How we verify what we publish
Methodology
Who reviews this site
Applicator Prep content is reviewed by the Applicator Prep editorial team before publication. Review here means one thing: every fact on the page is checked against the primary source that actually sets it, and the date of that check is printed next to the fact.
We do not claim anyone on this site holds a private or commercial pesticide applicator certification, a state license, or an agency role. Nobody here is a certified applicator, and we will not imply otherwise to look more authoritative. Applicator Prep is an independent publisher and is not a state agency, not the EPA, and not affiliated with any state department of agriculture. The authority this site stands on is the verification process described below, not a credential.
How data is sourced and maintained
Certification requirements, exam names, fee schedules, category lists, and recertification cycles come from the agency that certifies applicators in that jurisdiction: a state department of agriculture or its equivalent, such as the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries Pesticide Management Section, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, or the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Where a state contracts its testing to a vendor, the vendor's own candidate handbook or scheduling portal is the source for exam logistics and exam pricing. Each state page names the agency it was checked against and links its source page.
We do not reprint another site's compiled 50-state table. Every state row is checked against the certifying agency directly, and where an agency does not publish a figure we say so on the page instead of filling the gap with a guess. Several states in this dataset carry exactly that note.
Every page carries the date its facts were last checked. Our internal freshness target is a 90 day review window: once a page's printed date is older than that, it goes into the re-verification queue. The date on the page is the current signal here, so read it before you rely on a fee.
The statistics page is this site's own original data study: every figure on it is computed at build time from the state fee data on this site, under one published inclusion rule applied to every state, never hand-typed.
Last full verification
The newest verified fact on this site is dated . This date is computed from the site's own content, not hardcoded, and moves automatically as pages get re-verified.
Corrections
Spot something wrong? Agency fees and category rules change, and a state page that was right in July can be wrong by October. Tell us what page, what fact, and what it should say instead. Reach the publisher through the Urban Algorithm contact page. Applicator Prep is a project of Urban Algorithm LLC.