How to check a Pennsylvania contractor registration before you pay a deposit
A walkthrough of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's home improvement contractor registration search, including the verification hotline, what a result confirms, and what it leaves out. Uses PA HIC #PA2199962 as a live example readers can verify for themselves.
Go to hicsearch.attorneygeneral.gov and search the registration number your contractor gave you. If you do not have one, search the business name. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office also verifies by phone at 1-888-520-6680, and the search returns active registrations only. My registration number is PA2199962, so you can run the check right now and see what a real result looks like before you hand anybody a deposit.
Key facts
- The official lookup is hicsearch.attorneygeneral.gov, free and public, no account needed.
- The Home Improvement Registration Hotline is 1-888-520-6680. That line and HIC@attorneygeneral.gov handle registration questions and reports of unregistered contractors.
- A complaint about the work itself goes to the Attorney General's Bureau of Consumer Protection instead.
- You can search by registration number, business name, applicant name, address, city, ZIP, county, phone, or type of work.
- Pennsylvania registration numbers begin with PA. Mine is PA2199962.
- Registrations run two years and have to be renewed. The search shows active ones only.
How the Attorney General's contractor search works
The registry is one statewide database run by the Office of Attorney General, not a county office or a trade group. Open hicsearch.attorneygeneral.gov, type in what you have, and the results come back on the same page. You can download the results to a spreadsheet if you are comparing contractors.
I'm Thomas Darby, a registered Pennsylvania home improvement contractor (PA HIC #PA2199962) out of Lock Haven. My background and credentials sit on one page if you want to check them against the result.
Use the registration number if you have it, because that field returns one exact result. State systems do not always spell a business name the way the truck does, so a name search can come back empty even when the registration is good. If all you have is a flyer with no number on it, search the owner's name, or set the county filter to Clinton County and read down the list.
A blank screen does not always mean an unregistered contractor. A registration that expired last spring will not show up, because the search returns active ones only. The type-of-work filter is newer, with thin data for older registrations. An empty result there tells you about the database rather than about the contractor. When a search comes up dry and the contractor insists they are registered, call the hotline and ask a person.
What registration proves and what it doesn't
Registration proves that a business filed paperwork with the state. It does not prove the work is any good, and that is where most homeowners go wrong. The filing happens under HICPA, the Pennsylvania law that governs home improvement contracts.
The Attorney General says on its own page that registration is not an endorsement, recommendation, or approval of a contractor's competency or skill. Nobody from Harrisburg watched me set a rafter before that number was issued.
| What the search result confirms | What the result does not tell you |
|---|---|
| The business filed with the Attorney General and the registration is active today | Whether the work is any good |
| The legal business name and address on file with the state | Whether the crew that shows up is the business on the paperwork |
| The contractor stated they carry liability coverage at the state minimums | Whether that policy is still in force this week |
| That HICPA's contract rules apply to your job | Whether the contractor actually follows those rules |
The filing still carries real weight, though. Registering means giving the state a legal business name and address, and stating that the business carries personal injury and property damage liability coverage at the minimum levels Pennsylvania sets. It also puts your job under HICPA's contract rules.
Those rules require a written, signed contract carrying the registration number, the total price, the start and estimated completion dates, a description of the work, and notice of your right to cancel. The requirements have teeth. A contract missing them can end up voidable, meaning it may not hold up, and that is the contractor's problem rather than yours.
What to check besides the registry
The certificate of insurance
Ask the insurance agency for the certificate, not the contractor. A certificate of insurance is a summary of the policy and its dates, and any agent will email one to a homeowner who asks. Read the named insured, the business the policy actually covers, and confirm it matches the name in the registry result.
Then read the policy dates. A certificate dated two years ago proves a policy existed two years ago. What a policy covers in a specific situation is between the policyholder and the carrier. Treat the certificate as evidence that coverage exists rather than as a promise about how a future claim will go.
The written scope
Get the scope on paper before money moves. The scope is the line by line list of what the job includes, materials named. On the water-damage restoration I did in Lock Haven, every stage of the work was written out as line items before I started, down to the thickness of the plywood going back into the floor.
If your quote is a single number and one vague sentence, there is nothing to hold anybody to later. My own standard is a written quote back inside 48 hours, and the rest of how I work is on the FAQ page.
The deposit terms
The deposit is capped by law, not by custom. On all but the smallest home improvement contracts, a contractor may not take a deposit larger than a third of the contract price. If the contract names special-order materials, the cap is that third plus the cost of those materials. A contractor who wants nearly all the money before a single material is ordered is telling you something about their cash position. I don't take a deposit until you tell me to start.
Registration is not the same as a permit
Registration and permits are different, and people mix them up constantly. Registration is a statewide consumer filing with the Attorney General. A permit is local approval for your specific job, issued by whoever has jurisdiction where the house sits.
When I built the accessibility ramp in Loganton, I pulled the building permit and drew the plans myself. The homeowner and I changed the layout partway through, so I filed an amendment. My registration number did none of that work.
Asking who is pulling the permit is a fair question at the quote stage, and the answer should not be you. Permit rules vary by municipality, so Loganton borough and Lock Haven get confirmed separately before I price a ramp.
Common questions
Is a Pennsylvania contractor licensed or registered?
Registered. People say license and I know what they mean. Pennsylvania does not issue a statewide competency license for home improvement work. It runs a registration program under HICPA through the Attorney General's office. Individual trades and some municipalities add their own requirements on top. My HVAC work carries a separate EPA 608 Universal certification for refrigerant handling.
What if the contractor doesn't come up in the search?
Search the registration number first. A name mismatch is the most common reason the search misses someone who is registered. If you still get nothing, the registration may have lapsed rather than never existed, since only active ones come back. Call 1-888-520-6680 and ask. Unregistered contractors working above the state's annual threshold are what that hotline exists to hear about.
Does registration mean the contractor is insured?
Not by itself. To register, a contractor signs a statement that the business carries personal injury and property damage liability coverage at the levels Pennsylvania requires. The registry cannot tell you whether that policy is in force today. A registration runs two years, and a policy can lapse well inside that window. Ask the agency for a current certificate and check the effective dates yourself.
How much should I put down before work begins?
No more than a third of the contract price. HICPA caps the deposit rather than merely advising it, and the only addition is the cost of special-order materials named in the contract. Past that you are financing somebody else's business, and you have less leverage if the job stalls. I hold off on any deposit until you say go.
Run PA2199962 through the search yourself, then read who I am and how I work and decide from there.