How we verify

California Auto Shop Check is compiled from public records, not from who paid to be listed.

Sources

• DCA public license data: Bureau of Automotive Repair file — The Department of Consumer Affairs' monthly public license file for BAR: license type, number, name, address, county, original issue date, expiry and status for every registration and station license.
• DCA License Search (Bureau of Automotive Repair) — The state's own lookup, including any disciplinary history. Use it before you hire a shop.
• Bureau of Automotive Repair — Consumer rights, Smog Check rules, the Auto Shop Locator and complaints.
• Automotive Repair Act (Bus. & Prof. Code 9880–9889) — Registration, estimates, invoices, return of parts and grounds for discipline.

The California Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) publishes each board's public license file once a month. Every week we look up the current Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR) file in DCA's public data folder and download it; when DCA posts a new month's file, the site picks it up within a week.

We list every Automotive Repair Dealer (ARD) registration held by a business with status Active and an expiry date that had not passed. Smog Check station licenses (test-and-repair, test-only, repair-only) and vehicle safety systems inspection station licenses are matched to the ARD registration with the same business name, street address and ZIP code and shown on that listing; a station with no matching registration is listed on its own. Licensed technicians, inspectors and state referee stations are not listed.

Names, addresses, counties, original issue dates and expiry dates are shown as BAR publishes them. Older records carry only a year, which we show as the year. "Registered since" is the original issue date of the registration at that location. Order within a city: longest-registered first, then alphabetical.

BAR's public file has no phone numbers, ratings or disciplinary history. We never mark a shop as unregistered: a shop missing here may have renewed after the last monthly file, registered under another name, or be listed as delinquent, which we leave out. Check the DCA License Search for any shop, including its disciplinary history.

Featured shops appear in a separate, labelled box and never change the order of the list.

What a badge means

BAR-registered: the shop's Automotive Repair Dealer registration (or station license) appears in the Bureau of Automotive Repair's public license file with status Active and an expiry date that had not passed. We only publish positive matches. A listing without a badge is not an accusation — most gaps are name variations between registries.

Freshness

Data was last refreshed on 2026-10-16. DCA publishes BAR's license file once a month; we check for a new file every week and re-pull it.

Corrections

Email sabrsystemssoftware@gmail.com or claim your listing on the for-business page. We fix verified errors within two business days.