Illinois Contractor License Requirements: Roofing Is the Exception

Short answer: Illinois has no statewide general contractor license and no dollar threshold that triggers one. Two trades are licensed by the state anyway: roofing, through IDFPR under the Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act, and plumbing, through the Illinois Department of Public Health. Everything else — general contracting, electrical, HVAC — is left to the municipality, so Chicago’s rules are not Peoria’s. Statewide, the Home Repair and Remodeling Act still applies once a residential job passes $1,000.

Most state licensing pages start with a board and a dollar figure. Illinois gives you neither for general work, which is why so much national advice gets this state wrong. Tax is a separate track — the IRS federally, and the Illinois Department of Revenue for the use tax on your materials, covered in Illinois sales tax for contractors. This page is only about permission to do the work.

Does Illinois have a statewide contractor license?

No. There is no Illinois equivalent of California’s CSLB or Arizona’s Registrar of Contractors, no state application to fill in, and no aggregate contract price that flips you from unlicensed to licensed. A general remodeler here can take a $200,000 kitchen with no state license and be lawful at state level. That is structure, not a loophole: the regulation sits in three other places — the two trades the state carved out, the city where the job sits, and the Home Repair and Remodeling Act.

Which trades does Illinois license at the state level?

Two, and one of them makes Illinois unusual.

Work	Licensed by	Statewide license?
Roofing	Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR)	Yes — 225 ILCS 335
Plumbing	Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH)	Yes — 225 ILCS 320
General contracting	Your municipality, where it licenses at all	No
Electrical	Your municipality, where it licenses at all	No
HVAC / mechanical	Your municipality, where it licenses at all	No

Roofing is the surprise: Illinois licenses roofing contractors statewide under the Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act, which most states do not. Plumbing is licensed twice over — the individual plumber holds a license under the Illinois Plumbing License Law, and the business holds a separate plumbing contractor registration with IDPH. If you plumb for hire, you need both.

The plumbing contractor registration runs on its own calendar and its own rulebook, the Plumbing Contractor Registration Code (77 Ill. Adm. Code 894). It expires on September 30 whatever month you registered, the application IDPH posts states a $150 annual registration fee — that form carries an older revision date, so confirm the figure with the Department before you send it — and the Department will not let one plumber be the Plumber of Record for more than one company at a time. The Plumber of Record has to be the sole owner, a partner, an officer or a manager/member depending on how you are organised — not a hired hand. Changes of business structure, name, location or licensed plumber must reach IDPH within 15 days. If your Plumber of Record holds a Chicago-issued plumbing license, you also send IDPH a copy within 15 days of each Chicago renewal, plus proof of four hours of approved continuing education taken after October 1 of the renewal year.

What does an Illinois roofing license actually require?

The Act splits the license in two by the size of building you are allowed to work on. IDFPR’s own application packet (DPR-RF, packet updated October 2024) defines them:

	Limited roofing license	Unlimited roofing license
Scope	Residential roofing, including residential properties of 8 units or less	Roofing “unlimited in nature” — residential, commercial and industrial
IDFPR bond form to file	BD-LRF	BD-URF

The bond itself is written by a bonding company licensed in Illinois onto the Department’s own BD form, and the instructions tell you flatly not to change the language on it. The Department sets the bond amount and the required public liability and property damage figures by rule rather than leaving them on the application, and the only proof of that insurance IDFPR accepts is its RF-INS form completed by your insurer — so take both numbers from IDFPR or the Roofing Industry Licensing Rules, not from a blog. Illinois contractor insurance requirements unpacks that side.

Three things on the packet catch applicants out. The application fee is $125, and it is not refundable. The license expires on December 31 of each odd-numbered year regardless of when it was issued, so a license bought in November is a fourteen-month license. And the licence attaches to the business but runs through one person: each entity designates a qualifying party — the owner if a sole proprietorship — who is authorised to act for the business, supervises roofing installation operations, is engaged in day-to-day activities, and must pass the Illinois Residential or the Residential, Commercial and Industrial examination within three years of the application or forfeit the fee. No one may be qualifying party for more than one licensee, except for a second entity under at least 25 percent common ownership or a licensed subsidiary. Lose your qualifying party and the license becomes inoperable until you name a replacement.

If the business has employees, IDFPR also wants proof of workers’ compensation for roofing — a certificate of insurance, or the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission’s Certificate of Approval as a Self-Insurer — plus a Statement of Account from the Illinois Department of Employment Security giving your unemployment insurance account number and confirming you are not delinquent.

Section 11 of the Act sets out who falls outside it, and the owner working on their own property is the exemption homeowners ask about. Read that section itself before relying on any exemption; the list is narrower than word of mouth suggests.

Who licenses general contractors in Illinois, then?

Your city. Chicago is worth knowing even if you never work there, because other Illinois municipalities borrow its pattern.

The Chicago Department of Buildings issues its own General Contractor license, graded into classes, and the class you hold caps the value of the work you may take on inside the city. You apply in the class that covers the jobs you want to bid. Chicago has revised the licence and its fees in recent years, and this page states no class limits, fees, bond or insurance figures for it deliberately — the city publishes them and changes them, so read them off the city’s page on the day you apply.

Outside Chicago, expect variation: some municipalities license and bond general contractors, some only register them, some do nothing beyond permits. The permit desk where the work sits is the authority that matters. Illinois publishes no consolidated list of which municipalities license contractors, which is why the call to the building department is unavoidable.

What does the Home Repair and Remodeling Act require of every Illinois contractor?

This is the statewide rule that binds you whether or not anyone licensed you, and it is the one solo remodelers most often miss. The Attorney General posts the Act as enacted, Public Act 91-0230, effective January 1, 2000, alongside its home repair guidance. Under 815 ILCS 513:

• Over $1,000, you need a written contract or work order furnished to the customer for signature before you initiate the work, stating the total cost, with parts and materials listed with reasonable particularity, and any charge for an estimate. It carries your business name and address — plus your residence address if you take business correspondence through a PO box, mail receiving service or agent.
• You must hand over the “Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights” pamphlet. Over $1,000, the consumer signs and dates a “Consumer Rights Acknowledgment Form” and so do you; the form is in duplicate and bound into the pamphlet, you keep the original and the customer keeps the duplicate inside the pamphlet. At $1,000 or under the pamphlet is still required; no written acknowledgment is. The pamphlet must be a separate document in at least 12 point type.
• You must carry the Act’s minimum liability insurance, unless your net worth is at least $1,000,000 on your most recent financial statement, prepared within 13 months.

Check the scope before you assume it binds a given job, because Illinois drew it narrowly. A “residence” under the Act is a single-family home or a multi-family building of six or fewer units, so a 12-flat is outside it. The Act does not apply to original construction of single-family or multi-family residences, nor to repairs to dwellings with more than six apartments or family units. And plain maintenance, service or repairs under $500 fall outside the definition of home repair and remodeling altogether, as do carpet sales and installation, landscaping, and appliance work done by the merchant that sold the appliance.

Section 30 makes it an unlawful act to remodel, repair or charge for repair work over $1,000 before obtaining a signed contract or work order. Section 35 puts enforcement with the Attorney General or a State’s Attorney and provides that any violation of the Act is also a violation of the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act — which is where a homeowner’s private remedies come from. Getting the contract right is the cheapest compliance you will buy; what to include on an invoice covers the document that follows it.

What happens if you work unlicensed in Illinois?

It depends which rule you broke, and the answers are not symmetrical.

Roofing without an IDFPR license is the sharp end: the Act carries a civil penalty payable to the Department for each offense under Section 10a and criminal exposure under Section 9.8, and IDFPR can issue a cease-and-desist order under Section 10b. The penalty amounts have been amended more than once, so treat any figure you read secondhand as stale and take the current one from the Act. There is a quieter cost too — the application asks whether you are delinquent in complying with workers’ compensation obligations, and under 20 ILCS 2105/2105-15(g-5) the Department must refuse or revoke a license for anyone the Workers’ Compensation Commission or the Department of Insurance has found failed to secure those obligations. Plumbing without a license, or without a current IDPH registration, puts both your registration and your plumber of record’s license in play.

General contracting without a municipal license is a city matter: stop-work orders, permit refusal, fines, usually no further permits. Separately, a subcontractor preserving a mechanics lien must serve the owner written notice within the window 770 ILCS 60/24 allows after completing the work, by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, delivery limited to addressee only. That window is short, it is not the same for every kind of property, and missing it can cost the lien outright — read the section rather than a remembered number.

How does a homeowner verify an Illinois contractor’s license?

Through the agency, for the two state-licensed trades. IDFPR runs a public license lookup confirming whether a roofing contractor holds a current limited or unlimited license, and IDPH holds the plumbing records. Roofing license numbers all begin 104-, which is the profession code IDFPR prints on the application, so a number that does not start that way is not a roofing contractor license. For general contracting the homeowner calls the municipal building department — there is no state list to search, because there is no state license to list. Put your number on the estimate and the invoice by default; the Roofing Act requires licensees to display it, and a homeowner who can read it off your paperwork is a homeowner who stops shopping.

What do you have to keep once you are working in Illinois?

Licensing is one afternoon; the documentary burden is permanent. In Illinois it is specific: a signed pre-start contract on every residential job over $1,000, a signed pamphlet acknowledgment, material receipts proving what you paid use tax on, and a clean per-job record for the day a lien notice or an IDFPR complaint arrives. That is a record-keeping problem, not a licensing one. Keel is an iOS app that keeps those records entirely on the device — no account, no bank connection, no cloud sync, App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. It produces invoice PDFs with your own numbering, logo and payment-link QR code; captures receipts read on-device with Apple Intelligence; logs mileage; and writes everything into an append-only, hash-chained ledger you can export as one file per year or as an Accountant Pack. Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase.

Keel does not apply for your IDFPR license, register you with IDPH, or file anything with your city — it keeps the paper trail those things depend on. If your receipts live in a truck console, a contractor receipt organizer is where to start.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a contractor license in Illinois?

For general contracting, not from the state — Illinois issues no statewide general contractor license and sets no dollar threshold. You almost certainly need one from the municipality where the job sits. If the work is roofing or plumbing, you need a state license anywhere in Illinois.

Why does Illinois license roofers but not general contractors?

Because the legislature carved roofing out separately under the Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act, administered by IDFPR. It is a trade-specific statute, not part of a general contractor scheme. Illinois is one of few states licensing roofing at state level while leaving general contracting to municipalities.

What is the difference between a limited and unlimited Illinois roofing license?

Scope, and the bond form that goes with it. Limited covers residential roofing including properties of 8 units or less and uses IDFPR’s BD-LRF bond form. Unlimited covers residential, commercial and industrial roofing and uses BD-URF. Both run through one qualifying party who has passed the Department’s examination. IDFPR sets the bond amount by rule, so confirm the current figure with the Department.

Is there a dollar threshold for contractor licensing in Illinois?

Not for licensing. The $1,000 figure people quote comes from the Home Repair and Remodeling Act and triggers paperwork, not a license: over $1,000 you must furnish a written contract for signature before initiating work, and get a signed acknowledgment that you gave the customer the consumer rights pamphlet.

Can I use my Chicago general contractor license in the suburbs?

No. A Chicago Department of Buildings general contractor license is a City of Chicago license and carries no authority outside the city. Illinois municipalities operate no reciprocity scheme for general contractor licensing, so working across jurisdictions can mean holding several registrations at once, each with its own class or fee schedule.

Does a homeowner need a license to work on their own roof in Illinois?

Section 11 of the Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act sets out the exemptions from the licensing requirement, and the owner working on their own property is the situation homeowners are usually asking about. Read that section before relying on it, and remember an exemption from state licensing does not remove any local permit requirement.

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This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change — confirm with the authority named above.