Florida General Contractor License Requirements (2026)

Chapter 489, Florida Statutes, and the CILB rules in chapter 61G4 set four conditions for a certified general contractor license: documented construction experience, financial responsibility shown by a FICO-derived credit score of 660 or higher or a 14-hour Board-approved course, a passing score on the state examination, and the required insurance coverage.

Requirements at a glance

Requirements at a glance

Requirement	What it takes
Experience	4 years as a worker or foreman, at least 1 year of it as a foreman, or a 4-year construction-related degree plus 1 year of experience. General applicants additionally need experience in 4+ areas and 1 year on structures at least four stories tall.
Financial responsibility	A FICO-derived credit score of 660 or higher, or a 14-hour Board-approved financial responsibility course. No state surety bond is required.
State exam	A passing score on the Florida general contractor examination.
Insurance	General liability and property-damage coverage, plus workers’ compensation, or a filed exemption.

All four attach to the certified — statewide — path; registration is the separate, geography-limited route set out on certified vs registered contractor in Florida. This page describes the General class; the Florida building contractor license and the CRC scope and its two-story ceiling carry their own rules, set side by side on Florida contractor license types compared.

Not every scope reaches the licensing line in the first place. Whether work falls inside one of the contractor categories in Fla. Stat. 489.105(3) is the prior question, drawn under whether a license is required at all, and a trade scope is measured against its own class rather than this one — see requirements for a trade class. All of it is administered by the board that sets these rules.

Experience

Rule 61G4-15.001, Florida Administrative Code, and the DBPR CILB 5-A set the experience test for a Certified General applicant: four years of construction experience, at least one year of it as a foreman; experience in four or more of the six structural areas the form lists; and one year on structures of four stories or more. The qualification methods, the areas themselves and the employment history that evidences them are on how experience is evidenced on CILB 5-A.

The controlling document is the DBPR CILB 5-A, the application for a Certified General Contractor as an individual, incorporated by Rule 61-35.010, F.A.C., and published on DBPR’s Construction Industry licensing pages.

Financial responsibility

Florida’s financial-responsibility rule, Fla. Admin. Code 61G4-15.006, gives two paths: a credit score, FICO derived, of 660 or higher, or completion of a 14-hour financial responsibility course approved by the Board for applicants unable to provide that score. The current rule, effective 5/5/2024, makes no mention of a required state surety bond. Third-party vendors market a “sub-660 bond,” but that is a private product rather than a state requirement, and the rule is written for “an applicant” with no differentiation by class.

The examination and insurance

The Florida general contractor examination is administered by the state’s exam vendor and has three Division I parts; its structure, fees, format and retake rules are set out on the Florida general contractor exam page. A passing result is one of the documents the application file carries. A building-construction degree can remove the trade paper, but not the part the degree exemption leaves standing.

Florida requires general liability and property-damage coverage, plus workers’ compensation where there are employees or a filed exemption where there are none.

The dollar minimums are fixed by Board rule rather than by a single statutory figure and differ by class — see Florida contractor insurance requirements.

What the statute adds, and what it does not require

The financial test is set out in full under the two grounds, and why no bond is required. Two conditions sit in the statute itself, ahead of the four. Fla. Stat. 489.111(2) provides that “A person shall be eligible for licensure by examination if the person: (a) Is 18 years of age;” and “(b) Is of good moral character;”. Refusal on the good-moral-character ground is bounded: 489.111(3)(a) permits it only on a substantial connection to a certified contractor’s professional responsibilities, proved by clear and convincing evidence, and 489.111(3)(b) adds written findings and appeal rights — set out in full under how a prior finding affects a later application.

Three things the statute does not ask of an applicant are worth naming, because each is commonly assumed. It imposes no requirement where the work is exempt — an owner building on their own property files under Fla. Stat. 489.103(7) instead, which is the owner-builder exemption and the disclosure it requires. It does not decide which class you apply for, a scope question worked through under what a building contractor may build against a general contractor and, for the instrument the certified route issues, the state certificate of competency. And it says nothing about how to prepare: the reference list you may carry into the sitting is covered under what the open-book format allows in the room, and sequencing under how to study for the three parts. An applicant arriving with a national trade examination follows a different sequence entirely — what a NASCLA pass reaches in Florida, and the year of eligibility that examination carries for the sitting itself.

What the statute asks after licensure is a separate matter from any of this — the biennial hours are set out under Board-approved continuing education.

Three things widely described as requirements are not conditions of initial licensure:

• Continuing education. CE is a renewal obligation rather than an entry condition. DBPR’s certified-contractor renewal insert states that “Continuing Education is required for active renewal; the total requirements are 14 hours” — see Florida contractor license renewal.
• A business entity. Certification is issued to the individual who qualifies; no corporation, LLC or partnership is needed to hold it. A business organization becomes licensed only by employing a qualifying agent under Fla. Stat. 489.119, and these conditions attach to that individual, the Florida contractor qualifying agent.
• A separate financial showing by the business. No general financial-responsibility requirement runs against the business organization itself; financial responsibility runs through the qualifying agent, and Fla. Stat. 489.119(7)(a) exempts organizations maintaining a minimum net worth of $20 million.

For the order in which these are satisfied and filed, follow the filing sequence, step by step; for what each stage costs, the full fee breakdown and calculator. The overview is the Florida general contractor license guide.

Common questions

How many years of experience do you need for a Florida general contractor license?

Rule 61G4-15.001 and the CILB 5-A require four years as a worker or foreman, at least one of them as a foreman. A four-year construction-related degree substitutes for three of those years, leaving one year of proven applicable experience. For the General class the form adds two conditions on top of whichever method is claimed: four or more of its six experience areas, and a year on structures of at least four stories.

Can you get a Florida contractor license without experience?

No method on the CILB 5-A dispenses with experience. The education routes reduce the site years rather than remove them, and the one route exempted from the employment-history section is a licensure-history method requiring four years of active current certification as a residential or building contractor.

Do you need a bond for a Florida general contractor license?

No. Fla. Admin. Code 61G4-15.006, effective 5/5/2024, requires a FICO-derived credit score of 660 or higher, or completion of a 14-hour Board-approved course — not a state surety bond. A “sub-660 bond” offered by a vendor is a private product, not a state requirement.

This page summarizes Florida law and is general information, not legal advice. Verify every detail with the Florida DBPR before acting.

Obligations that begin when work does are a separate body of law. A construction lien under chapter 713 attaches to the property rather than to the license, and its requirements sit outside chapter 489 entirely.

The exemption alternative in that row is narrower than it reads: the three-officer cap and ownership floor decide who may elect one at all, and a contractor engaging subcontractors has a separate duty to obtain their evidence — verifying a subcontractor’s coverage or exemption.

Qualifying a business carries duties of its own, and an affidavit about authority rather than about supervision alone: the responsibilities a qualifying agent takes on.