Texas General Contractor License: What Applies and What Does Not
What Texas requires of a contracting business in 2026, what the LLC has to file first, and where the license and the entity are two separate steps.
By Edmond Hui · Last updated: September 2026
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Texas general contractor licensing at a glance
| State credential required for this work? | No statewide license |
Does a contracting business need a license in Texas?
Texas issues no statewide license for a contracting business. Local registrations and specialty permits can still apply.
Texas issues no statewide general contractor license or registration, and the Texas Residential Construction Commission that once registered homebuilders was abolished when its Act expired on September 1, 2009. Specific trades remain licensed by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, including electricians, air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, elevator contractors, and industrialized housing and buildings, and general contractors may face county or city requirements.
A state that issues no license of its own is not a state with no rules. City and county business registrations, specialty endorsements and sales tax permits are set separately, and we do not track them page by page, so confirm those with Texas and with the locality you work in.
A state agency states this directly, rather than us inferring it from an absence.
This records what Texas publishes, not a determination about your business. Scope, thresholds and local requirements are set by the issuing body, so confirm with them before you bid or file.
Source: 2026-2027 Texas Business Licenses and Permits Guide, Business Permit Office, Office of the Texas Governor (updated December 2025). Verified 2026-09-03.
What the LLC has to do first
Where the state licenses the company rather than only the individual, the LLC has to exist before the license application can name it.
The entity filing is separate from anything the license requires. In Texas it is made with the Texas Secretary of State. File directly with the state here. The order matters wherever the license is issued to the company rather than to a person: the entity has to exist before an application can name it.
Forming an LLC as a contracting business in Texas covers the filing itself, step by step.
Insurance Texas general contractors are asked to show
General liability cover is the item most often demanded before a contractor license application is accepted or a job is awarded, and the certificate has to name the entity that holds the license.
We do not publish Texas premium figures for this trade, so nothing here is a quote. Our business insurance guide for general contractors covers what each policy does and does not pay for.
This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It reports what each state licensing board publishes for this trade, with the sources this page cites. It cannot tell you whether your own work needs a licence: that turns on the scope of the job, the value of the contract, and the city or county you work in, which commonly adds its own registration on top of the state's. Confirm your own position with the board named on this page and with your local building or business licensing office before you bid or start work.
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Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.