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Texas doesn't license general contractors. It licenses trades — on three separate clocks, with three different points of no return.

Almost every "Texas contractor license" question starts in the wrong place. There is no statewide general-contractor license to renew, so the search that matters is not "when does my Texas contractor license expire" — it's "which of my trade licenses expires next, and under which agency." A Texas outfit doing mechanical and plumbing work under one roof is carrying licenses from two different agencies, with different renewal cycles, different continuing-education hours, and — the part that actually costs people their livelihood — different deadlines past which the license cannot be renewed at all and has to be earned again from scratch.

First: is there a Texas general-contractor license? No.

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation publishes its own list of regulated industries, and it runs from Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Contractors through Water Well Drillers — electricians, elevator safety, industrialized housing, mold remediation, residential solar retailers, tow trucks. There is no general-contractor or home-improvement-contractor program on it. General contracting in Texas is regulated by cities through permitting and local registration, not by a state licence, which is why a Dallas requirement and a Houston requirement can differ and why no single state renewal date exists to track.

Stated as a negative drawn from TDLR's own published program list rather than from a statute that says "no license is required" — if you are relying on this for a specific scope of work, confirm with the municipality you are pulling permits in, since city registration requirements are real even where a state licence is not.

Clock 1 — Electricians (TDLR): annual, 4 hours, and the contractor licence is the one that's exempt

TDLR requires 4 hours of continuing education before each renewal from master electricians, journeyman electricians, journeyman linemen, journeyman industrial electricians, residential wiremen, maintenance electricians, master sign electricians, journeyman sign electricians, and both apprentice classes. Apprentices can substitute enrolment in a department-registered apprenticeship training course.

The exemption is the part people get wrong in both directions: "Contractors and Residential Appliance Installers are not required to complete continuing education." So the business licence — Electrical Contractor — carries no CE obligation, while the master electrician of record who makes that licence possible carries 4 hours every year. Firms routinely buy CE they don't owe on the contractor licence, or assume the contractor licence's CE-free status covers the master. It doesn't.

The 4 hours have required subject matter

The coursework must address the National Electrical Code as adopted under Occupations Code §1305.101 (or the current NFPA-approved NEC), Texas Electrician Law (Title 8, Occupations Code, Chapter 1305), the Texas Electrician Administrative Rules (16 TAC Chapter 73), and electrical safety as defined in NFPA 70E. TDLR states plainly that if you have already taken four hours of NEC-only content, you must take an additional approved course of at least one hour in law, rules, or NFPA 70E safety — meaning the licensee who does the obvious thing and stacks four hours of code ends up owing five.

Three timing rules that quietly invalidate hours

• Hours must fall inside the term of the licence being renewed. TDLR's own worked example: a licence expiring January 1, 2021 must be renewed on courses taken between January 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021. Hours taken early — before the current term opened — do not count, and this is also the clearest confirmation that the electrician licence term is one year.
• Hold multiple licence types and you still owe only 4 hours total (holding both master and journeyman does not double the requirement) — but those courses must be taken during the period of the licence being renewed.
• An hour is 50 minutes of actual instruction, courses must come from a registered TDLR provider, no partial completion is accepted, and you cannot claim credit for the same course twice.

Reporting is the provider's responsibility, not yours, which is the failure mode worth guarding against: if a certificate hasn't arrived within 15 days of course end, or hours aren't showing in TDLR's lookup, chase the provider. You must keep your certificate of completion for one year, because a TDLR inspector can ask for it during an inspection or investigation.

The Electrical Contractor licence: $110, a master of record, and a hard 36-month wall

An electrical contractor must either employ a licensed master electrician or hold the master licence themselves, and a master electrician's licence may only be assigned to a single electrical contractor — unless that master owns more than 50 percent of the contracting business. Change your master of record and you must notify the department. Required business liability insurance is $300,000 per occurrence, $600,000 aggregate, and $300,000 aggregate for products and completed operations.

Renewal is $110 online. If you let it lapse, TDLR publishes an explicit ladder:

Clock 2 — Air conditioning and refrigeration (TDLR): annual, 8 hours, one of them Texas law

ACR contractors must complete 8 hours of approved continuing education each year, and the composition is prescribed: at least one hour must be instruction in Texas state law and rules regulating the conduct of licensees. Renewal is $65, and TDLR advises starting 30–60 days before expiry so the licence doesn't lapse mid-process.

Two details that differ from the electrical side and catch people who assume "TDLR is TDLR":

• Late renewal has its own CE timing rule. If you didn't finish CE before expiry you may still be eligible for a late renewal, but the courses must have been completed within the one-year period immediately before the date of renewal — a different test from the electrical rule, which measures against the licence term.
• There is no inactive status. The ACR law and rules do not provide for one. If you're out of the industry but want to keep the licence alive, the route is a waiver of insurance (submitted on the Notice of Change form, no fee) — and you still have to renew every year. A licensee holding an insurance waiver cannot perform or offer ACR contracting to the general public.

The expired-licence ladder here is a multiplier, not a flat fee

And the flat prohibition worth reading twice: you may not engage in air conditioning and refrigeration contracting while your licence is expired — the fee ladder is the price of getting back in, not permission to keep working meanwhile.

Three ACR facts that save real money

• Cities cannot charge you a registration fee. Since September 1, 2021, Occupations Code §1302.304 prohibits any municipality from charging registration fees to TDLR-licensed ACR contractors. It does not stop them collecting building permit fees — so a permit invoice is legitimate and a registration invoice is worth questioning.
• Reciprocity is exactly two states. Texas reciprocates on ACR with South Carolina and Georgia only, and the mechanism is a "letter of good standing" you request from TDLR. Separately, TDLR will accept experience earned in states or municipalities whose requirements are substantially equivalent — that's an experience credit, not reciprocity.
• Mini-splits are not exempt. The exemption for "a portable or self-contained ductless air conditioning product that has a cooling capacity of three tons or less" covers window units, thru-the-wall units and self-contained portables. A mini-split is a split system, not self-contained, so contracting work on one requires the licence (Occupations Code §1302.058).

Clock 3 — Plumbers (TSBPE): annual, 6 hours, and a first expiration date you cannot predict

Plumbing is a different agency entirely — the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners — with four licence types (Tradesman Plumber-Limited, Journeyman Plumber, Master Plumber, Plumbing Inspector). Licences renew annually and all licensees must complete six hours of continuing professional education to be eligible to renew.

How the licences stack — and where the stacking stops

• You may hold Journeyman and Master at the same time. The Master licence is automatically assigned an expiration date matching the Journeyman licence, and at renewal you pay only the Master fee.
• A Plumbing Inspector licence does not join that sync — it renews in January, on its own clock. Hold all three as an unaffiliated inspector and you pay both the Master and the Inspector renewal fees; as an affiliated inspector, only the Inspector fee.
• Endorsements (Medical Gas Piping Installation, Multipurpose Residential Fire Protection Sprinkler Specialist, Water Supply Protection Specialist) renew once every three years, initially synced to the licence they sit on. The Medical Gas Piping Installation endorsement carries its own 2 hours of CPE.
• Registrations (Plumber's Apprentice, plus Drain Cleaner-Restricted, Drain Cleaner and Residential Utilities Installer) renew annually, again with a random 6–18 month first date. The three add-on registrations each require 6 hours of CE to renew.

So a single Texas plumbing professional can be carrying an annual licence on a random date, a three-year endorsement on a date derived from that, and — if they inspect — a second licence that renews every January regardless. Four renewal obligations, three different cycle lengths, one agency.

The two-year cliff, and why it is worse than it sounds

TSBPE states it directly: you cannot renew a licence, registration or endorsement that has been expired for more than two years. Instead you must reinstate — and in the board's own words, "when your license or registration goes into reinstate, it is like you never held that license or registration at all." Reinstating means registering as a Plumber's Apprentice and applying for and passing all applicable exams again.

The sting is in the eligibility test: to take the exam you must meet all CURRENT eligibility requirements, even if those requirements did not exist when you first qualified. TSBPE's own example — a journeyman licensed before February 1, 2010 who never completed an apprenticeship programme would now have to complete the 48-hour training programme to be eligible to sit the journeyman exam. A licence earned under an older, lighter rule set does not come back under that rule set. It comes back under today's.

Three clocks, three cliffs — side by side

Blank or "confirm" cells mean the source consulted for this page did not state the rule — not that no rule exists. Confirm with the board before relying on any row.

One more thing that stops a renewal cold: child support

TDLR licences can be flagged non-renewable by the Office of the Attorney General's Child Support Division when its records show no payment in more than six months. You may not use the licence after its expiration date while in that status, you cannot apply for renewal until TDLR receives a release from CSD, and there is a 365-day window from the expiration date to apply for late renewal once released. Miss that and the licence cannot be late-renewed at all. TDLR sends notice roughly 65 days before expiry if no release has arrived — which is a warning that arrives well inside the window, but only if the address on file is current.

Related reading

• State-by-state renewal reference — renewal cycles and CE hours across states, with the governing board linked in every row.
• What happens when a licence lapses or expires — how the lapse windows compare state to state.
• Reciprocity between states — including the two-state ACR reciprocity Texas actually offers.
• How CE reporting works — why provider reporting, not your certificate, is what the board sees.
• California (CSLB) — the opposite arrangement: one statewide licence, no CE at all.
• Virginia (DPOR) — the other two-clock state, except Virginia does license contractors at state level: a two-year firm licence with no CE, and three-year tradesman licences with hours owed per trade designation.
• Arizona (ROC) — one licence, no CE, and a suspension that fires automatically the next business day after the renewal date.
• Minnesota (DLI) — the other multi-clock state, where the second clock belongs to a person rather than a trade.
• Oregon (CCB) — unlike Texas, Oregon does license general contractors, and pegs CE hours to years licensed and headcount.

Official sources

• TDLR — Electrician Continuing Education (4-hour requirement, who is and isn't covered, required coursework, the term-of-licence timing example, 50-minute hour, one-year record retention)
• TDLR — Renew an Electrical Contractor License ($110 fee, master electrician of record and the 50-percent ownership exception, insurance minimums, the $165/$220 expired-fee ladder and the 36-month wall)
• TDLR — Continuing Education Requirements for ACR Licensees (8 hours including 1 hour of Texas law and rules; the late-renewal one-year CE window)
• TDLR — Renew an ACR Contractor License ($65 fee, 30–60 day lead time, insurance waivers, the 1½× / 2× expired-fee ladder)
• TDLR — ACR Contractors FAQs (no inactive status; §1302.304 municipal registration-fee prohibition effective Sept 1, 2021; South Carolina and Georgia reciprocity; the mini-split exemption limit under §1302.058; the OAG child-support 365-day rule)
• TSBPE — License Types (annual renewal, 6 hours CPE, randomly assigned 6–18 month first expiration, Master/Journeyman sync, January inspector renewal, three-year endorsements, and the two-year reinstatement cliff with the pre-2010 journeyman example)
• TDLR — regulated industries index (the published programme list this page reads as showing no state general-contractor licence)