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California State Contractor License Scraper (CSLB)

LEAD GENERATION
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California State Contractor License Scraper (CSLB)

Scrape contractor license records from the California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) public portal at cslb.ca.gov. Supports two modes: direct lookup by license number, or enumeration by business name search. Returns full license detail for every matched record.

What you get

Each record includes:

Field Description
license_number CSLB contractor license number
business_name Contractor or business name
address Street address
city / state / zip Location
phone Business phone
entity_type Sole Ownership, Corporation, Partnership, etc.
issue_date Date license was issued
expire_date License expiration date
status Active, Inactive, Suspended, etc.
additional_status Any supplemental status notes
classifications Trade classifications (e.g. "C-7 - LOW VOLTAGE SYSTEMS")
bonding_info Bonding status summary
workers_comp Workers compensation status
license_url Direct link to the license detail page
scraped_at ISO timestamp of when the record was scraped

Input

Mode A — License number lookup (recommended for known contractors)

Provide a list of CSLB license numbers. Each number is fetched directly, returning its full detail page.

{
  "licenseNumbers": ["1000001", "963795", "856234"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Mode B — Business name search

Provide one or more business name prefixes. The actor POSTs each term to the CSLB name-search form, paginates through all result pages, then fetches each matched license's detail page.

{
  "searchTerms": ["smith construction", "abc plumbing"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

If both licenseNumbers and searchTerms are provided, Mode A runs first. If licenseNumbers is empty or omitted, Mode B runs.

Anti-bot / CAPTCHA

The CSLB portal loads a reCAPTCHA v2 script but does not render the widget on any lookup form and does not require CAPTCHA completion for license lookups. No proxy or bypass is needed — the actor sends direct unauthenticated HTTP requests using a Chrome User-Agent.

Rate limiting

Requests are spaced 500 ms apart per government-server courtesy. Requests are sequential. For large batches, the timeoutSecs default of 14 400 s (4 hours) is sufficient for tens of thousands of records.

Performance

  • Mode A: ~2 requests/record (ViewState bootstrap + detail POST)
  • Mode B: ~3 requests/record on average (bootstrap + search + detail)

Use cases

  • Contractor due-diligence and background verification
  • Lead generation for construction-related B2B services
  • License status monitoring for compliance teams
  • Building contractor directories or databases
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