Missouri does not license roofers
There is no state roofing license here, which means the reassuring question you were told to ask has no answer and tells you nothing. This page explains what happened to the bills that tried to create one, what is genuinely municipal, and the five checks that actually separate companies.
Missouri has no statewide licensing scheme for roofing contractors and issues no roofing credential. Anyone quoting you a state roofing credential number is quoting something that does not exist, which is a fact about them worth knowing early.
Verified against the Missouri Revisor of Statutes, 23 August 2026. No chapter creates one.
Three bills, three failures
The legislature has been asked to create a scheme more than once and has declined each time. SB 1022 in 2016, SB 153 in 2019 and SB 326 in 2021 all failed, and none of them became law. That last one matters more than the other two, because it is the one that gets quoted as current law. Ask an AI assistant about Missouri roofing requirements and there is a real chance it will describe the scheme that the failed 2021 bill, SB 326, proposed, in the present tense, as though it were law. It is not.
The bills were not fringe ideas. They were responses to exactly the storm chasing problem this site keeps circling: out of state crews arriving after a hail event, collecting deposits, and being untraceable by the following spring. The problem is real. The statewide answer to it does not exist, so the answer has to be assembled from other things.
What is genuinely municipal
Registration in Missouri is a city and county matter and it is uneven. Some municipalities in the St. Louis area run their own contractor registration with a bond requirement and an annual renewal. Ballwin and Kirkwood are two of them. Plenty of neighbouring municipalities require nothing at all, which is why "licensed in Missouri" is a phrase with no fixed meaning and why a company can be entirely legitimate in one town and unregistered in the next one over.
Do not treat municipal registration as a quality signal. It is a records check and a fee. It tells you a company filled in a form and posted a bond. It does not tell you anybody can lay a valley.
Five checks that do the work a license would have done
- General liability, from the carrier, not from the contractorAsk for the certificate of insurance to be sent to your email address directly by the insurance agent. A PDF forwarded by the salesperson is a PDF, and PDFs are editable.
- Workers compensation coverage on the crewAsk separately, because it is a separate policy and it is the one that matters if somebody is hurt on your roof. A company that goes quiet on this question has answered it.
- Registration in your own municipalityCall your city hall and ask whether they register contractors and whether this company is on the list. It is a two minute call and it also tells you whether your job needs a permit.
- A local address you can drive toNot a mailbox service, not an address in another state, not a phone number that goes to a call centre. After a large hail event the number of roofing companies in a metro area rises sharply and falls again just as sharply.
- A written scope before any money movesMaterials named by manufacturer and product line, quantities, what happens if the decking is bad, who pulls the permit, what the cleanup includes, and the payment schedule. If it will not go in writing it will not happen.
None of these is a credential. Together they are considerably more informative than the credential Missouri never created.
Permits: separate question, also local
Permitting is not licensing and the two get muddled constantly. In unincorporated St. Louis County, a like for like asphalt shingle reroof on a slope of 4:12 or steeper does not require a permit. A permit is required if the slope is shallower than that, if more than a quarter of the decking is being replaced, or if the roofing material is changing to something different from what is on the house now.
That is one county, and municipalities inside it set their own rules on top. If your house is anywhere else in Missouri, call your own building department and ask before the tear-off starts rather than after. Contradictory answers circulate online for several Missouri counties, including some published pages that no longer resolve, so a phone call to the department that would issue the permit beats anything you read, including this page.
Whoever pulls the permit is answerable for the inspection. A contractor asking you to pull it yourself is asking you to carry that, and the reason is usually not convenience.
Not legal advice
Permit and registration requirements change, and they differ street by street. Confirm yours with the building department that has jurisdiction over your address before you rely on anything here.
Documentation, in your name, whether or not you hire anyone
Keys Roofing is a roofing, gutter and downspout company working in greater St. Louis, and that is the only part of Missouri it can send anyone to. If your house is outside that radius, use the guide and hire locally. Nothing here changes based on where you live.
What an inspection produces is a set of photographs, slope by slope measurements and a written scope of the work the roof needs. You keep that file. If there is a claim in your story, the claim stays in your name and in your hands: under RSMo 407.725 a Missouri roofing contractor shall not represent or negotiate an owner's insurance claim, and Keys does not. The contractor's job is to document the roof accurately and to be on the roof as the contractor when the adjuster inspects it.
Ask for a roof inspection
Goes to Keys Roofing. Greater St. Louis only. No obligation, and no part of this form asks anything about your policy limits.
Nothing you type here is sent to any insurer, and nobody from Keys will contact one on your behalf.