How did we pick these?
Plumbing is licensed to people in Texas, not to companies. A plumbing business works under the licence of one designated responsible master plumber, and the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners publishes its entire licensee list as a free download. That makes this the one home trade where a list like this can be checked rather than asserted.
So we took the licence number off each company's own site and looked it up in the board's file, confirming that the number is current, that it belongs to the company trading under it, and which named person holds it. Then we read the endorsements, which are recorded against the individual and decide what the plumber may legally touch. Two results came out of the data rather than the marketing: Stan's licence carries the water supply protection endorsement, the backflow and cross-connection qualification, and Pecan Street's carries medical gas. Neither company leads with it.
Austin then adds a second hurdle that Houston phrases differently and most lists ignore entirely. Under the city's own plumbing code amendments, a permit goes to a responsible master plumber who is licensed by the state and registered with the City of Austin. A plumber can be perfectly legal statewide and still unable to permit your water heater here. We asked about both.
After that, ordinary judgement: how long the company has worked Austin, whether the trade scope matches the licence, whether the published address is a real yard, and whether a company's own website agrees with itself. That last test moved two companies down this page.
What we cut. Butler Plumbing and Reliant Plumbing both sit behind bot checks that refused every request we made, so we could not read their own addresses or licence numbers first hand, and we will not publish details we have not seen. Capital City Plumbing & Drain is in Leander and S&D's own Taylor base is in Williamson County, so neither is an Austin address even though both serve the metro. A search for Austin plumbers also turned up daniels-plumbing.com ranking locally, which on inspection is a Philadelphia company on Torresdale Avenue with a city of Philadelphia master plumber. That is the single most common trap in this category.
No business on this page is a client of ours and none paid for its place.
Which Austin plumber fits which job?
| Company | Trading since | Licence published | Endorsement in state file | Best for |
| Stan's | 1954 | M-38233, labelled | Water supply protection | Most houses, softeners, irrigation |
| ABC | 1949 | M-32147, unlabelled | None recorded | Households that want one supplier |
| Moore & More | 1986 | M-13180 | None recorded | South Austin, plumbing only |
| Radiant | 1999 | M-42438 and M-45619 | None recorded | Nights, weekends, three trades |
| Pecan Street | Not stated | M-18971, with the RMP named | Medical gas | Downtown, condos, clinics |
| Beyond Wow | 1980 | M-11671 | None recorded | Sewer, trenchless, whole metro |
What should you ask before anyone starts?
Three questions, in this order.
Who is your responsible master plumber, and what is the number? Then look it up. Every company above passed, including the ones whose sites publish nothing, so there is no excuse for a company that will not tell you.
Are you registered with the City of Austin? This is the Austin-specific one. The state licence makes somebody a plumber; the city registration is what lets them pull your permit. If you are doing the work yourself in a house you own and live in, the homestead permit route puts you in the role of trade contractor, inspections included.
Is this job permitted, and who files it? Irrigation systems need a permit before installation and no gas work is exempt. A water heater change-out gets permitted as a matter of routine. A contractor who offers to skip it is saving you a fee and handing you a problem at resale.
What should you do next?
For an ordinary Austin house, call Stan's first. If you want one company for the plumbing, the pest control and the air conditioning, ABC. In south Austin, Moore & More. At 2 a.m., Radiant. Downtown or in a condo, Pecan Street. For a sewer line under a driveway, Beyond Wow.
Then have a look at the rest of our Austin coverage, the other cities on the plumbing hub, the same licence test applied in Houston, and our Austin roofing rankings, where no state licence exists at all and the whole exercise has to be done differently.