How Much Does it Cost to Maintain an Electrician License?

Written by Kacie Goff

The best things in life might be free, but your electrician’s license isn’t. Yes, it enables you to have a lucrative career. But it also requires you to periodically go through a renewal process with your state, and that process probably costs money. 

The good news is that you shouldn’t need to set aside an exorbitant sum in order to keep your license or certification current. While some states are certainly more expensive than others, you’re probably looking at a few hundred bucks tops when all is said and done. 

Budgeting for two main categories will help you prep for the cost to maintain your electrician license. Let’s take a look at each.

License renewal fees

The first and most obvious cost in maintaining an electrician license is the actual renewal fee. There’s some pretty significant variation in this cost across states.

If you want to renew a journeyman electrician license in Alabama, for example, it’s just $35. As a master electrician in Wyoming, you’re paying triple that thanks to a $100 renewal fee. 

Ultimately, renewals can range from $30-ish to $300. It depends on a few things:

• Your state. Certain state codes cap the renewal fees that can be charged for electrical licenses, helping to keep things more affordable.
• Your renewal timeline. Generally, the longer you have between renewals, the more renewal will cost. If you have to renew annually, for example, your renewal fee will likely cost less than someone who has biennial or triennial renewal. That helps to balance out the per-year cost that most licensed, registered, or certified electricians need to budget for their renewal fees. 
• Your license type. Many states offer multiple types of electrical licenses, with a higher license type indicating more experience. In most states, renewing a higher-level master electrical license will cost more than renewing a starter-level journeyman license. 

Long story short, your renewal fee hinges entirely on your state and your license type. Look up your specific fee so you know how much you’ll need to pay to keep your electrician license active. 

Continuing education costs

Beyond the renewal fee, most states require continuing education (CE) hours before you can be eligible for renewal. And those hours usually aren’t free.

Fortunately, to make CE more affordable and more convenient, a lot of states have approved online CE. To give you an idea of what it would cost to take your hours online and on-demand, we built this chart for states that allow online CE, complete with links to the course you’ll need for renewal:

Budget for the renewal fee itself and the price of your CE hours and you should have no trouble covering the cost to maintain your electrician license.