Illinois Department of Public Health
Illinois 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 and fees. There are three of them here, so read the one you are aiming at rather than the page as a whole.
What Illinois licenses
Both answers come directly from the state licensing authority.
| Licensed Plumber | 5,600 hours on the job |
|---|---|
| The exam fee | $175 |
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 and fees. 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.
Not every class comes with an exam of its own, and none of the classes here names one. Where a business qualifies through a licensed person it employs, the exam falls on that person rather than on the business. The state can tell you in one call whether one applies to you.
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.
Two of Illinois's licenses are held by the worker. Each is a separate license with its own experience requirements and fees.
Not published for any class here: an exam name or an application fee. Illinois does not publish a reciprocity list for these licenses.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
$100 for the license itself.4 You renew this every year. The published renewal requirements do not list any additional hours requirement.5
Apprentice Plumber
Be at least 16 years of age.4
The state doesn't list job hours, classroom hours, who runs it or an exam fee.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
5,600 hours on the job.4 2,800 hours in a classroom.4 $150 for the license itself.4 $175 to take the exam.4 Illinois Department of Public Health administers the exam.4 You renew this every year, with 4 hours of approved continuing education.1
One license here publishes an hours figure. One of them also counts classroom hours, and those are counted apart from the job. A board can require thousands of one and none of the other.
Licensed Plumber
Applicants must have been employed as a licensed apprentice plumber for a minimum of 4 years, and have successfully completed at least 2 years of high school or equivalent in addition to completing an approved course instruction through a college, university or trade school.1
The state doesn't say whether the hours it requires can be earned online.
36 registered apprenticeships train Illinois plumbers. People who finished one recently left at a median of $52.80 an hour.
See every program and what they payAmong the plumbers on a payroll in Illinois, half earn more than $48.05 an hour and half earn less. The federal wage survey puts the annual figure at $99,950.3
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 16,750 of these jobs. Self-employed workers are not included in the survey.3
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
$150 for the license itself.6 You renew this every year. The published renewal requirements do not list any additional hours requirement.6
Plumbing Contractor Registration
At least one member of every firm, association or partnership engaged in plumbing work, and at least one corporate officer of every corporation engaged in plumbing work, as the case may be, shall be a licensed plumber.7
The state doesn't list job hours, classroom hours, who runs it or an exam fee.
Illinois Department of Public Health is the examiner this page names, and no class here publishes an exam title. The exam provider sets the exam content, publishes the study material and sets retake fees. Exam fees are listed with each class above.
The Illinois Department of Public Health issues all worker and contractor credentials covered on this page.
Illinois Department of Public Health1
https://dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/environmental-health-protection/plumbing.html
Check a license
This is the state's own search, so what comes back is the register itself rather than somebody's copy of it.
the worker and the business: https://ildohplmprod.glsuite.us/GLSuiteWeb/Clients/ILDOHPLM/PUBLIC/Verification/Plumber_License_Verification.aspx2
Illinois does not publish a list of the states whose plumber licenses it recognizes. Moving to Illinois? Contact Illinois Department of Public Health and ask whether your current license will be recognized. Leaving? Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work.
Illinois licenses individual plumbers. You need a state license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for. Illinois 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.
Illinois publishes an hours figure for one of the three license classes here: Licensed Plumber, 5,600 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 Illinois earn between $34.65 and $57.72 an hour, and half of all of them earn more than $48.05. 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.3
The top tenth of plumbers on a payroll in Illinois earn above $60.79 an hour, which over a 2,080-hour year comes to more than $126,430. 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.3
The state publishes these: $100 to be issued Apprentice Plumber, $150 to be issued Licensed Plumber and $150 to be issued Plumbing Contractor Registration. 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: Illinois 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.
Illinois licenses the worker, so the work itself is work a license covers. Working as an employee and taking a job in your own name are two different positions, and the second one puts you under the contractor license as well. What the state does about work done without one is not something these pages carry, and it is exactly the kind of thing worth five minutes on the phone before you accept anything.
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.