Which States License Locksmiths? The Full List
Fourteen states currently require locksmiths to hold a state-issued license, and the full list is right below. In most of the rest of the country, anyone with a van and a set of picks can legally call themselves a locksmith by tomorrow morning, so which side of that line you live on changes how you vet the person coming to your door.
The 14 states with locksmith licensing
As of mid-2026, these states run a statewide locksmith license:
- Alabama
- California
- Connecticut
- Illinois
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Virginia
Live in one of these? Then every working locksmith you hire is supposed to carry a current license, and the state keeps a public record you can search for free.
What a license actually requires
Less than you'd hope, and it varies. The common thread is a criminal background check, usually with fingerprints. Some states add a written exam or required training. Others issue the license once the paperwork and the fee clear. Nobody is testing whether the applicant can pick a lock under pressure at midnight.
So treat a license as a minimum bar. It tells you the person cleared a background check and that a regulator knows where to find them. It does not cap prices. A licensed locksmith can still quote you $300 for a house lockout that typically runs $50 to $150, which means the usual homework on reviews and quotes still applies.
Where cities and counties step in
New York State doesn't license locksmiths, but New York City does. Florida has no statewide license either, and there two counties run their own programs: Miami-Dade and Hillsborough. Everywhere else in Florida, Jacksonville included, there's no license to look up at all. We broke down what to check instead in our guide to whether Florida licenses locksmiths, and the short answer is that you verify the company on Sunbiz, the state's official business registry, and ask for proof of insurance.
How to verify a license in two minutes
Ask for the license number on the phone, before anyone gets dispatched. A legitimate company hands it over without a pause. The number is usually printed on their invoices and often on the truck.
Then go to the state licensing board's website. Every licensing state has a public lookup where you can enter the number or the company name and see whether the license is current. Make sure the name on the license matches the name you were given. If the dispatcher dodges the question, or says "we're fully certified" without producing an actual number, call someone else.
What to do in the other 36 states
In the 36 states with no license to check, you verify the business instead. Four things do most of the work:
- Business registration with your state's corporate registry, under the same name they answer the phone with.
- A certificate of insurance, which any real company can email you in an afternoon.
- A physical street address, not a P.O. box or a stock photo of a storefront.
- Reviews that stretch back years, not forty glowing write-ups posted in the same month.
The ALOA (Associated Locksmiths of America) member directory is another useful signal, since members agree to a code of ethics. The FTC has warned for years about bait-and-switch locksmiths who quote $29 on the phone and demand $300 at the door, and that scam works the same in licensed and unlicensed states alike. Our guide on how to find a locksmith you can trust walks through the whole vetting routine step by step.
One habit beats everything above: run these checks once, on a calm weekday, and save the winning company's number in your phone. A license takes two minutes to verify when you're bored and zero seconds when you're standing in the rain outside a locked door, because nobody checks anything in the rain.
