How to Check a Tradie Is Legit in NSW
You're about to let a stranger into your home to do real work — plumbing, wiring, something structural — and the only information you've actually got is a star rating and a friendly quote. Here's how to check who you're hiring properly, using the same checks a genuine verification runs, none of which take more than a few minutes.
The short answer
Before you book anyone for anything beyond the smallest job, run five checks: their ABN, their trade licence, their White Card (if the trade needs one), a form of photo ID that matches the name on the licence, and current insurance. Each one is free, each one takes a few minutes, and together they tell you more than any star rating ever will — because a review can be written by anyone, but a licence record can't be faked. The rest of this guide walks through how to run each check yourself.
How to look up an ABN (and what it actually proves)
Every legitimate business operating in Australia has an Australian Business Number. It's free to look up on the government's ABN Lookup service — search the business name or the ABN itself, and you'll see whether it's active, when it was registered, and what the business is registered to do.
An ABN alone doesn't prove someone's a good tradie. What it proves is that they're a real, registered business — not a name made up for a Facebook Marketplace post. A business registered eight years ago with a consistent trading name is a different proposition to one registered three weeks ago under a name you can't find anywhere else. It's the first five minutes of due diligence, and it costs you nothing.
How to check a trade licence on NSW Fair Trading
This is the check most people skip, and it's the one that matters most. In NSW, any building work over $5,000, and all electrical, plumbing and gas work regardless of value, has to be done by someone holding the right licence. If it isn't, your home insurance can be voided, statutory warranties don't apply, and you've got limited recourse if the work goes wrong.
Service NSW runs an official licence check tool — search "check a builder or tradesperson licence" and you'll land on it, or use the NSW Fair Trading home building licence check directly. You can search by the tradie's name or their licence number, which they should be able to give you (a licensed tradie will usually have it on their van, invoices or website — if they hesitate to give it, that's already telling you something). The result shows you whether the licence is current, what categories it covers, and — importantly — any conditions, cautions or disciplinary history attached to it.
Match the licence categories to the actual job. A licence that covers general building doesn't automatically cover gas fitting. If you're getting hot water replaced, you want to see plumbing and gas fitting on the licence, not just "contractor."
What a White Card covers — and what it doesn't
A White Card (general construction induction training) is required for anyone working on a construction site in NSW — it's a safety qualification, not a trade qualification. It tells you someone's completed basic site safety training. It does not tell you they're licensed to do the trade work itself, and it's not required for every trade — a cleaner or a locksmith won't have one, and shouldn't need one.
Where it matters is bigger jobs with multiple people on site — renovations, extensions, anything with scaffolding or excavation involved. If several tradies are going to be on your property at once, ask whether they hold a current White Card. It's checkable through SafeWork NSW if you want to confirm one that's been shown to you.
Why photo ID matters (and how to actually confirm it)
This sounds obvious, but it's the check almost nobody does: does the person standing at your door match the name on the licence and the ABN? A licence number is only useful if you can confirm it belongs to the person you're actually letting inside.
Ask to see photo ID before work starts, and check the name matches what's on the licence check and the invoice. This isn't about distrust — a legitimate tradie won't blink at the ask, because they show ID to insurers and clients constantly. It's the person turning cagey about it that tells you something.
How to confirm insurance is current
Insurance is the one people forget to check because it's the least visible — there's no public register you can search the way you can for a licence. The right way to confirm it is to ask directly for a certificate of currency, which is a one-page document any legitimately insured tradie can produce on the spot or email you within minutes. It shows the insurer, the policy type, the coverage amount and the expiry date.
For anything structural or high value, you want public liability insurance at minimum, and for larger residential building work, home warranty insurance may be legally required on top of that. If a tradie can't produce a certificate of currency, or the one they show you expired last month, that's not a technicality — it means if something goes wrong on your property, you're the one left exposed.
Red flags that mean walk away
A few patterns are worth knowing regardless of trade:
- Reluctance to give a licence number. A licensed tradie has it memorised or on hand — hesitation is a signal, not a coincidence.
- Cash-only, no invoice. A written quote and an invoice aren't bureaucracy, they're your only record if the work is faulty.
- Pressure to decide today. Genuine trades are usually booked out, not desperate to lock you in on the spot.
- A quote well below everyone else's. Underpricing has to come from somewhere — usually corners cut on materials, insurance, or actually holding the licence at all.
- No fixed business address or ABN that was registered last month. Doesn't automatically mean a scam, but it means you check everything else twice.
None of these on their own are proof of anything. Together, they're a pattern worth listening to.
The bottom line
Running all five checks — ABN, licence, White Card, photo ID, insurance — takes maybe ten minutes the first time you do it, and most people never do even one. That gap is exactly why scams and unlicensed work cost Australians real money every year, and why a good tradie with nothing to hide will never make you feel awkward for asking.
BLDESY runs all five of these checks on every tradie before they're listed, so you're not doing this from scratch at 8pm with a hot water system down. You still see the work, the prices and the person, and you still make the call — we just make sure what you're looking at is real before you have to work it out yourself.