Hiring an unlicensed contractor in Arizona costs you the state backstop. The Residential Contractors Recovery Fund pays up to $30,000 per residence when a residential job goes wrong, and it pays only if the contractor held a valid residential license when you signed, when you first paid, or when work started. A license is also required on far smaller jobs than most people expect, because any job needing a permit needs a licensed contractor whatever it costs. Check the license before money moves.
| Service | Typical |
|---|---|
| Auto repair shop labor rateArizona average | $145 per hour |
| Attorney hourly rateArizona average | $266 per hour |
| Full traditional dentureArizona average | $1,975 per arch |
Ranges last checked September 2026. They come down automatically when they are due to be rechecked.
Every figure above comes from a named source we can link to, with the date we last checked it. We publish ranges rather than single prices because a range is what a provider will actually give you: the same job moves with what is being worked on, the materials, how hard it is to get at and how busy the trade is locally. Treat these as the order of magnitude to expect before you call, not as a quote.
Where a source publishes figures state by state, this page shows the figure for this state rather than a national average. Where no state-level source exists, it shows the national range and the local factors that move a job within it. We do not scale a national number by a multiplier of our own invention.
Every range carries a review date. When that date passes the number comes down until it is rechecked, rather than sitting here undated.
Arizona runs a Residential Contractors Recovery Fund, and it is the clearest reason the license matters to your wallet rather than to a regulator. It pays a maximum of $30,000 per residence. Each contractor license carries a lifetime ceiling of $200,000, and once claims against that license reach it, nothing further is paid out against it.
The eligibility test is where people lose. The contractor has to have been appropriately licensed at the time you signed the contract, made the first payment, or work began, which the statute defines as holding a valid residential contractor license that was not canceled, inactive, expired, suspended or revoked. The property has to be your primary residence, or fit one of the other occupant categories the statute lists. And when you prove what it costs to put the work right, that proof cannot rest on a bid from an unlicensed person or business.
So an unlicensed contractor is not only a risk in the ordinary sense. It removes a $30,000 backstop you would otherwise have had, and nobody checks until the job has already gone wrong.
Wider than most people assume. Any business that contracts or offers to contract to build, alter, repair, add to, subtract from, improve, move, wreck or demolish a building, highway, road, railroad, excavation or other structure, development or improvement, or to do any part of that work, must be a licensed contractor.
The small-job exemption has two halves, and the second one does the work. A license is required once labor and materials exceed $1,000. It is also required whenever a permit is needed, regardless of price. Since the permit question is answered by your city rather than by the invoice, a cheap job in one city can need a licensed contractor while the same job elsewhere does not.
The Registrar of Contractors publishes a Contractor Search, and its own guidance is blunt about the alternative: the only sure way of knowing that a contractor is licensed is to call the ROC to confirm it, or to check the record. Two things are worth checking beyond the license existing. Make certain the license class allows for the work listed in the contract. Verify that the person you are negotiating with is an authorized representative of the licensed contractor, by calling the number on the license record rather than the number they gave you.
Residential and commercial are separate licenses. A contractor can hold one, the other, or a dual license covering both, and the classification underneath that names the trade.
Dentists, dental hygienists and denturists are licensed by the Arizona State Board of Dental Examiners, on one application covering all three.
Automotive recyclers hold a license under Title 28, chapter 10. Scrap metal dealers hold no license at all. They register with the Department of Public Safety, and that registration renews every two years. The scrap metal statute expressly excludes licensed automotive recyclers whose primary business is dismantling vehicles, so two yards that look alike from the street can sit in different regimes.
Vehicle glass. The ROC glazing classifications R-65, C-65 and the dual CR-65 cover glass products, window film, window treatments, and the steel and aluminum members that hold glass. All three are about buildings. None of them reaches a windshield, so a windshield technician in Arizona holds no state license, and what stands in its place is a voluntary industry standard.
The table above carries the figures this directory tracks for Arizona, each from a named source with the month it was checked. Auto repair labor sits a little above the national average, with Phoenix and Tucson shops above the state figure and rural Arizona below it. Attorney rates sit above the median state average, and dentures come in just under the national figure.
None of that is a reason to expect a bad deal. It is the shape to have in your head before the first quote, so an outlier is recognizable as one.
For anything construction-adjacent, settle the permit question before you compare quotes. Because the license exemption falls away the moment a permit is required, the permit answer decides whether this is licensed work at all, and it comes from your city rather than from the invoice.
Check the ROC record yourself rather than accepting a number on a card, and check two things beyond the license existing: that its classification covers the work in your contract, and that the person you are dealing with is an authorized representative, by calling the number on the license record rather than the one you were given.
On trades Arizona does not license at all, including vehicle glass, there is no record to check. What stands in its place is a voluntary industry standard and whether the shop has registered for third-party audits under it, so ask that question by name.
On any trade, ask what the quoted rate excludes. An hourly figure is labor: parts, shop supplies, filing fees and imaging all sit outside it.
About $145 an hour on the state average, against a national figure of about $132. Phoenix and Tucson shops run higher than rural Arizona, dealerships sit above the state average and independents below it.
About $266 an hour on the state average across practice areas, on 2023 figures. Experience moves it further than geography does: 20 to 30 years of practice averages $511 to $606, under four years $182 to $212.
Each one comes from a named source we link to, with the month we last checked it, listed under the cost table. Where a source publishes figures state by state we show the Arizona figure; where it does not, the category page shows the national range instead. We never scale a national number to Arizona by a multiplier of our own.
No. Verified on this site means one specific thing: someone at the business replied to an email we sent to the address on the listing. A business can be listed, accurate and perfectly good without having replied yet, and the listing says which it is.