How do I check a pest control license in Florida?

The agency covering work inside your house

Structural pest control in a Florida home falls to the FDACS Bureau of Entomology and Pest Control. It enforces the Structural Pest Control Act, Chapter 482 of the Florida Statutes, along with the pest control rules at Chapter 5E-14 of the Florida Administrative Code. The public number is 1-800-435-7352.

Start there rather than with a review site. Reviews tell you whether somebody was pleasant to deal with. The division tells you whether they are actually permitted to do the work at all.

That verification matters more the farther a company operates from Tallahassee proper. The pros we connect homeowners with also cover Panacea along US 98, where salt marsh and Ochlockonee Bay humidity draw different pressure than inland clay soil, and jobs stretching toward Sopchoppy or the Fenholloway River near Perry. A license check confirms the same company permitted to work a Tallahassee kitchen is also permitted to cross county lines for a job near Mashes Sands, which is a real difference on paper, not a formality.

Three separate grades of credential

Florida keeps the certificate, the license and the card entirely separate. The certified operator holds the certificate, the business location holds the license, and every employee carries an identification card. None of the three are interchangeable, and whoever is standing at the door is not necessarily the person whose credential the company advertises.

A certificate expires one year on from the day it was issued, so asking when the current one runs out is entirely fair. Florida has no common renewal season: every certificate and every business location carries its own anniversary, and that anniversary is the calendar the paperwork genuinely follows.

That anniversary date matters wherever the work happens, and Tallahassee homeowners checking a license should confirm it covers the actual service area, not just a mailing address downtown. The same credential search applies for a company working out toward Havana, past the old tobacco barns and farm ponds north of town, or out along US 90 to Monticello, where a crew might cross the Wacissa River on a routine call. The pros carry one certificate regardless of which county line they cross.

Certificates go by category, so ask about the category

This is the question almost nobody thinks to ask. A certificate gets issued by category, so holding one does not mean a company is credentialed for everything it might ever quote. Termite and other wood-destroying organisms control sits in a category of its own, entirely separate from general household pest and rodent control.

Put it plainly over the phone: which category covers the work being quoted, and whose license the agreement will be written under. On termite work, the licensee's full name and business address have to appear on the agreement regardless, so the name given on the phone and the name on the paper ought to match.

Complaints and inspection requests explained

Complaints and requests for an inspection go to the division through its published request form, and the division inspects structural pest control work as a matter of routine. That route exists for exactly the situation where a job got paid for and the trails came right back.

Hold onto the paperwork that makes a complaint possible at all: the written agreement, whatever inspection reports it promised, a WDO report if one exists, dated notes, and photographs. A complaint arriving with documents attached is an entirely different thing from one arriving without.

The board that has nothing to do with your house

Searching for a Florida pesticide license turns up the agricultural side of FDACS, which licenses farm and general pesticide applicators. That is not structural work inside a home. The two sit in entirely different parts of the same department, and a name appearing on one list says nothing about the other.

We operate as a referral service and hold no license ourselves. The work gets done by the licensed local pros we connect you with, and every check described on this page is one you are entirely welcome to run on them.