Texas State Licensed Contractor Scraper — TDLR License Data

Scrapes the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) public license database and returns complete, structured licensee records — license number, type, class, business name, contact details, status, issue/expiration dates, bond amount, insurance amount, sponsor, and discipline/violations.

Export scraped data, run the scraper via API, schedule and monitor runs, or integrate with other tools.

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Why use this actor

• Full license detail — not just the search-results row. Every record carries the detail-page data: bond, insurance, sponsor, discipline, and violations.
• 80+ license program types — Electricians, Air Conditioning Contractors, Elevator Contractors, Cosmetologists, Barbers, Massage Therapists, Mold Remediation, and every other TDLR program.
• Flexible filtering — by license type, license number, business name, owner name, city, county, ZIP code, or technician tier (Registered / Certified).
• Contractor lead-gen ready — Electrician and Elevator Contractor records include address, phone, and email. Drop straight into HubSpot/Salesforce.
• Compliance / verification — verify a contractor's license status, bond, and insurance before hiring. Perfect for insurance underwriters, HOAs, and GCs.
• MCP/AI-agent friendly — semantic field names, field-level output schema, predictable maxResults, and a per-record pricing model an agent can budget.

What it outputs

One dataset item per TDLR license:

Field	Type	Example
licenseNumber	string	80019
licenseType	string	Electricians
licenseClass	string	Master
licenseDescription	string	Master Electrician
businessName	string	Acme Electric LLC
contactName	string	John Smith
address	string	123 Main St
city	string	Austin
state	string	TX
zipCode	string	78701
county	string	Travis
phone	string	(512) 555-0100
email	string	info@acmeelectric.com
status	string	Active
issueDate	string	2021-01-15
expirationDate	string	2026-01-15
renewalDate	string	2024-01-15
bondAmount	string	$10,000
insuranceAmount	string	$500,000
sponsor	string	Acme Electric LLC
sponsorLicenseNumber	string	80019
sponsorExpiration	string	2026-01-15
discipline	string	None
violations	string	None
detailUrl	string	https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/Detail/80019
scraped_at	string	2026-07-01T20:35:00.000Z
source_url	string	https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/

Note: phone, email, bondAmount, insuranceAmount, sponsor* are published by TDLR only for license programs that collect them (Electricians, Elevator Contractors, Air Conditioning Contractors). For other programs these fields will be null.

Input parameters

Field	Type	Required	Description
licenseType	enum	recommended	TDLR license program (e.g. Electricians).
licenseNumber	string	no	Look up a specific license number.
businessName	string	no	Full/partial business name.
ownerName	string	no	Individual/owner license holder name.
city	string	no	Texas city (free text).
county	enum	no	Texas county (official list, incl. Out Of State).
zipCode	string	no	5-digit ZIP.
technicianType	enum	no	All / Registered / Certified (Electricians and A/C only).
maxResults	integer	no	Max records to return. Default 50.

At least one filter is required. licenseType alone is the most common entry point.

Pricing

Event	Price	When charged
result-item	$0.025	Per TDLR license record saved to the dataset
apify-actor-start	$0.00005	Once per run

A typical small pull of 100 licensed-electrician leads costs ≈ $2.50 + a few cents compute. There is no charge for runs that return 0 results.

Quickstart

# 1. Install + run locally against the live TDLR site
cd tdlr-texas-scraper
npm install
apify login
apify run --input '{"licenseType":"Electricians","city":"Austin","maxResults":5}'

# 2. Push to your Apify account
apify push -f -w 120

# 3. Set PPE pricing + SEO (one-time, after first push)

Run via API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/USERNAME~tdlr-texas-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"licenseType":"Electricians","county":"Harris","maxResults":100}'

How it works

1. GET the TDLR search page and harvest the ASP.NET hidden fields (__VIEWSTATE, __EVENTVALIDATION).
2. POST the search form with your filters.
3. Parse the results grid and enqueue each license's detail-page URL.
4. GET each detail page, extract the full record, and push it to the dataset immediately (never batched across requests — a single detail-page timeout can't lose other records).
5. Stop when maxResults is reached. Each successful record triggers a result-item charge.

Limitations & transparency

• Selectors may need a one-time calibration run. TDLR's public search HTML occasionally shifts class names. The actor uses multiple fallback selectors per field. If a run returns 0 items with a No detail links parsed from results page warning, run it once locally and adjust the selectors/constants at the top of src/main.ts (search form field names + the RESULTS/DETAIL parsers). This is the only brittle layer; the rest of the pipeline is durable.
• Single results page. The current build enqueues detail links from the first results page (TDLR shows up to a few hundred rows per search). For exhaustive lists, run multiple county/city filters and merge the datasets.
• Contact info (phone/email) is only published by TDLR for Electricians and Elevator Contractors — it will be null for other programs by design, not a bug.
• No login, no anti-bot — TDLR's public search is open. The actor uses US datacenter proxies (fast + cheap) by default.

Use cases

• Home-services lead generation — pull every licensed electrician / A/C / elevator contractor in a county with phone + email for cold outreach.
• Compliance & verification — bulk-verify that subcontractors hold an active license, valid bond, and current insurance before signing a contract.
• Insurance underwriting — feed bond + insurance amounts into risk models.
• Market research — count active licensees by program, county, or city for TAM sizing.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
0 results, No detail links parsed warning	Do one local apify run, open the saved HTML, and update the RESULTS/DETAIL selectors in src/main.ts.
phone/email are null	Expected for non-Electrician/non-Elevator license programs — TDLR doesn't publish contact info for them.
__VIEWSTATE missing	TDLR may have changed the search URL. Confirm SEARCH_PAGE_URL/SEARCH_RESULTS_URL at the top of src/main.ts.
Charge shows but no rows	Ensure at least one filter is set and spelled exactly as TDLR uses it (case-insensitive for businessName).

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Source: https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/ — Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation public license search. This actor only reads publicly available licensee data.