How we verify
This is the whole standard. It is short on purpose. If you only read one part, read what the badge does not mean.
What we check
We check one thing, against one public record: the contractor's Florida license. That is the entire check. The three tables below say exactly how it is done, and the next section says what it does not cover.
Does an active license exist for this business?
| Where we check it | The licensee file published by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), for Sarasota County and Manatee County. |
|---|---|
| How often | On the day the listing is built, and again every month. |
| What it proves | The State of Florida showed the license as active on the date printed on the listing. Nothing more. |
What the license actually allows
| Where we check it | The license type and category in the same DBPR record — Certified Roofing Contractor, Certified Air Conditioning Contractor, and so on. |
|---|---|
| How often | Every month, with the license status. |
| What it proves | Which trade the state authorizes. A roofing license is not a plumbing license, and we list a contractor only under a trade their license covers. |
Does the listing match the record it came from?
| Where we check it | The same DBPR record, matched on license number and business name together. A match on one and not the other is not a match, and it is not published. |
|---|---|
| How often | Every month, and again on every correction someone sends us. |
| What it proves | The business name and trade on the listing are the ones in the public record. Where the two ever disagree, the record wins and the listing changes. |
Every listing carries one line showing the result and the day we got it, like this: License verified 8/11/26 · source: Florida DBPR. If we checked it and it failed, the listing is not up.
Where the data comes from
DBPR publishes its licensee file for anyone to download. We pull the rows for the two counties this registry covers — Sarasota, which the state files as county 68, and Manatee, which it files as 51 — and we build from the current file, never an archived one.
We do not buy this data from a broker, we do not copy another directory, and we do not take a contractor's word for a license number. If the state record does not say it, the listing does not say it.
What the badge means
A Verified badge on this site means all three of these were true on the date shown:
- The State of Florida listed an active license for this contractor.
- The license covers the trade we listed them under.
- The business name and trade on the listing match the public record we pulled them from.
That is the whole badge.
What the badge does NOT mean
- It is not a recommendation. We have not worked with these contractors. We are not vouching for them. We do not have a favorite.
- It is not proof of insurance. We do not hold anyone's certificate of insurance and we have never seen one, so we say nothing at all about it. Ask the contractor for a current certificate of insurance in writing before you sign anything, and call the agent listed on it.
- It is not an inspection. We have never been to their job sites. We have not looked at their work, their crew, their trucks, or their punch list.
- It is not a background check. We do not look at criminal history, credit, or personal records.
- It is not a complaint or lawsuit search. We do not pull disciplinary history, liens, judgments, or court filings.
- It is not a check of the company's other filings. We do not check corporate registration, and we do not check permit history. The license record is the only record behind the badge.
- It is not a promise about anything they will do on your house. No warranty, no guarantee, no assurance of any kind.
- It is not today's status. It is the status on the date printed on the listing. Licenses change. Before you sign anything, look the license up yourself — it is free and it takes about a minute.
Look up any Florida license yourself →
And ask for the certificate of insurance in writing before you sign. That one request protects you more than any badge on any directory.
How often we check again
We re-run the check monthly, on the whole list at once, and we stamp each listing with the date it last passed.
If a license goes inactive, expired, suspended, revoked, or null, the listing comes down. Not flagged. Down. We take it down within two business days of the check that caught it.
If a check fails because a state system is down or a record is unclear, the listing keeps its last verified date and we do not re-stamp it. We never move a verification date forward without having actually re-verified it. An old date is honest. A fresh date we did not earn is a lie, and it is the exact lie this page exists to prevent.
Trades where there is no state license to check
Florida does not license every home-services trade, and a registry that pretends otherwise is lying about the easy part. Right now this site covers 6 trades, and the state licenses every one of them — which is why every listing here carries a license number.
Trades Florida does not license at the state level include handyman work, pressure washing, most landscaping, painting, flooring, concrete and pavers, garage doors, and appliance repair. There is no state credential to check, so there is nothing for a badge to stand on. Those trades are not on this site.
When we do add them, a listing in one of those trades will carry no badge and no license block. In place of one it will say that no Florida state license is required for that trade, and it will name whatever we did check and the day we checked it. Either we verified a state license or we did not. We will not badge a business off a county business tax receipt and call it the same thing.
Pest and termite control is the exception worth naming. Florida does license it — through the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, a different agency from DBPR, publishing a different list. That list is not the file we pull, so pest control is not on this site yet either.
Impact windows, screen enclosures, and docks and seawalls are a third case. Florida licenses them, but the state file we pull records them only as Certified Specialty Contractor and does not say which specialty. We will not guess a specialty from a business name, so those trades wait until we can read the specialty off the record.
What a listing does not have, and why
The DBPR file has no phone number, no email address, no photo, no hours and no description in it. It has a business name, a license, a status, dates, and a city. That is why most listings here are thin. A thin listing is a thin public record — it is not a sign that the business is small, new, or out of work.
A small number of listings do show a phone number or a website. Every one of those was read off that business's own site, and the listing names the site and the date we read it, right next to the number. If we cannot source it, we do not publish it, and a blank is better than a wrong number on somebody's page.
The address on a DBPR license record is a mailing address, and for a small contractor it is very often a home. We never publish it. Listings show the city and county of record only, and each one says plainly that a city of record is where the license is filed, not a claim about where the business works.
The rest fills in when a contractor claims their listing and writes it themselves. Until then, nothing on the listing came from anywhere but a public record.
Insurance — read this part
We do not say anything about a contractor's insurance on this site, because we have not seen anyone's certificate.
Most directories print a line about insurance next to every name on the list. They cannot know that. Insurance is a certificate that gets issued, and it lapses, gets cancelled, or comes up short on coverage without anyone announcing it. We are not going to print a word we cannot stand behind.
So if a listing does not say we have seen a certificate, we have not. Every listing on this site says exactly that today, and it says it in plain gray type, not as a warning — most of these contractors are covered and we simply do not hold the paper.
If a contractor sends us a certificate, we will show what the certificate said and the date we received it: the carrier, the coverage type, and the policy period, straight off the document. We still will not tell you it is in force today, because we do not have a live feed to their carrier and neither does anyone else.
What to do instead, every time: ask the contractor for a current certificate of insurance made out to you, get it in writing before you sign, and call the insurance agent listed on it. Any contractor worth hiring does this without complaint. One that stalls on it is telling you something.
How we make money, and what it does not buy
Suncoast Registry makes money one way: paid placement. Neither price touches verification, and neither one can.
No listing on this site is paid today. Not one. Everything you are looking at is a free listing built from the public record.
- Featured — paid placement, $49 a month. A contractor pays to sit at the top of their trade category, with photos and a longer description. Every one is labeled on the page, everywhere it appears.
- Exclusive partner — paid placement, $199 a month. The same position, capped at two contractors per trade per ZIP code. Also labeled paid placement, everywhere it appears.
That is the whole business. We do not sell your phone number, we do not sell leads, we do not take a cut of anybody's job, and we do not charge homeowners for anything, ever.
What money cannot do here:
- It cannot get a contractor verified. Verification is a state record check with a pass or a fail in it, and no human judgment for money to lean on.
- It cannot make verification happen faster. Paid and free listings go through the same monthly check on the same day.
- It cannot keep a listing up after a license lapses. A paying contractor whose license goes inactive comes down the same as a free one.
- It cannot hide a correction or take one off a listing.
- It cannot buy a review, weight a review, or filter a review.
- It cannot get anyone into a trade their license does not cover.
- It cannot change one character of the license record block. Paid placement moves position on the page and nothing else.
Placement is paid. Verification is not for sale. If that ever changes, this page changes first, on the day it changes.
When we get it wrong
Public records have errors in them and so do we. If something on a listing is wrong, tell us and we will fix it or take it down.
- We reply within two business days.
- While we are checking a disputed fact, we hide that fact on the listing rather than leave it up with a question mark next to it.
- If a correction is right, we fix it within five business days and note the date the listing was corrected.
- If we cannot confirm a correction from a public record, we take the disputed item off the listing instead of guessing.
- Nobody has to pay us, sign up, or talk to a salesperson to get something fixed.
Where the listings came from
We built this list before anyone signed up for it.
We took the State of Florida's public licensee file, pulled every active contractor license filed in Sarasota and Manatee County, and published the ones that passed the checks above. 4200 listings, and most of the contractors on this site do not know they are on it yet.
Every listing we built this way says so on its face, with the record it came from and the date we built it, above the fold and not in a footnote. Nothing on a listing came from anywhere but a public record until the contractor claims it and fills it in themselves.
If a contractor wants their listing gone, they email us and it is gone. No argument, no retention offer, no phone call.
Who runs this
Suncoast Registry is operated by Cibbee. Cibbee is run by Bryant Burdine, a general contractor licensed in Indiana who spent ten years on the other side of this — pulling permits, pricing jobs, and watching homeowners have no practical way to check whether the person in their driveway held a license.
Suncoast Registry does not perform, bid, negotiate, arrange, or sell construction work in Florida, and neither does Cibbee. We publish a list. The contractors on it are independent businesses. Nobody on this site works for us.
This page was last changed 8/11/26. When the standard on it changes, this page changes and the date moves.