About this site

I'm Dan. I practice workers' compensation law in Minneapolis, which means I meet construction work at its worst: after the fall, after the shock, after the uninsured contractor has stopped answering the phone. The pattern behind a remarkable number of those cases is the same one behind most bad home projects: nobody checked the license, the insurance, or the comp coverage before the work started.

MN Contractor Buddy puts the state's own license data where a homeowner can actually use it. Minnesota's Department of Labor and Industry publishes every license, registration, certification, and bond its Construction Codes and Licensing Division issues, refreshed nightly: electricians, plumbers, residential contractors and roofers, boiler operators, elevator constructors, and more. Our checker searches all of it in one box, shows the status, class, dates, and enforcement flags, and tells you the date we last checked the state's file.

Three commitments. First, searches here are anonymous: what you type in the checker is matched and discarded, never stored. Second, the numbers come from named public sources, cited on the page; when our copy and DLI's own lookup disagree, DLI's lookup controls, and we say so. Third, the license record is never for sale: no contractor can pay to edit, polish, or hide what the state file says about them on this site. Ever.

This site is an independent educational resource. It is not a government agency and not a law firm, and nothing on it is legal advice about your situation. If you ask to be connected with a plumber or electrician, your request is shared with the number of licensed Minnesota contractors you approve on the form; participating contractors may pay to receive inquiries, and that never changes what any license record shows. Details in the privacy policy.

MN Contractor Buddy is part of a small family of free Minnesota tools: Comp Buddy for work injuries, Hail Buddy for storm damage, Radon Buddy for radon testing, Rebate Buddy for energy rebates, and Wage Buddy for paychecks. Same builder, same rules: public data, cited sources, nothing about you stored.