If you're bringing a hardware product to market in the US, you need an FCC-accredited test lab. Wireless devices, unintentional radiators, anything that emits RF energy: it goes through a test lab before it can legally be sold.

There are 591 FCC-recognized test labs worldwide. We pulled the complete dataset from the FCC, enriched every record with accreditation status, capabilities, and location data, and built a searchable directory out of it. Here's what the landscape actually looks like.

What "FCC-accredited" actually means

The FCC doesn't run its own test labs. It recognizes private labs that have been accredited by approved Test Firm Accreditation Bodies (TFABs). Organizations like A2LA in the US, MIC in Japan, and BSMI in Taiwan are each authorized by the FCC to certify that a lab meets ISO/IEC 17025 standards for EMC and RF testing.

When a lab gets accredited, it receives a designation number. US labs get numbers like US1291, Chinese labs get CN1349, German labs get DE0058. That designation is what lets a Telecommunication Certification Body (TCB) accept the lab's test results and issue an FCC grant of equipment authorization.

The distinction between test labs and TCBs matters. Test labs do the physical testing: they put your device in an anechoic chamber and measure its emissions. TCBs review the test data and issue the certification. Some labs are also TCBs (67 out of 591), meaning they can test and certify in a single step. The rest are test-only, and their results go to a separate TCB for review.

The dataset: 591 labs across 28 countries

Here's where FCC-accredited test labs are located, ranked by count.

Labs by country

Less than a quarter of FCC-accredited labs are in the United States. The top three non-US countries (China, Taiwan, Japan) collectively hold 288 labs, more than double the US count.

China and Taiwan together account for 217 labs, or 37% of the total. Test labs follow factories, not regulators. That's where the hardware gets built, so that's where it gets tested.

The FCC's Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) framework covers 60+ countries through bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, which is how labs in 28 countries can perform testing that the FCC accepts.

US labs by state

If you're looking for a domestic lab, here's where they cluster.

California has 36 labs, mostly in the Bay Area and Southern California — names like MiCOM Labs, Intertek, Sporton, and UL. UL's headquarters is in Illinois, and you'll find Eurofins/MET Labs in Maryland, SGS North America in Georgia. Browse the full list at /labs/us.

Accreditation body breakdown

Labs are accredited by different bodies depending on their country.

A2LA (the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation) is the largest by a wide margin, accrediting 193 labs, or 33% of the total. That includes many labs outside the US, since A2LA accredits internationally. NVLAP, the NIST-run program, covers another 57. Between the two, US-based accreditation bodies oversee 250 of the 591 labs worldwide.

TCBs vs. test-only labs

pie title 591 FCC-recognized labs
    "Test-only labs (524)" : 524
    "TCBs — test + certify (67)" : 67

Only 67 labs are also TCBs. If your lab is a TCB, it can test your device and issue the FCC grant directly, with no separate certification body needed. That saves 1-2 weeks and simplifies the chain of custody for test data. UL, Intertek, TUV, and SGS show up repeatedly in the TCB list.

Accreditation status

We verified accreditation status for every lab in the dataset through web research and cross-referencing.

pie title Accreditation status (591 labs)
    "Confirmed active (414)" : 414
    "Not yet verified (123)" : 123
    "Expired (54)" : 54

414 labs have confirmed active accreditation. 54 have clearly expired and can't currently perform FCC testing. The remaining labs are operational but haven't had their status independently verified yet. The FCC's published expiration dates in the Socrata dataset are uniformly stale (many show 2022-2023 dates for labs that are obviously still operating), so we only mark a lab "active" when we can confirm it through a second source like the accreditation body's own records or the lab's website. In practice, most of these unverified labs are active. They have current websites, Google Business listings, and published capabilities.

The China question

119 of the 591 labs are in mainland China. Another 7 are in Hong Kong. Together, that's 126 labs, or 21.3% of the FCC-recognized testing ecosystem.

On April 30, 2026, the FCC is voting on a proposal to ban all of them.

The core proposal bans all labs in China and Hong Kong, extending the "Bad Labs" rule the FCC adopted in May 2025. A broader proposal would also cut off labs in any country without a Mutual Recognition Agreement with the US, which adds 5 more labs (4 in India, 1 in Switzerland). Total at risk: 131 labs, 22.2% of the global total.

Not all small local shops

The assumption that every affected lab is some unknown Chinese operation is wrong. 27 of the 126 labs facing the ban are subsidiaries of Western testing conglomerates:

• Intertek: 3 facilities in China including a TCB, plus 1 TCB in Hong Kong
• SGS: 4 facilities across Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Xi'an
• Bureau Veritas: 3 facilities in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Dongguan
• TUV Rheinland: 3 facilities across Guangdong, Shanghai, and Shenzhen
• TUV SUD: 2 facilities in Shenzhen and Shanghai
• UL: Guangzhou/Dongguan
• Eurofins: Shenzhen
• DEKRA: Suzhou

These companies all have labs in the US, Europe, and other MRA countries. The ban hits their China operations specifically, not their global businesses. But the China labs exist for a reason: they're co-located with the factories where products are actually built. Testing locally avoids the cost and delay of shipping prototypes internationally.

Who benefits

If 126 China/Hong Kong labs are removed, 460 labs remain. That testing volume has to go somewhere.

Taiwan comes out ahead. With 98 labs, it becomes the largest non-US testing market. Taiwanese labs serve the same Mandarin-speaking manufacturer base, they're a short flight from Chinese factories, and their pricing is comparable. For manufacturers who've been testing in Shenzhen, Taipei is the natural next option.

For a detailed breakdown of the April 30 vote — which specific labs are affected, which are already banned, and what it means for certification timelines — read our Bad Labs vote analysis.

How to choose a test lab

Whether you're picking your first lab or switching away from a China-based one, here's what to look at.

Check accreditation scope, not just accreditation. A lab can be FCC-accredited but not accredited for your specific tests. Accreditation scopes define which standards, test types, and frequency ranges a lab is qualified to run. Ask for the scope document. If they can't produce it, walk away.

Consider TCBs for speed. Only 67 of 591 labs in our dataset are TCBs, meaning they can test and certify in one engagement. No handoff to a separate certification body, and you save 1-2 weeks. If turnaround matters, start your search there.

Match location to your manufacturing. If your CM is in Shenzhen and you're testing in Ohio, you're shipping prototypes across the Pacific every time something fails. If you need engineers present for debugging (you often will), proximity matters. Check labs near your team or near your contract manufacturer.

Ask about multi-market capability. Good labs can run FCC, CE (Europe), and ISED (Canada) testing in a single campaign from one set of measurements. This avoids duplicate testing and can cut your total certification budget by 30-40%.

Get a quote breakdown. Lab quotes vary 50%+ for the same product. The spread comes from chamber time, number of standards, report scope, and whether retesting is included. Get line-item breakdowns. Ask specifically about retest rates, because if you fail (and many products fail initial testing), the hourly retest cost matters more than the initial quote.

Run pre-compliance first. Before booking a $5,000-$15,000 formal test campaign, spend $500-$2,000 on a pre-compliance scan. It catches major issues before you're on the clock at full rates.

Browse the full directory at /labs. You can filter by country, state, TCB status, and accreditation status.

How we built this dataset

I wanted a comprehensive FCC test lab directory and couldn't find one, so I built it.

The FCC publishes raw accreditation data through their Socrata API (dataset nubx-v54a). It's 591 firms with names, addresses, designation numbers, and expiration dates. No websites, no capabilities, no way to tell if a lab is still operating or if it's a two-person shop or a $50 billion multinational.

Here's what I did:

1. Pulled all 591 labs from the Socrata API and normalized the data: firm names, addresses, countries, designation numbers.
2. Cross-referenced with TCB registrations to flag which labs can also certify, not just test.
3. Enriched with Google Places data: website URLs, ratings, review counts, geographic coordinates. This gave me verified web presence for hundreds of labs that the FCC data doesn't link to.
4. Classified accreditation status by cross-referencing lab websites, A2LA records, and accreditation body directories. I only mark a lab "active" when I can independently confirm it, because the FCC's own expiration dates are unreliable.
5. Mapped ban risk against the FCC's foreign adversary designations and MRA framework to flag which labs are affected by the upcoming April 30 vote.
6. Used Claude to synthesize lab descriptions, capabilities, and industry context from web-sourced data into structured records.

The result is the /labs directory on this site. Every lab has its accreditation status, location, designation number, and whether it's affected by the Bad Labs vote. Enriched labs also have website links, Google ratings, capabilities, and descriptions.

The FCC publishes the raw data. The accreditation bodies publish scope documents. Google has the business listings. But nobody had stitched it all together into something you could actually use to find and compare test labs.

What's next

Browse the full directory at /labs. For US labs, start at /labs/us. To check whether your current lab is affected by the Bad Labs vote, search by name or designation number.

On April 30, one in five FCC-accredited test labs could lose their recognition. If you're mid-certification at a China-based lab, or planning a test campaign for later this year, now is the time to check your exposure. Read our full breakdown of which labs are affected and what your options are.

Found an error or something out of date? Let us know.