Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Three questions, then the list of what your application actually needs

30 situations across the three ways people arrive at a Texas electrical license, built from 61 rules with a citation left on every line.

What nineteen dollars buys

You answer three questions with buttons. Where you are starting from, then either which license you are aiming at, which state issued the one you hold, or how long yours has been expired. Out comes the checklist for that one situation: the requirements, the fees, the forms, the day counts and the traps, each with the rule it comes from printed on it.

• 30 situations, covering 11 licenses on the first-license path, 14 answers for people licensed somewhere else, and 5 for a license that has lapsed.
• 559 checklist lines in total, of which 175 are marked as traps, meaning a rule that is commonly read backwards or a pair of rules one section apart that say opposite things.
• 61 distinct rules cited, and every line carries the one it came from, so any of it can be checked against the statute in about a minute.
• 2 holes we have not filled, disclosed inside the free half rather than discovered after paying.

The free half names the target and the number that decides whether you are close. For a journeyman electrician that is 8,000 hours of on-the-job training under a master electrician, with the examination available at 7,000. For a residential wireman it is 4,000 hours or an approved career and technology education program instead of them.

Then it counts the checklist in front of you. How many lines your situation actually carries, how many of those are the qualification and the fees you already expect, how many are paperwork and day counts, and how many are traps, which are the lines where an application comes back or a license does not issue. A journeyman applicant has 22 lines and 7 of them are traps. One of the 7 is then shown in full, for nothing, because a count nobody can check is worth nothing.

Of the 30 situations, 2 carry 2 traps rather than the 8 the busiest ones carry. Those 2 are told their checklist is short and that they probably do not need this, and no price is shown on that answer at all. Losing that sale is cheaper than being the kind of tool that takes it.

The rules are free. The arrangement is what costs nineteen dollars

Everything in this is published. Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1305 and 16 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 73 are online at no charge and anyone can read them. Between them they run to hundreds of provisions, arranged by subject matter, and not one of them is arranged by the question a person actually has, which is some version of what do I need and what am I missing.

So what you are paying for is 30 answers to that question, assembled by hand, with the citation left on every line so you can check any of it against the rule in about a minute. If a line here is wrong, the citation is what lets you find that out. That is the opposite of how most of this material is written.

And the reason it is worth paying for at all is that the department does not give the money back. 16 TAC 73.80(e) makes every fee in the electrician fee schedule non-refundable, so an application filed against a requirement you had misread costs you the thirty or forty-five dollars whether or not anybody agrees with you later. The evaluation you were hoping for arrives as a rejection you paid for.

The traps are the part people come back for

175 lines across the 30 situations are marked as traps. Four of them, free to read here:

• Seven thousand hours lets you sit the journeyman examination under 16 TAC 73.21(b). The license still needs 8,000 under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155. Passing at 7,000 and waiting for a license in the post is the most common version of this.
• Hours in a career and technology education program may not be credited toward the on-the-job training required for a license under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575(g). One section earlier, Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157 makes completing such a program an alternative to the residential wireman hours. Both are true and confusing them costs a year.
• The journeyman industrial electrician license requires its 8,000 hours to have been worked as a licensed electrical apprentice under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1601. Hours worked without that license do not become qualifying hours later.
• A residential wireman may only work in single-family and multifamily dwellings not exceeding four stories under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002(13). The version people carry in their head is single-family or duplex, which is the wrong test in both directions.

The others are in the tool and they are the same kind of thing: the continuing education window that moves when a renewal is late, the ninety day criminal history letter that people request after they file rather than before, the thirty calendar days your verifier has to answer, and the eighteen month line past which renewal stops being something you can do.

What it does not do

It does not file anything, it is not the department, and it is not legal advice. It is a reading of published rules with the citations left on.

It does not tell you how long anything takes in practice. The only processing time in it is the one with a statute behind it, and where there is no number we do not invent one.

It does not know who you are. Nothing you click leaves your browser, there is no account, no password and no address on file, and the checklists arrive as one file that is looked up on your own machine. The server never learns which situation you are in, which is deliberate: several of these questions are nobody else's business.

It is one charge, not a subscription, and it does not expire.

If it does not tell you anything you did not know

Ask for the nineteen dollars back and you get it. Write through the contact page inside ninety days of the payment, quote the Stripe receipt, and the refund goes to the card. You do not have to give a reason, and there is nothing to send back.

That position is easy for us to hold and worth saying out loud anyway. The checklists are already on your machine by then and we have no way to remove them, no account to close, and no record of who you are. A refund costs us the money and nothing else, so there is no reason to make you argue for it.

• ToolOpen the readiness check

  The count is free, no payment, no account

• PageAll fourteen license types

  Free, and a good place to start

What is behind the 30 situations

11 licenses on the first-license path, covering journeyman, master, residential wireman, maintenance electrician, journeyman industrial, journeyman lineman, journeyman sign, master sign, residential appliance installer, electrical apprentice and the electrical contractor business license.

14 answers on the out-of-state path. Ten states are recognized for a journeyman license and six for a master license, and the conditions differ per state rather than following one rule: a year for some, two years for others, and Louisiana adds a residency requirement. The last answer is for every state on neither list, which is most of them.

5 answers on the renewal path, from an on-time renewal through the ninety day and eighteen month windows to the point where the only route left is a new license with the examination attached.

Read the department roster again on the day you file. It moved four times between December 2025 and June 2026, and one of those announcements had still not reached the roster page when we read it on 24 August 2026. The tool says so on the answer where it matters rather than in a footnote.

One purchase covers all of them, which is the point of pricing it this way. The license you are applying for today is not the last thing this check answers for you: a Texas license runs a year and is renewed annually, the renewal path is already in here, and the master license sits on the same first-license path for whenever you come back to it.

What this page cites

• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 The journeyman electrician on-the-job training requirement, 8,000 hours under the supervision of a master electrician. source
• 16 TAC 73.21(b) Examination eligibility at 7,000 hours, or on completing an approved accelerated program. The rule wrote down what had been department practice. source
• 16 TAC 73.80(a) The whole fee schedule, from twenty dollars to one hundred and ten dollars by license type, plus the ninety-five dollar apprentice training program registration. source
• 16 TAC 73.80(e) Every fee in the electrician fee schedule is non-refundable, which is what makes a misread requirement cost money rather than time. source
• Tex. Occ. Code 51.401 The late renewal ladder: one and a half times inside ninety days, twice beyond it, and the executive director approval that keeps the eighteen month to three year window open. source
• 16 TAC 73.24(a) Licensure without the examination for an applicant licensed in a state with an agreement, provided all other requirements are met. source