Georgia Contractor Compliance, License & Insurance Requirements
The complete onboarding checklist for GCs and property managers hiring in Georgia: which board licenses which work, the insurance the state ties to a license, the workers’ comp rule that can make an uninsured sub’s injury your claim, and what to collect before anyone starts.
State licensing quick-check
Verifying one Georgia license by hand?
The Secretary of State’s GOALS search covers general contractors and the electrical, plumbing, conditioned air, low-voltage and utility boards. It needs at least two fields: pick the profession, then a license number or a name. Search Business/Facility to see a company’s license and its qualifying agent.
Open the GOALS licensee searchManaging a roster of Georgia subs?
A lookup is right today. It doesn’t watch the dates.
Georgia contractor licenses all expire on the same day — the last cycle closed June 30, 2026, the next closes June 30, 2028 — while each sub’s GL and workers’ comp policies renew on dates of their own. TrackMyVendor keeps every one of those dates on one roster and shows what’s expiring.
Track COIs and licenses free →In Georgia, anyone contracting residential or general construction work worth more than $2,500 needs a license from the State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors, in one of four categories. Electrical, plumbing, conditioned air, low-voltage and utility work is licensed separately, by the State Construction Industry Licensing Board. Holding a contractor license requires $300,000 or $500,000 of general liability coverage, and workers' compensation is required once a business has three or more employees. Because O.C.G.A. § 34-9-8 can make a GC liable for an uninsured sub's injured worker, collect proof of coverage from every sub.
In this guide
Georgia trade licensing requirements and boards
Georgia splits contractor licensing between two boards, both run by the Secretary of State’s Professional Licensing Boards division:
- The State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors licenses building work. A license is required once the value of the work, or the contractor’s compensation for it, whichever is higher, exceeds $2,500 (O.C.G.A. § 43-41-2).
- The State Construction Industry Licensing Board licenses the trades through five divisions: Conditioned Air, Electrical, Low Voltage, Master and Journeyman Plumbers, and Utility Contractors. Each division sets its own license classes and rules.
The four residential and general contractor categories
The category on the license decides what the contractor may build. A sub licensed in the wrong one is unlicensed for that job, so check the category, not just that a license exists.
| Category | What it covers | GL to hold it | Net worth | CE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential-Basic | Detached one- and two-family homes, and one-family townhouses up to three stories, with their accessory buildings | $300K per occurrence | $25K | 3 hrs / year |
| Residential-Light Commercial | Everything Residential-Basic covers, plus multifamily and multiuse light commercial buildings under four stories and under 25,000 sq ft (pre-engineered steel up to 50,000 sq ft) | $500K per occurrence | $25K | 6 hrs / year |
| General Contractor | Any building or structure, with no limit on type or contract size | $500K per occurrence | $150K | None |
| General Contractor — Limited Tier | The same work as a General Contractor, on projects of up to $1 million each | $500K per occurrence | $25K | None |
A General Contractor may do everything a residential contractor may. Two limits catch GCs out: a Limited Tier sub cannot take a contract over $1 million, and a Residential-Light Commercial sub cannot take a four-story building.
For property managers: a vendor you hire directly for a renovation or build-out over $2,500 is the contractor on that job. It needs the license (or an exemption below) itself, whoever it subcontracts to.
Trade licenses, and what a trade contractor may take on
Electricians, plumbers, HVAC (conditioned air), low-voltage and utility contractors hold a license from their own division of the Construction Industry Licensing Board. All of them appear in the same GOALS search. A trade contractor may contract directly with an owner for a job that is mostly their trade, with other work incidental to it, up to the greater of $10,000 or 25% of the contract (O.C.G.A. § 43-41-17). Past that, the job needs a residential or general contractor.
Who is exempt
- Specialty contractors the board recognises (it publishes the lists) may do limited, specialty or single-trade work without a residential or general license, within the same $10,000-or-25% limit on other work. They still need a trade license for any electrical, plumbing, conditioned air, low-voltage or utility work.
- Repair work that does not affect the structural integrity of the property is exempt, provided the contractor discloses that they are not licensed. Much of a property manager’s routine maintenance falls here.
- Owner-builders building for their own use, not for sale or lease, need no license.
A company is licensed through its qualifying agent
An LLC or corporation does not pass the exam; a person does. Each contracting company registered with the Georgia Corporations Division must have at least one licensed qualifying agent, and the company’s license runs through them. When a qualifying agent leaves, the board must be told within 30 days, and the company then has 180 days to finish open contracts before its license number goes inactive. Search the company, not just the owner’s name, and if the qualifying agent has changed recently, ask who replaced them.
Renewal, continuing education and out-of-state subs
- Residential and general contractor licenses renew every two years, by June 30 of even-numbered years. The last deadline was June 30, 2026; the next is June 30, 2028.
- Residential contractors must complete continuing education each year (3 hours for Residential-Basic, 6 for Residential-Light Commercial), and since January 1, 2026 it has to be recorded in CE Broker. General Contractor licenses carry no CE requirement.
- A license from another state does not let a sub work in Georgia. Reciprocity exists for Residential-Basic with Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, and for General Contractor with Louisiana and Mississippi, but it is still an application the sub has to make and win.
Check the license before the contract is signed. Georgia tests a contractor’s license on the contract’s effective date or the first day of work. An unlicensed contractor cannot enforce the contract and loses its lien and bond rights for that work (O.C.G.A. § 43-41-17(b)), and a dispute with a sub who has no enforceable contract is a dispute nobody controls.
Mandatory insurance and COI requirements in Georgia
Georgia ties insurance to the license rather than to the job. Insurance is a condition of applying for and keeping a residential or general contractor license. Beyond that, the state sets almost nothing for private work, so the minimums your subs carry are the ones your subcontract writes down.
| Coverage | What Georgia requires | What GCs usually require by contract |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial General Liability | $300K per occurrence for Residential-Basic; $500K for Residential-Light Commercial and both General Contractor categories. No state minimum for trades or exempt specialty contractors | $1M per occurrence / $2M aggregate, including products-completed operations |
| Workers' Compensation | Required once a business regularly has three or more employees in Georgia (O.C.G.A. § 34-9-2) | Statutory limits from every sub, whatever its headcount (see below) |
| Employer's Liability | No state minimum | $500K–$1M each accident / disease, usually part of the WC policy |
| Commercial Auto | No minimum specific to contractors | $1M combined single limit |
| Umbrella / Excess | No state minimum | $1M–$5M, by project size and trade |
The license minimum is a floor for holding the license, not a sensible limit for your job. A Residential-Basic sub carrying exactly $300,000 is licensed, and still well short of what most subcontracts ask for. Pass down whatever your prime contract or your owner requires of you.
Workers’ comp: the three-employee rule
A Georgia business with fewer than three employees regularly in service is outside the workers’ compensation law unless it chooses to be covered. Many small subs, including two-person crews and owner-operators, legally carry no workers’ comp at all. Their certificate is not wrong to omit it. The question is who pays when one of their workers is hurt on your site.
Under O.C.G.A. § 34-9-8, that can be you. A principal or intermediate contractor is liable for workers’ compensation to a subcontractor’s injured employee, to the same extent as the sub, when the injury happens on premises where the contractor is doing the work or that it controls. The claim goes to the sub first. But if the sub is too small to be covered by the law, the claim can go straight to the contractor above it.
You can recover what you pay from the sub, if the sub has anything to recover from. Georgia courts treat a contractor that carries this liability as a statutory employer, immune from that worker’s negligence suit, which is the trade the statute makes. The practical cost lands on your own policy: an uninsured sub’s payroll is commonly added to yours at your carrier’s premium audit.
What to require, then:
- Workers’ comp with statutory limits from every sub that has employees, written into the subcontract, not only onto a COI checklist.
- For a sub that genuinely has no coverage, its headcount in writing, and a deliberate decision with your broker about whether to accept it. Don’t let it happen by default.
- A check that the people the sub sends are its employees. Crews paid as 1099 contractors are the usual gap.
How an auditor treats uninsured subs, and what certificates to keep for it: workers' comp audits for subcontractors.
Endorsements on the ACORD 25: contract terms, not state law
No Georgia statute requires a sub to name you as additional insured. These are subcontract terms, and the certificate is only evidence of them. The endorsement on the policy is what actually grants the coverage.
- Additional insured on the sub’s GL (and auto, where you require it), for ongoing and completed operations. See CG 20 10 vs CG 20 37.
- Primary and non-contributory, so the sub’s policy pays before yours. See primary and non-contributory.
- Waiver of subrogation on GL, auto and WC, so the sub’s insurer cannot come after you for what it paid.
Georgia’s anti-indemnity statute reaches insurance too. O.C.G.A. § 13-8-2(b) voids any promise in a construction contract to indemnify, hold harmless, insure or defend someone against injury or damage caused by their own sole negligence. Workers’ comp is unaffected, and so are requirements to buy project-specific insurance such as builder’s risk, owner’s or contractor’s protective liability, and wrap-up (OCIP/CCIP) policies. Have your broker or counsel read the insurance exhibit with that in mind.
How TrackMyVendor automates this
- Every certificate is read on upload — carrier, policy numbers, each coverage row’s limits and its own dates — and measured against the minimums you set, so a missing WC line or a $300K GL limit shows as short.
- Georgia licenses are tracked on their own expiration dates beside the certificates, so the June 30 renewal sits on the same roster as every policy.
- Per-deadline reminders at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days go to your team and to the sub, with the upload link in the sub’s copy. Starter and above
- The endorsement pages are read too — additional insured, waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory — so a ticked box with no endorsement behind it shows as a gap. Pro
Working with a Georgia sub: vet, onboard, stay compliant
Everything above, put in the order you meet it.
Vet before you hire
- Search the company in GOALS under Business/Facility and confirm an active license in the category the job needs. Watch for a Limited Tier sub on a contract over $1 million, or a Residential-Light Commercial sub on a four-story building.
- For trade work, check the license from the right division. An electrician bidding the whole job must keep the non-electrical part under $10,000 or 25% of the contract, whichever is greater.
- Ask how many employees the sub has before you price the risk. Under three, it may legally carry no workers’ comp.
Go deeper: How vetting a prospect works · Free subcontractor prequalification form · 5-minute contractor verification checklist
Onboard before work starts
- A certificate showing GL at your contract’s limits, not the license minimum, with additional insured, primary and non-contributory and waiver of subrogation backed by the endorsements.
- Workers’ comp, or the sub’s employee count in writing and a decision you made on purpose.
- A signed W-9 before the first payment, the license number on file, and the subcontract signed after the license check, not before.
Go deeper: Subcontractor onboarding checklist · Collecting COIs, W-9s and licenses in one link · W-9 collection
Stay compliant while they work
- Each GL, auto and WC policy on its own expiration date. They rarely renew together.
- Every residential and general contractor license expires June 30, 2028. Trade licenses follow their own division’s cycle.
- A changed qualifying agent: the company has 180 days to finish open work before its license number goes inactive.
Go deeper: Expiration alerts · COI tracking · Workers' comp audits and uninsured subs
Onboarding Georgia subs?
Everything above is a check you can run by hand. This is what it looks like when it runs itself.
On the free plan
- Your first 25 subs, no credit card
- Subs upload certificates, licences and W-9s through a one-time link — no account, no app
- Every certificate read automatically: coverage rows, limits and each policy’s own dates
- Every Georgia licence tracked on its own expiration date, with the same alerts
- A Monday summary of everything expired or expiring
Per-deadline alerts at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days, sent to your team and to the sub, start on Starter. Compare plans
Stop checking by hand
Set up your roster today
Add your subs — or import the whole list from a spreadsheet on Starter — send each a one-time upload link, and the certificates, licences and W-9s arrive already read. No demo, no sales call, no implementation project.
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Explore what it does: Sub onboarding · COI tracking · Expiration alerts · W-9 collection