A C-10 electrical contractor license in California means four years of documented journey-level experience, a $450 application to the CSLB, fingerprints cleared by the DOJ and the FBI, and two closed-book exams at a PSI test center. It also comes with a second credential most people discover late: the electricians you employ need their own certificate from the Department of Industrial Relations, and $20 of your renewal fee is what pays to enforce that rule. This guide walks both paths using only the figures the two agencies publish — and says plainly where no figure is published at all.
C-10 is the electrical classification on a California contractor license. The definition CSLB publishes from Title 16 of the California Code of Regulations is short and deliberately wide: an electrical contractor places, installs, erects or connects electrical wires, fixtures, appliances, apparatus, raceways, conduits, solar photovoltaic cells or any part of them, where those things generate, transmit, transform or utilize electrical energy in any form or for any purpose. Service upgrades, panel changes, branch circuits, motor connections and grid-tied photovoltaic work all sit inside that one sentence.
Two neighbouring classifications matter here, because they also decide who has to be certified later. C-7 covers low-voltage communication and signalling systems and C-45 covers electric signs; work inside those scopes is not C-10 work, even when one company holds both licenses. If most of your days are structured cabling rather than power, compare the scopes before you file — the C-7 low voltage exam is a different exam entirely.
California's exemption for small jobs is Business and Professions Code section 7048, rewritten by AB 1170 with effect from January 1, 2026. Four things have to be true at once: the aggregate price for labor, materials and everything else is under $1,000; the work is genuinely casual, minor or inconsequential; it does not require a building permit; and you neither advertise as a contractor nor employ anyone to help. Splitting a larger job into sub-$1,000 pieces does not create the exemption either — and since a new circuit, a service change, a panel swap or a photovoltaic array is permitted work almost everywhere in California, the permit condition alone puts most electrical work outside section 7048 whatever it costs.
This is the most expensive confusion in the trade. The C-10 license comes from the Contractors State License Board and lets a business contract for electrical work. The electrician certificate comes from a different agency — the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement at the Department of Industrial Relations — and it certifies the individual making the connections. Holding one does not give you the other.
Labor Code section 108 defines “electricians” as the people who connect electrical devices for contractors classified as electrical contractors, and section 108.2 requires them to be certified. The rule reaches employees of C-10 contractors, and only connections above 100 volt-amperes; workers operating inside a C-7 or C-45 scope are outside it even if their employer also holds a C-10. One exception sits at the top of the company: the qualifying person who actually sat the C-10 exam may perform electrical work under that license, and supervise uncertified workers, without a certificate. Partners, officers and members who did not sit that exam get no such pass. The program publishes its own rules at the DIR Electrician Certification Unit.
Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, section 291.1, sets eligibility: an approved apprenticeship in the category sought, or documented hours worked for a C-10 contractor — 8,000 for General Electrician, 4,800 for Residential Electrician, 4,000 for Fire/Life Safety Technician, 4,000 for Voice Data Video Technician and 2,000 for Nonresidential Lighting Technician. Each category caps how many hours may come from any one activity, so a career spent on a single kind of job will not add up on its own. Fire/Life Safety hours may instead be proved with NICET certification in Fire Alarm Systems at Level II or above. Anyone short of hours registers as an electrician trainee for $25, renews that registration yearly at no charge with proof of enrollment in an approved school, and works only under the constant supervision of a certified electrician.
DIR publishes the exam detail CSLB does not. The application fee is $75 and the exam fee $100. The test is open book with reference materials supplied at the site, multiple choice, and sized by category: 100 questions in four hours for General Electrician, 80 in three hours for Residential, 50 in two hours for each of the three technician categories. Seventy percent passes; a failure means a 60-day wait and another $100. It is offered in Spanish as well as English, and for exams taken on or after June 1, 2026 the scheduling moved to CPS HR Consulting, with the appointment booked through Pearson VUE. A certificate runs three years; renewal costs $100 and takes 2,000 hours of industry work plus 32 hours of continuing education from a DIR-approved provider. Let it lapse and you sit the exam again.
Every license stands on a qualifying individual, and that person needs four years of journey-level electrical experience gained in the ten years before the application. CSLB credits time as a journeyperson, foreperson, supervising employee or contractor, and defines a journeyperson as an experienced worker rather than a trainee — able to run the trade unsupervised, or a finished apprentice. Someone else certifies the experience — an employer, a fellow journeyperson, a union representative, a building inspector or a client — and that person must have watched the work happen. A randomly selected share of applications is pulled for deeper investigation, so certify only what you could document on request.
A completed apprenticeship or accredited technical training can earn credit toward the four years, case by case, with certificates and official transcripts attached; high school coursework earns nothing, and every qualifier still shows at least one year of practical work. Who may qualify depends on the entity: a sole owner personally or through a responsible managing employee; a partnership through a qualifying partner or an RME; a corporation through a responsible managing officer or an RME; an LLC through an RMO, a responsible managing manager or member, or an RME. An RME must be a bona fide employee, may not qualify any other active license, and must be engaged in the business at least 32 hours a week or 80 percent of its operating hours, whichever is less.
The Application for Original Contractor License carries a $450 processing fee for one classification, and it buys processing rather than a result: CSLB files each application on arrival and refunds nothing if it is rejected. Apply for one classification at a time, hold the bond and the initial license fee back until you are asked for them, and answer any correction request within 90 days — miss that and the application is void, along with the $450. Everyone named on it submits fingerprints for a criminal history check against Department of Justice and FBI records, as Business and Professions Code section 7069 requires; the state's share is $32 to DOJ and $17 to the FBI, plus a rolling fee each live scan site sets for itself.
Once the application is accepted you receive a Notice to Schedule an Examination and deal with PSI for dates, sites and fees. There are two exams: Law and Business, taken by every applicant, and the C-10 trade exam. Each allows three and a half hours, both are closed book and multiple choice on a computer, and the trade exam is given only in California and Oregon. Fail one and you wait 21 calendar days to retake it, all inside the 18 months an accepted application stays alive. Ten CSLB exams exist in official Spanish versions and C-10 is not one of them; if English is the obstacle you may ask to be joined by a translator of your choosing, screened by CSLB in a review that takes four to six weeks. What PSI charges for an exam is PSI's own fee, and CSLB does not publish it. Our free C-10 electrical practice test and Law and Business practice test follow the official outlines for both.
Passing produces a Bond and Fee letter, not a license. Expect a $25,000 contractor bond on file with CSLB (Business and Professions Code section 7071.6) — a face amount, not a price, since the surety sets your premium. If your qualifier is an RME, or an RMO or member owning less than ten percent of the voting stock or equity, add a separate $25,000 bond of qualifying individual. The initial license fee is $200 for a sole owner and $350 for everyone else. Every applicant also completes CSLB's open-book asbestos exam before a license can issue, and passing it authorizes nothing about asbestos work itself — you can practice the asbestos open-book exam here for free.
Workers' compensation is the one place a C-10 currently gets a break. Five classifications — C-8 Concrete, C-20 HVAC, C-22 Asbestos Abatement, C-39 Roofing and C-61/D-49 Tree Service — must carry coverage whether or not they have employees. C-10 is not among them, so a C-10 with no employees and no RME as qualifier may still file the exemption certificate. That window closes on a published schedule: SB 216 wrote a universal requirement into Business and Professions Code section 7125, SB 1455 moved its operative date to January 1, 2028, and CSLB must build a process for verifying no-employee claims by January 1, 2027. Budget for the premium rather than being surprised by it.
A license runs two years, expiring the last day of the month two years after it was issued. Timely active renewal is $450 for a sole owner and $700 for a non-sole owner — except that a C-10 pays $470 and $720. Those twenty dollars are not a rounding artifact: Business and Professions Code section 7137 requires the board to charge C-10 contractors an extra $20 with every active license renewal and to spend it enforcing the Labor Code rules on electrician certification, which CSLB has enforced since July 1, 2009. Your renewal fee literally funds the check on whether your crew holds valid cards. Late renewal runs $695 or $1,070 for a C-10, and an expired license may be renewed for up to five years — but you count as unlicensed for the gap.
Between renewals the standing duties are short to list and easy to let slip: keep the bond in force, keep a qualifier on the license, keep every electrician's certificate current, and report changes of address, business name and personnel. CSLB also states plainly that no school or application-preparation service is its agent, and that its study guides are free downloads. Both exams reward understanding over recall, so work the C-10 practice questions until the explanations feel obvious, not until the answers do.
Ready to practice for the exams? The C-10 Electrical practice bank on LICENA: real-exam-style questions with a written explanation on every answer, in English, Spanish and Russian. The sample is free — no sign-up.
Try the free practice test → CSLB Law & Business