How to check an IBCLC credential yourself

IBLCE, the board that issues the IBCLC credential, publishes a free public registry. Checking takes about a minute, and it is the single most useful minute you can spend before booking a paid consultation in a state where the title is not protected.

Last checked 2026-09-09.

The steps

1. Ask for their full name as it appears on the credential, or their L-number. This is a normal question and a legitimate practitioner will not mind it. The L-number is the faster route.
2. Open the IBLCE public registry. It is linked in the sources below.
3. Search by L-number if you have it. The format is a capital L, a dash, then digits — L-12345. It is case-sensitive and must match exactly.
4. Otherwise search by full first and last name.
5. Check the expiry date, not just the presence of a record. The credential has to be renewed. A lapsed entry is a different thing from a current one.

Three things that will surprise you

It only does exact matches

The registry is a lookup, not a browse. You cannot list every IBCLC in your city, or in your state, or sort by anything. You can only confirm a specific person you already have a name for. This is a deliberate privacy design, and it is the reason no directory anywhere — including this one — can simply publish “every verified IBCLC near you” straight from the source.

A business name will not work

The credential belongs to a person, not a practice. If all you have is “Sunrise Lactation Support LLC”, the registry cannot help until you get a human name out of the website, the booking page, or by asking. This is the most common reason a check fails, and it is not a red flag on its own — plenty of legitimate practitioners trade under a business name.

Nothing found is not the same as a fake

A name that does not appear might be spelled differently on the certificate, registered under a previous name, or the person may hold a different lactation credential entirely — CLC and others are real qualifications that simply are not in this registry. See what the different credentials mean. Ask before concluding anything.

If you are in a state that licenses

Connecticut, New Mexico, Oregon and Rhode Island restrict who may practise for pay, so there you can also ask for a state licence number and check it with the state. In Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island a licence implies IBCLC certification, so that one check answers both questions.

New Mexico is different. Its licence accepts several national certifications, not IBCLC alone — so a New Mexico licence does not tell you someone is an IBCLC, and the registry check above is still worth doing separately. See the rules for your state.

What we do with this

We run this same check before a practitioner listing on this site is allowed to ask a search engine to rank it, and we publish what the check returned and when. Where a listing cannot be checked — usually the business-name problem above — we say so rather than implying it passed.