Open data: US massage therapy licensure
All 51 US jurisdictions — what each requires to practise, the training hours, the exam, the fees and the continuing education. Free under CC BY 4.0. Every record carries its own source URL and verification date; newest verification 2026-07-25.
The finding most people want
The same licence takes 500 training hours in 12 jurisdictions and 1,000 in Nebraska and New York — a 2.0× spread for the same scope of practice. 500 hours is the most common requirement, held by 12 of the 47 licensing jurisdictions. A further 4 jurisdictions do not license massage therapy: California, Kansas, Minnesota, and Wyoming. California is not unregulated, though — it runs voluntary CAMTC certification with its own hour requirement and fee, which are in the file but deliberately excluded from every licensure figure on this page.
Training hours, by requirement
| Hours | Jurisdictions | Which |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | 12 | Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia |
| 570 | 1 | Hawaii |
| 600 | 6 | Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin |
| 625 | 10 | Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia |
| 650 | 7 | Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee |
| 700 | 2 | Arizona, Mississippi |
| 725 | 1 | New Hampshire |
| 750 | 3 | Connecticut, Maryland, North Dakota |
| 800 | 1 | Rhode Island |
| 1,000 | 2 | Nebraska, New York |
Published for 45 of the 47 licensing jurisdictions — not published for Utah and Vermont.
Exams and fees
The MBLEx is near-universal but not universal: 43 of the 47 licensing jurisdictions name it. Arkansas, Hawaii, and New York require a different examination, and Vermont requires no state examination at all.
First-time licence fees run $65 in Rhode Island to $379.75 in Connecticut — but they are published for only 36 of the 47 licensing jurisdictions, so treat that range as a floor and a ceiling on what is documented, not on what exists.
Download
- massage-licensure.csv — one row per jurisdiction (51 rows)
- massage-licensure.json — the same rows, plus licence metadata and the derived headline figures
- states.json — the fuller nested record per state, including the overview text and every source
Where our figures differ from other tables
Two states are worth knowing about before you republish anything. Ohio is recorded at 600 hours because Ohio Revised Code §4731.19 sets it there verbatim; 750 is quoted on other sites. South Carolina is recorded at 650 hours, raised from a long-standing 500 by a 2023 regulatory rewrite (S.C. Code Regs. 77-101, effective 26 May 2023). Both figures come from the codified text rather than from a secondary table, which is the same rule applied to every row in the file.
What is NOT in it
- Fees are published for 36 of 47 licensing jurisdictions. An empty fee means not published in a primary source, never free.
- No municipal or county licensing sweep. Local requirements appear only where a state's own source raises them, so absence is not evidence there are none — several cities license massage independently of their state.
- No school, program or CE-provider directories, and no exam pass rates.
- No historical series. Current snapshot; newest verification 2026-07-25.
- In
ce_ethics_hours,0means checked and no ethics carve-out exists; empty means that check has not been done. The two are not the same and the export keeps them apart.
Embed it
Plain HTML — no iframe, no script — so the table styles with your own CSS and the credit is a normal link on your page.
<table>
<caption>Massage therapy training hours required for licensure, by US jurisdiction (45 of 47 licensing jurisdictions)</caption>
<tr><th>Hours required</th><th>Jurisdictions</th><th>Which</th></tr>
<tr><td>500</td><td>12</td><td>Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia</td></tr>
<tr><td>570</td><td>1</td><td>Hawaii</td></tr>
<tr><td>600</td><td>6</td><td>Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin</td></tr>
<tr><td>625</td><td>10</td><td>Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia</td></tr>
<tr><td>650</td><td>7</td><td>Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee</td></tr>
<tr><td>700</td><td>2</td><td>Arizona, Mississippi</td></tr>
<tr><td>725</td><td>1</td><td>New Hampshire</td></tr>
<tr><td>750</td><td>3</td><td>Connecticut, Maryland, North Dakota</td></tr>
<tr><td>800</td><td>1</td><td>Rhode Island</td></tr>
<tr><td>1000</td><td>2</td><td>Nebraska, New York</td></tr>
</table>
<p>The same licence takes 500 hours in 12 jurisdictions and 1,000 in Nebraska and New York — a 2.0x spread for the same scope of practice. 4 jurisdictions (California, Kansas, Minnesota, and Wyoming) do not license massage therapy; California instead runs voluntary CAMTC certification, which has requirements of its own. As of 2026-07-25. Data: <a href="https://www.getmassagelicense.com/data">US Massage Therapy Licensure Dataset</a> by GetMassageLicense, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></p>Attribution
US Massage Therapy Licensure Dataset by GetMassageLicense, CC BY 4.0
Found something wrong? Corrections lists what has already been fixed and how to report the next one, and About & Methodology documents how each figure is sourced.