Quick facts

Class A vs. Class B vs. the closed Class C

Class A Air-Conditioning Contractor has no limit on the size of equipment you can install or service. Class B is capped at 25 tons of cooling capacity and 500,000 BTU/hr of heating capacity per unit or system — enough for most residential and light commercial work. There is also a Class C category, limited to service and maintenance of existing AC, heating, or refrigeration systems, but it’s important to get this right: Florida Statute 489.105 states explicitly that only someone already registered or certified as a Class C contractor as of October 1, 1988 could continue to hold that certification after that date. In other words, Class C has been closed to new applicants for decades — this is a much older grandfather clause, unrelated to Florida’s 2025 local-licensing preemption law (HB 735), which is a separate change affecting local occupational licenses for trades that don’t correspond to a CILB category at all (like flooring or painting), not the state-level A/B/C air-conditioning categories themselves.

Steps to get licensed

1. Accumulate qualifying education and experience totaling about 4 years — commonly cited as at least 1 year of experience with a 4-year relevant degree, or at least 1 year as a foreman without one (confirm the current standard with CILB, since this comes from license-prep sources rather than a rule we verified directly).
2. Submit your application to DBPR — the fee depends on when in the 2-year cycle you apply.
3. Pass both the trade exam and the Business & Finance exam through PTI/Pearson VUE.
4. Secure your bond ($10,000, reducible to $5,000 with the 14-hour course, or waived entirely with a FICO score of 660+) and required insurance.
5. Pay your initial license fee once approved, then renew every 2 years with 14 hours of continuing education.

Renewal and continuing education

Certified Class A and Class B licenses renew biennially, expiring August 31 of even-numbered years, for a renewal fee of roughly $209. Renewal requires 14 hours of CILB-approved continuing education per 2-year cycle — more than the 11 hours required for Florida’s electrical contractors, since CILB (Part I of Chapter 489) and the Electrical Contractors’ Licensing Board (Part II) set their continuing-education rules independently.

Reciprocity

CILB has reciprocity agreements covering general, building, and residential contractor categories with a small number of states (commonly cited as Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina, via CILB form 32), but whether those agreements exonerate the trade exam specifically for air-conditioning contractors is genuinely unresolved in the sources available for this research — two independent sources disagree on this point, and DBPR’s own reciprocity PDF was blocked during research. Don’t assume a reciprocity list for AC contractors without confirming it directly with CILB. Separately, a 10-year endorsement path exists (roughly a $350 fee) for applicants who’ve held an unrestricted license in the same classification in another state for at least 10 years, which can exonerate the trade exam while still requiring the Business & Finance exam.

Don’t forget EPA 608

A Class A or B license authorizes you to run an air-conditioning contracting business in Florida — it doesn’t, on its own, authorize you to handle refrigerant. Florida doesn’t appear to add any state-specific requirement on top of the federal rule: anyone who purchases, handles, or recovers refrigerant still needs the separate federal EPA Section 608 certification, which applies nationwide regardless of state license.