Georgia does not issue a master electrician license. There is no journeyman license either, and no city or county in the state issues one of its own. If you came here to find out how to get your master card in Georgia, the honest answer is that the card does not exist — and the thing you actually need has a different name.
Here is the whole picture, with the statute and the Board's own pages cited, so you can check every line of it.
Key facts
- Georgia issues two electrical licenses: Electrical Contractor Restricted (Class I) and Non-Restricted (Class II). No master. No journeyman.
- No county or city may add its own electrical license — O.C.G.A. 43-14-19(b).
- Five states transfer by reciprocity to the Non-Restricted license: Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee.
- The exam is 140 scored questions in two four-hour parts, 30 law and 110 technical, open book on the 2023 NEC, passing scaled score 70.
- Application fee $110, minimum age 21, processed in about 20 business days.
- Renewal every two years by June 30 of even-numbered years; continuing education 4 hours a year, 8 per cycle.
What Georgia licenses instead
The Georgia State Board of Electrical Contractors, under the Secretary of State's licensing division, issues two electrical licenses. Both of them license a contractor — the person or firm that takes the job — not a grade of electrician:
- Electrical Contractor, Restricted. Residential work: multifamily structures of not more than two levels, or single-family up to three levels, with single-phase installations not exceeding 400 amperes at the service drop or lateral (O.C.G.A. 43-14-2(10) as re-enacted effective July 1, 2026). Most study material still prints the older 200-ampere figure from Board Rule 121-3-.01.
- Electrical Contractor, Non-Restricted. Any electrical work in Georgia, any size, no limit.
If you are the one holding the license, the Non-Restricted is the top of the ladder in this state. That is the license a master electrician from somewhere else is looking for.
Why everybody calls it a master license anyway
Because in most states it is one. Texas, North Carolina, Virginia and many others run a three-rung ladder: apprentice, then journeyman, then master electrician, each with its own card and its own exam. An electrician who learned the trade under that system moves to Georgia and naturally asks how to transfer his master.
Georgia never built that ladder for electricians. It regulates who may contract for electrical work, and it leaves the grading of electricians to employers.
The word does exist on that same Board, which is where a lot of the confusion comes from: the Board has twenty-seven members sitting in five divisions, and one of them is the Division of Master Plumbers and Journeyman Plumbers. Georgia does license master plumbers. It does not license master electricians.
Is there a journeyman electrician license in Georgia?
No. Same answer, same reason. You can work as an electrician in Georgia for an employer without any state card at all — what you cannot do without a license is contract for the work yourself.
Plenty of Georgia employers use "apprentice", "journeyman" and "master" internally for pay grades, and an apprenticeship is one of the three routes the Board accepts as experience. But none of those titles is a state license, and none of them appears on a state license lookup.
Does my city or county issue one?
No, and this one is worth knowing because it can save you a trip. The license is good statewide, and the law says plainly that no county or municipality may impose additional licensing requirements (O.C.G.A. 43-14-19(b)). Licensing under 43-14-8 is required before you do business anywhere in the state, "including at the local level" (43-14-8(h)).
What a city or county still can do is charge you a business license or occupation tax and collect registration fees (43-14-16(c)), and require permits and inspections for the work itself. That is a tax and a permit, not a second electrical license.
What if I already hold a master license in another state?
Then read this part twice, because it may mean you never sit an exam at all.
Georgia takes a license from five states by reciprocity, for the Non-Restricted license only. The Secretary of State publishes an application called Electrical Contractor — Non-Restricted, Reciprocity, and its instruction is: apply if you hold a current license with no violations, obtained by exam, from Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina or Tennessee (read 2026-09-23).
The mechanism behind it is Board Rule 121-2-.03 and O.C.G.A. 43-14-23: the other state's exam and requirements must be substantially equal to Georgia's, that state must extend Georgians the same privilege, and you must meet Georgia's experience prerequisites. The rule also lets the division refuse somebody who appears to have licensed in another state purely to route around Georgia's own requirements.
The checklist is the ordinary one plus proof of the other license: notarized application and fee, three references, a background check from your local law enforcement agency, verification of the out-of-state license, a secure and verifiable identity document and the citizenship affidavit.
Hold a license anywhere else, or want the Restricted license, and you take the exam like everybody else.
What you actually have to do
For the Non-Restricted license, the Board approves you to test before you can book a seat, and it looks for one of three routes (O.C.G.A. 43-14-8 as re-enacted July 1, 2026):
- Experience: four years of full-time field experience on NEC-type installations, at least two of them on three-phase systems, across the listed work areas — raceways and boxes; conductors, cords and splices; service entrances, metering, panelboards and switchboards; motors and generators with their feeders and controls; switches, disconnects, lighting and appliance controls; special-occupancy equipment; bonding and grounding electrodes; and load, branch-circuit and conductor calculations.
- Education: a two-year electrical diploma or certificate program plus four years of experience, two of them three-phase.
- Apprenticeship: a US Department of Labor apprenticeship plus one year of three-phase experience.
Applications are generally processed within 20 business days. A deficiency letter restarts that clock, and an application left incomplete for 60 days is withdrawn.
What the exam is
Once the Board approves you, PSI administers it:
- 140 scored questions, in two four-hour parts.
- Part 1, laws and regulations: 30 questions. Licensing law, the Uniform Codes Act, OSHA, permits and inspections, business and administrative requirements.
- Part 2, technical: 110 questions, written to the 2023 NEC with the Georgia amendments.
- Open book. You bring the code and the other listed references; the questions are written on the assumption that you can find a section, not that you memorised it.
- Scaled score of 70 to pass.
Names and dates to keep straight
- The license is Electrical Contractor, Restricted or Non-Restricted. Search the Secretary of State's license lookup under that name, not "master electrician" — that is why your lookup comes back empty.
- The code edition is the 2023 NEC with Georgia amendments, and PSI's reference list stays 2023 through December 31, 2026.
- The 2026 Georgia amendments take effect January 1, 2027. The amendment packet changes; the NEC edition does not.
- Licenses renew every two years, online, by June 30 of even-numbered years, with a late window July 1–31. Continuing education is four hours a year, eight per renewal cycle.
Common questions
Is there a master electrician license in Georgia?
No. Georgia licenses electrical contractors in two classes, Restricted and Non-Restricted, and issues no master or journeyman electrician license at the state, county or city level. The Non-Restricted license is the unlimited one and is what an out-of-state master electrician normally wants.
What is the Georgia equivalent of a master electrician license?
The Electrical Contractor Non-Restricted license, which this site and most candidates call Class II. It allows any electrical work in Georgia with no size limit, and it is earned by Board approval plus a 140-question PSI exam, or by reciprocity from five states.
Can I work as an electrician in Georgia without a license?
Yes, as an employee of a licensed electrical contractor. The license is required to contract for electrical work yourself — to take the job, pull the permit and be responsible for it. Contracting unlicensed is a misdemeanor under O.C.G.A. 43-14-17(g).
Does Georgia have a journeyman electrician license?
No. Employers use the term for pay grades and the Board accepts a US Department of Labor apprenticeship as an experience route, but Georgia issues no journeyman electrician license.
Does my city or county require its own electrical license in Georgia?
No. O.C.G.A. 43-14-19(b) bars a county or municipality from imposing additional licensing requirements; the state license is valid statewide. Local governments may still charge business license and occupation taxes and require permits and inspections.
Which states can transfer an electrical license to Georgia?
Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, for the Non-Restricted license only, where the license is current, free of violations and was obtained by examination. It is filed as the "Electrical Contractor — Non-Restricted, Reciprocity" application with verification of the out-of-state license.
Where to start
If you are sitting the exam, find out where you stand before you buy anything from anybody. The free exam on this site is 20 questions from the official outline, no account and no card, and every answer comes back with the section it came from. Twenty minutes tells you whether Part 1 or Part 2 is your problem.
Sources read on 2026-09-23: the Secretary of State's How-To Guide for Electrical Contractors and its reciprocity application instructions; O.C.G.A. Title 43, Chapter 14 as effective July 1, 2026; Board Rules 121-2-.03, 121-2-.06 and 121-3-.01.