Montana Landscaping License: What Applies and What Does Not
What Montana requires of a landscaping 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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Montana landscaping licensing at a glance
| State credential required for this work? | Through contractor licensing |
| What it is called | Construction Contractor License |
| Who issues it | Montana Department of Labor and Industry |
| Must the business itself be licensed? | Yes |
| Applies to work valued above | $2,500 a job |
Does a landscaping business need a license in Montana?
Montana issues no license of its own for landscapers. Its contractor licensing reaches this work through the Construction Contractor License on work valued above $2,500.
Montana issues no landscaping license, and its former contractor registration no longer exists: Ch. 644, L. 2025 repealed Title 39, chapter 9 and moved the scheme to Title 37, chapter 45 as a construction contractor license the Department of Labor and Industry began issuing on January 1, 2026. MCA 37-45-102 reaches a person who for another constructs, alters, repairs, adds to or improves a structure, project, development or improvement attached to real estate, which covers landscape construction such as grading, irrigation and retaining walls, and MCA 37-45-104(8) exempts one undertaking whose aggregate contract price for labor, materials and all other items is less than $2,500 a job. MCA 37-45-104(24) separately exempts an independent contractor who has no employees, who may register voluntarily.
The landscaping business itself must be licensed or registered, not only the people doing the work.
This records what Montana 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: Montana Code Annotated 37-45-201, Construction contractor license required. Verified 2026-09-03.
What the LLC has to do first
Pesticide and herbicide application is licensed separately from landscaping itself in most states, and that license is usually the one a general landscaping business actually needs.
The entity filing is separate from anything the license requires. In Montana it is made with the Montana 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 landscaping business in Montana covers the filing itself, step by step.
Insurance Montana landscapers are asked to show
Landscaping work damages what it is next to: irrigation lines, fences, windows and parked cars. General liability is the cover for that, and commercial clients ask for the certificate before the first visit.
We do not publish Montana premium figures for this trade, so nothing here is a quote. Our business insurance guide for landscapers 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.