Colorado State Plumbing Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies
Colorado licenses individual plumbers. You need a state license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for.
Every requirement on this page belongs to a license class the state names itself. Each one has its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules. There are four of them here, so read the one you are aiming at rather than the page as a whole.
What Colorado licenses
Both answers come directly from the state licensing authority.
| Residential Plumber | 3,400 hours on the job |
|---|---|
| Master Plumber | 8,500 hours on the job |
We use the state's published licensing requirements throughout this page. If the state doesn't publish a requirement, we don't guess.
There are two different licensing paths here: one for people working as plumbers, and one for the contracting business. If you're starting your career, focus on the worker license first. You may need the one for the business later, if you decide to run the contracting business yourself.
Each license class below has its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules. Start with the class you're working toward: everything below depends on it. We use the state's official license names, so you'll see the same terms on its forms.
The experience requirements for each license are quoted below exactly as the state publishes them. The licensing authority decides whether your experience qualifies, so keep your own record from day one and make sure your employer can verify your hours.
If your license requires an exam, the exam name and its fee are listed under that license class. The licensing authority and the testing company are often different organizations, so the exam fee is often paid to the testing company. That's why the exam fee may appear in the candidate bulletin instead of the fee schedule.
Each license class below lists the fees the state publishes for it. Renewal varies by class too, so check the renewal period and fee for the class you are working toward rather than for the trade as a whole.
Three of Colorado's licenses are held by the worker. Each is a separate license with its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules.
Not published for any class here: classroom hours, an exam fee or a license fee. Colorado does not publish a reciprocity list for these licenses.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
3,400 hours on the job.5 $60 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.5 You renew this every two years, with 16 hours of approved continuing education.5
Worth knowingThis is the fee printed on the board's application form, which is the one you pay from. The board's licensing guide names a higher number, and that guide still has the electrical board's prices in it.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
6,800 hours on the job.5 $72 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.5 You renew this every two years, with 16 hours of approved continuing education.5
Worth knowingThis is the fee printed on the board's application form, which is the one you pay from. The board's licensing guide names a higher number, and that guide still has the electrical board's prices in it.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
8,500 hours on the job.5 $84 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.5 You renew this every two years, with 16 hours of approved continuing education.5
Worth knowingThis is the fee printed on the board's application form, which is the one you pay from. The board's licensing guide names a higher number, and that guide still has the electrical board's prices in it.
There are three license levels here, and each is a separate license. The hours below are totals for each license, not additional hours on top of the last one. The hours here are on-the-job hours, not classroom hours.
Residential Plumber
You must verify 2 years (3,400 hours) of practical experience.5
Journeyworker Plumber
The maximum experience the board requires for an applicant to qualify to receive a Journeyworker Plumber's license is 4 years (6,800 hours) of practical experience.5
Master Plumber
An applicant for a master plumber's license must furnish evidence of having obtained five full-time years (8,500 hours) of practical experience.5
29 registered apprenticeships train Colorado plumbers. People who finished one recently left at a median of $35.68 an hour.
See every program and what they payAmong the plumbers on a payroll in Colorado, half earn more than $30.40 an hour and half earn less. The federal wage survey puts the annual figure at $63,240.4
These figures cover every experience level, from first-year apprentices to workers with decades on the job, so this is not what an apprentice earns. The survey counts 10,080 of these jobs. Self-employed workers are not included in the survey.4
The yearly figure assumes 2,080 paid hours, which is full time with no long gaps. Actual earnings can be lower where work is interrupted or seasonal.
Figures from the federal wage survey for May 2025, read 2026-08-16. The survey’s state file is a spreadsheet in a zip, not a web page.
This credential applies if you plan to take work in your own name. It is issued to the business itself rather than to any one person.
Held by the business · issued by the state
You renew this every two years. The published renewal requirements do not list any additional hours requirement.5
Plumbing Contractor registration
In order to act as a plumbing contractor, the person must either be, or employ full-time, a master plumber, who shall be in charge of the supervision of all plumbing work performed by the contractor.3
The state doesn't list job hours, an exam name, who runs it or an application fee.
PSI administers every exam listed on this page. The exam provider sets the exam content, publishes the study material and sets retake fees. Use the official exam names below when you look for study material, application instructions or retake information. No page here prices the exam. The fee belongs to whoever administers it and is published in a candidate bulletin rather than in a fee schedule.
The Colorado State Plumbing Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies issues all worker and contractor credentials covered on this page.
Colorado does not publish a list of the states whose plumber licenses it recognizes. Moving to Colorado? Contact Colorado State Plumbing Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies and ask whether your current license will be recognized. Leaving? Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work.
Colorado licenses individual plumbers. You need a state license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for. Colorado licenses plumber contractors as well. Taking work in your own name, rather than working for somebody who holds that license, needs a second and different one.
Colorado publishes an hours figure for three of the four license classes here: Residential Plumber, 3,400 hours on the job, Journeyworker Plumber, 6,800 hours on the job and Master Plumber, 8,500 hours on the job. Each figure belongs to the class it is named under and to no other. The state does not publish a working week, so nothing here turns hours into months. How fast you get there depends on how many you work in a year.
The middle half of the plumbers on a payroll in Colorado earn between $25.18 and $37.86 an hour, and half of all of them earn more than $30.40. These are straight-time figures, before any overtime, at every experience level, counted by the federal wage survey in May 2025. Self-employed workers are not included in them.4
The top tenth of plumbers on a payroll in Colorado earn above $48.19 an hour, which over a 2,080-hour year comes to more than $100,240. Those are straight-time figures: overtime pay is outside them, and so are self-employed workers. The federal wage survey counts what the top tenth earn above, not how many reach any figure past it. So yes for at least one in ten: the top tenth here clear $100,000 on straight time alone.4
The state publishes these: $60 to apply for Residential Plumber, $72 to apply for Journeyworker Plumber and $84 to apply for Master Plumber. Each is per class, not per trade. None of them is the exam: where a vendor administers the exam, that fee is the vendor's and lives in its own bulletin.
Not as a published rule: Colorado publishes no list of the states it recognizes. Bringing a license in and taking one out are two separate agreements, signed and published separately. Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work and ask what it will recognize.
There is no national answer. Any page that gives you one is averaging states whose requirements differ by thousands of hours. Licensing is set state by state, and in some states city by city, so the honest version of this question has a place in it. What is the same everywhere is the shape: you learn on the job, the hours that count are the ones somebody signs for, and the clock starts the day the work does.
Yes, and that is the ordinary way in. These trades are learned at work rather than before it, which is why boards mostly require time on the job. What you cannot skip is the paperwork: the hours that count are the ones somebody signs for, so the question to ask an employer is who signs, not whether they will train you.
No. Boards set a minimum age, not a maximum. No board on these pages sets an upper limit, and where age shows up at all it is a floor. The real question at 30 is money: an apprenticeship pays you while you learn and school charges you while you learn. That difference usually decides it.
None of the boards on these pages publishes a pass rate. The useful question is who administers the exam: that organization sells the reference material for it and sets what a retake costs.