PestPin Research
Licensed but unreachable
The pest control companies a homeowner is told to check, and cannot contact.
· Every figure on this page is computed when the page is loaded
By Vijaygopal, Founder, PestPin. Compiled from official state regulator sources.
Of the 22,282 pest control license records PestPin carries across 33 states, all marked active by the regulator when the source was last processed, 10,227 publish no phone number, no website and no email: 45.9% of the industry's own public record. A homeowner who does exactly what every consumer-protection page tells them to do, look the company up before letting it in, reaches a name and stops there.
What a homeowner runs into
The advice is the same in every state: before you let a pest control company treat your house, confirm it holds a current license. The roster that answers that question is public, and on 45.9% of the records in it there is no phone number, no website and no email to go with the name. The check that was supposed to protect the homeowner ends without a way to call anyone.
The person who is always reachable is the one already standing at the door. That is the practical shape of this gap: verification is slow and often dead-ends, while the unlicensed door-knocker is immediate. We are not measuring how often that trade ends badly, and we do not claim a number for it. We are measuring the part that can be counted, which is how often the licensed option gives a homeowner nothing to act on.
For scale: 12,029 records publish a phone number, 3,920 publish a website, and 6,544 publish an email. A record can carry more than one, so those do not sum to the reachable total.
What regulators have said
Delaware Department of Justice,
Attorney General Jennings obtained a Court of Chancery order under which door-to-door pest control company Aptive Environmental pays $600,000 for violations of Delaware's consumer protection laws, including contracts shown only on an iPad and undisclosed termination fees.
Read the agency noticeFlorida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services,
FDACS fined Mira Home LLC $36,000 and barred Grit Marketing LLC from any regulated pest control activity in Florida, including soliciting contracts, after more than 30 of its unlicensed workers solicited over 600 pest control contracts door to door.
Read the agency noticeGeorgia Department of Agriculture,
The Structural Pest Division warned of a spike in unlicensed door-to-door pest control solicitation, citing 175 violations in a year and fines of up to $10,000, and advised consumers to ask for proof of a valid license before any work begins.
Read the agency notice
The contact gap by state
Ordered by the number of records a homeowner cannot act on, so the biggest absolute gaps come first. Each state name links to what we publish about that regulator, including its official license lookup. Only states whose records PestPin processes appear here.
Read the near-100% rows differently. Utah is blank on 95% or more of records. At that level the explanation is almost always the roster itself: the state publishes a name, a license number and a location, and no contact column for anyone. That is a publication decision by the agency, not a choice made by the businesses on the list.
| State | License records | No contact published | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 3,884 | 3,011 | 77.5% |
| Texas | 2,837 | 2,343 | 82.6% |
| New York | 1,697 | 1,454 | 85.7% |
| Ohio | 807 | 620 | 76.8% |
| Wisconsin | 622 | 566 | 91.0% |
| Oklahoma | 588 | 490 | 83.3% |
| Colorado | 397 | 371 | 93.5% |
| Utah | 339 | 331 | 97.6% |
| Mississippi | 406 | 252 | 62.1% |
| Minnesota | 183 | 154 | 84.2% |
| Rhode Island | 154 | 135 | 87.7% |
| Oregon | 171 | 127 | 74.3% |
| Connecticut | 146 | 118 | 80.8% |
| South Carolina | 125 | 116 | 92.8% |
| Arizona | 652 | 46 | 7.1% |
| Missouri | 53 | 41 | 77.4% |
| Illinois | 117 | 32 | 27.4% |
| Virginia | 1,098 | 11 | 1.0% |
| Tennessee | 695 | 3 | 0.4% |
| Kansas | 446 | 3 | 0.7% |
| Georgia | 459 | 2 | 0.4% |
| Pennsylvania | 39 | 1 | 2.6% |
| Florida | 3,690 | 0 | 0.0% |
| North Carolina | 894 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Louisiana | 434 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Michigan | 415 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Kentucky | 275 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Maine | 249 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Washington | 239 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Indiana | 64 | 0 | 0.0% |
| West Virginia | 54 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Vermont | 42 | 0 | 0.0% |
| District of Columbia | 11 | 0 | 0.0% |
How to read a share. A state only appears once PestPin processes its records, so a state that is missing is missing from our coverage, not from the industry. Below 100 records a percentage is arithmetic rather than a finding, which is why no sentence on this page ranks a state under that floor even though the table shows every state we carry.
For reporters: the summary, free to quote
45.9% of the pest control license records PestPin carries give a homeowner no way to reach the company. Of 22,282 license records across 33 states, all of them marked active by the regulator when the source was last processed, 10,227 publish no phone number, no website and no email address anywhere in the public record. The largest single block is California, where 3,011 of 3,884 records carry no contact detail at all. Consumer advice from state agencies is to check the license before letting anyone into the house, and on these records there is nothing to check but a name, which is the point at which a homeowner stops verifying and calls whoever knocked on the door.
Credit PestPin and link to this page. We will pull the figure for any single state, or the underlying rows for a state you are writing about, on request at hello@pestpin.com.
Methodology and limitations
- Records, not businesses. The unit is one license record. A company holding licenses in three categories or three states appears three times, so this count runs higher than the deduplicated business count on our licensing report. We report records because the question is about what each public record supports.
- Which records are in the denominator. Every record we can publish: a license marked active when the source was processed, a consumer pest control role rather than lawn, agricultural or government work, and not suspended. That is the same gate the rest of the site uses to decide what a visitor may see.
- The real gap is wider than this. A record counts as reachable if it carries a phone, a website or an email from any source we hold, including contact details our own enrichment found rather than the state published. So the share measured here is the floor. Counting only what regulators themselves publish would push it higher, never lower.
- States are not comparable. Regulators publish different columns. Some give a business phone, some give only a name, a license number and a county. A high share usually describes the roster rather than the businesses on it, and the state table says so on the rows where that is the likely reading.
- What this does not measure. Not whether a company answers its phone, not whether it is any good, and not how often a homeowner ends up hiring an unlicensed operator instead. It measures one thing: whether the public license record gives a homeowner a way to make contact.
The full method behind the license records, including how each state is sourced and how often it is reprocessed, is on the methodology page, and the state-by-state sources are on the license data page.
Questions this edition answers
How many licensed pest control businesses publish no contact information?
10,227 of 22,282 active-status pest control license records PestPin processes, or 45.9%, publish no phone, no website and no email. The unit is license records rather than businesses, because one company can hold several licenses.
Which state has the largest share of unreachable license records?
Among states with at least 100 records, Utah is highest: 97.6% of its 339 records carry no phone, website or email. A very high share usually means the regulator's published roster has no contact column at all, not that the businesses individually declined to give one.
Why does this matter to a homeowner?
Every state agency tells consumers to confirm a pest control company is licensed before hiring it. When the record for a licensed company carries no phone, no website and no email, that check ends at a name and an address. The homeowner who cannot complete it is the homeowner most likely to hire the unlicensed operator who knocked on the door, because that person is reachable and the licensed one is not.
Does an unreachable record mean the business cannot be contacted at all?
No. It means the business cannot be reached from its public license record. Many of these companies have a phone that is simply not in the roster the regulator publishes. The finding is about what the public record supports, not about whether a company answers its phone.
Can I use these numbers?
Yes. Quote and republish them freely, including commercially, as long as you credit PestPin and link to this page. Please carry the processing date with the figures. This page was last processed through September 8, 2026. We will pull the numbers for a single state on request at hello@pestpin.com.
Press and data questions
Free to use, quote and republish, including commercially, as long as you credit PestPin and link to this page. No permission needed. Please carry the processing date with the figures, since they move as regulators republish. Write to hello@pestpin.com and we will pull the numbers for the state you are writing about.
Other editions: the licensing report and the monthly snapshot.