output	Each publisher’s own fields and wording	One JSON shape: verdict, score, reasons, license, insurance and bond, permits, discipline, freshness
Name matching	You search and compare names yourself	Normalized, typo-tolerant matching with a 0 to 1 confidence and alternate candidates
Use from an agent	Needs browsing or custom parsing	REST and MCP, OpenAPI 3.1 spec, and llms.txt
Freshness	Check each page’s own date	Per-source `last_refreshed_at` and `publisher_updated_at` in every response
Cost	Free to look up; your time	$0.15 per check; 20 free with a new key

Billing

What a check costs.

$0.15 per check, and every new API key includes 20 free checks with no card. A check that returns not_found or unknown is charged because the search ran. out_of_coverage requests and server errors are not charged. Retries with an Idempotency-Key are free. When credits run out the API returns HTTP 402 with a machine-readable body. Details on the pricing page.

All credit purchases are final and non-refundable, except where applicable law requires a refund, or to correct a duplicate or erroneous charge. Credits do not expire while the account is active.

What it is not

Public records, not a consumer report.

It tells you

Whether a license record matches, and its status and expiry
Insurance and bond on file (WA and OR)
Permits naming the contractor in Seattle, Austin, or NYC
WA suspension dates and NYC DCWP charges

It does not tell you

Anything outside WA, TX, NYC, OR, CT, and Pittsburgh, PA
That a missing record means a problem
Anything a consumer report would cover

Do not use results for employment, credit, insurance, or tenant-screening decisions. See the Terms of Service. Where each source comes from: Coverage.

API docs and quickstartRequest, response, errors, billing
MCP serverHosted endpoint and local stdio server
WashingtonL&I licenses, insurance, bond, Seattle permits
TexasTDLR trade licenses and Austin permits
New York CityDCWP licenses, charges, and DOB permits
OregonCCB licenses with insurance and bond
ConnecticutDCP contractor credentials
Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh)City of Pittsburgh licenses and permits
FAQCommon questions

Run your first 20 checks free.

Create a key and send one request.

Get an API key

Read the API docs

create a key

# 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"}'