The City of Cleveland requires a mechanical contractor to file a $5,000 surety bond to hold a license through the Cleveland Contractor Licensing Board — ours is $100 flat, and the price you see is the checkout price. The bond issues the moment you pay, and the application collects no credit information.
















Municipal contractor license bonds are about the simplest thing in surety. Here's the entire process:
Business details and an effective date. That's the application — no financials, no credit section, no follow-up scavenger hunt.
Municipal license bonds like this are among the thousands of bond types that issue right after purchase. At most, 1–2 business days.
Your executed bond and power of attorney arrive by email, ready to file with the Cleveland Contractor Licensing Board as part of your mechanical license application or renewal. Wet-ink original mailed on request.
Cleveland does not license mechanical contractors through the state — it licenses them locally through the Cleveland Contractor Licensing Board, which the city's Department of Community Development also administers alongside building permits and code enforcement within the corporate limits of Cleveland. Holding the license is conditioned on a $5,000 surety bond.
It's a three-party arrangement: you (the principal), the surety carrier, and the City of Cleveland (the obligee), with property owners and other harmed parties as the protected parties. If a licensed mechanical contractor fails to perform work properly or leaves a covered claim unpaid, the harmed party can recover against the bond.
It is not insurance for you — if the surety pays a claim, you repay the surety. The $5,000 figure comes from Section 3(3)(b) of the City of Cleveland's Contractor Licensing Ordinance (adopted June 2, 2015), which requires the bond of every applicant for a Board-issued license, mechanical contractors included. The bond must stay active for the life of your license, so we track it and notify you 60 and 30 days out to keep your $5,000 filing continuous.
These are the actual issuing fields — no credit section, because this application doesn't collect credit information.
Start the application →$100 flat, soft pull only, bond often issued in the same sitting. Free until issued.