Bonded Trades is a reference site for people who work in the trades in the United States. We publish state-by-state guides to getting licensed, bonded and insured — the administrative side of running a contracting business, written for the person doing the work rather than for a search engine.
Why this exists
Licensing information is genuinely hard to find, and most of what turns up is one of three things.
State board websites are accurate but written as regulation. The thresholds, the classifications, the financial requirements and the exam rules live on five different pages, in the language of the statute, and none of them tells you which order to do things in.
Exam-prep companies fill that gap, and they do it reasonably well — but their pages exist to sell you a course. They will not tell you that you might not need a licence yet, or that the cheaper route through the financial requirement is the Board’s own form rather than a CPA.
And a great deal of what remains is out of date. Fees change. Thresholds change. Bond requirements change every legislative session. A guide written in 2023 and never revisited is worse than no guide at all, because you have no way of knowing which parts are still true.
We are trying to be the fourth thing: current, complete, and honest about what you actually need.
How we research
Every figure on this site — a threshold, a fee, a bond amount, an experience requirement — comes from the state licensing board or the statute, not from another article. We link the source and we carry a verification date at the top of every licensing page, so you can see exactly how current the page is rather than guessing from a publication date.
Every state page is reviewed at least annually, and sooner when a board publishes changes. When we find something is wrong we correct the page and update the verification date rather than quietly editing it.
Where the honest answer is inconvenient, we publish the honest answer. North Carolina requires no insurance at all to hold a general contractor licence — plenty of pages imply otherwise, and we say plainly that it does not. Nevada requires proof of workers’ compensation before it will licence you at all. The answers genuinely differ by state, which is exactly why we verify each one instead of writing a template.
Who writes this
Yasmin Smith – Licensed Property & Casualty Insurance Agent | 10+ Years in Customer Service & sales.
Tyler Williamson — Licensed Property & Casualty Insurance Agent, North Carolina. Reviews every page on this site that discusses insurance coverage, cost or requirements, for factual accuracy.
Licensing content is checked against the issuing board. Insurance content is checked by a licensed agent. If a page carries a claim about coverage and does not carry a reviewer’s name, treat that as a mistake and tell us.
How we make money
Bonded Trades is free to read and carries no subscription. We make money two ways, and we would rather you knew exactly how.
Affiliate commissions. Some links to insurance providers and exam-prep companies are affiliate links. If you get a quote or buy a course after clicking one, we may be paid a fee at no additional cost to you. We are not paid more for recommending one option over another on any page where we compare them.
Advertising. Some pages carry display advertising. We do not choose those advertisers and their presence is not an endorsement.
What that money does not buy: a place in a recommendation, a softened assessment, or the removal of an inconvenient fact. If a state does not require insurance, we say so — even though saying so costs us the click. A reference site that shades its answers toward its own revenue is worthless, and would not survive contact with an audience who can check.
What we are not
We are not attorneys, and nothing here is legal advice. We are not an insurance broker or agency — we do not sell policies, quote them, or hold your details. We are not affiliated with any state licensing board, and none of them has reviewed or endorsed this site.
Licensing rules change, and the board is always the authority. Use our guides to understand the process and know what to prepare; confirm the specifics with the board before you file.
Tell us if we are wrong
If a figure on this site is out of date, or a requirement has changed, or something is simply incorrect, we want to know — particularly if you are a licensed contractor who has just been through the process and found reality differed from what we published.
Write to us at bondedtrades@gmail.com. Corrections are made quickly and the verification date is updated when they are.