Washington

Verify a Washington contractor license with one API call.

Better Vetters checks a Washington contractor against the state’s official L&I license, insurance, and bond records and Seattle building permits, then returns a verdict, a 0 to 100 trust score, and the records behind them. $0.15 per check, and every new API key includes 20 free checks.

What you get

Washington records in one response.

Washington requires every construction, electrical, plumbing, and elevator contractor to hold an L&I registration or license, and L&I publishes the data as open data.

License status and expiry

License number, type, class, status (such as active, expired, suspended, or inactive), expiry date, days until expiry, and a verify_url to the record on L&I’s own site.

Insurance and bond

General-liability insurance and surety bond on file, with amounts, providers, and expiry.

Suspension date

The license suspension date where one exists. L&I does not publish an infraction feed as open data.

Seattle permits

Permit counts, last 12 and 24 months, the most recent permit date, and links to Seattle permit records that name the contractor.

Match confidence

A 0 to 1 confidence from name, license number, phone, city, and website domain, plus alternate candidates.

Freshness

L&I’s datasets update nightly; each response shows when we last refreshed and when L&I last updated.

Sources

Four official datasets.

Record counts are a snapshot from November 11, 2026. Live counts: GET /v1/coverage.

Data	Source dataset	Records	License	Publisher cadence
License	WA L&I Contractor License Data, General	161,629	PDDL	Nightly (observed)
Insurance	WA L&I Contractor License Data, Insurance	76,756	PDDL	Nightly
Bond	WA L&I Contractor License Data, Bond	137,877	PDDL	Nightly
Permits	Seattle Building Permits (rows naming a contractor company)	27,363	Public Domain	Daily

Try it

A Washington check in one request.

Set state to WA. name is the only required field.

request

curl -s -X POST https://api.bettervetters.com/v1/contractor/check \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BV_API_KEY" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"Example Roofing LLC","state":"WA","city":"Seattle"}'

The sample response on the home page is a Washington check with made-up names and numbers, so no real contractor is shown. Fields are documented in the docs.

How to read the result

Read verdict and trust_score. trusted needs a score of 80 or more and a match confidence of 0.8 or more.
Check match.confidence. Below 0.8, treat it as a possible match and confirm the license number or address.
Read license.status and license.expires, and open license.verify_url to confirm on L&I’s own site.
Cite data_freshness when you show the result to a person.

Limits

What a Washington check does not tell you.

Not covered

Infractions: open data has suspension dates only
Permits outside Seattle
Anything outside the published L&I and Seattle datasets

Good to know

Permits are attributed to a contractor by normalized name, or by license number where the permit carries one
A missing record is not proof of a problem
This is public records, not a consumer report. Do not use it for employment, credit, insurance, or tenant-screening decisions

Other covered places: Texas · New York City · Oregon · Connecticut · Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh). See all sources on the Coverage page.

FAQ

Washington contractor verification FAQ.

How do I verify a Washington contractor license through an API?

Send POST /v1/contractor/check with the contractor’s name and state set to WA. Add license_number, phone, city, or website to raise confidence. The response includes the matched L&I license, its status and expiry, any suspension date, insurance and bond on file, and Seattle permits that name the contractor.

Where does the Washington data come from?

From the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) contractor license, insurance, and bond datasets on data.wa.gov, which are published under the PDDL, plus the City of Seattle building permits dataset on data.seattle.gov. L&I’s datasets update nightly, and every response carries a data_freshness block with the refresh time of each source used.

Does it show insurance and bond for a Washington contractor?

Yes. For Washington matches the response includes insurance_bond: whether general-liability insurance and a surety bond are on file, with amounts, providers, and expiry dates where L&I publishes them.

Does it show violations or infractions for a Washington contractor?

Not infractions. The open data has the license suspension date only, with no infraction feed, so a contractor with no suspension can still have issues that are not in open data. The response says so in discipline.scope.

Are Washington permits covered everywhere?

No. Permit coverage in Washington is Seattle only, and Seattle names a contractor on only some permits. A contractor with zero permits is scored neutrally, not penalized.

Check a Washington contractor.

20 free checks, then $0.15 per check.

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"}'