Compare nursing compact states
Weighing several states at once? Put up to four side by side — compact status, multistate availability, privilege, official board links, and travel/telehealth guidance. Share the link or print it.
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Comparisons people run most
The workspace above builds any combination. These are already written up, with the reasoning rather than just the statuses.
- Living in Texas, working in Florida
- Living in Florida, working in Texas
- Living in Texas, working in California
- Living in California, working in Arizona
- Living in California, working in Texas
- Living in New York, working in Florida
- Living in New York, working in Texas
- Living in Illinois, working in Wisconsin
- Living in Illinois, working in Florida
- Living in Connecticut, working in Pennsylvania
- Living in Pennsylvania, working in New Jersey
- Living in Massachusetts, working in Florida
Every pairing we have written up, or browse all 56 jurisdictions one at a time.
Reading the comparison
Compact status is the headline: a fully implemented state issues multistate licenses to residents and recognizes privilege from other compact states. A partial or pending jurisdiction may do one but not the other — which is exactly why the next two rows are separate questions rather than one.
Residents can get a multistate license matters if you live there. Compact nurses can practice here matters if you are coming from elsewhere. They are not the same thing, and assuming they are is the single most common compact mistake. Whichever way you are going, the compact covers RN and LPN/LVN licenses only — never APRN authority.
Direction is part of the question
A comparison of two states is not symmetric, which is why the tool asks where you live before it asks where you want to work. Texas to California and California to Texas are different questions with different answers, and they get separate pages here for that reason rather than for the sake of having more of them.
The asymmetry comes from where a license is issued. Your home state decides what kind of license you can hold; the state you are working in decides whether it will honour it. A nurse living in a compact state and working in a non-compact one has a license that simply does not reach — while the same two states in reverse means a license that cannot be multistate at all, because the state issuing it never joined. Same pair, different problem, different fix.
What a comparison cannot tell you
It answers one question well: whether you are authorized to practice. That is the question the compact governs, and it is the one most people are actually asking. Three others it does not answer, and should not be read as answering:
- What you may do once you are there. Scope of practice belongs to the state you are working in and is set by its nurse practice act, not by the compact. The difference matters more for LPN/LVN roles, where states draw the line more variably.
- How long anything takes. Where a comparison says you need a license by endorsement, the queue is the receiving board’s and we do not publish processing times, because they change and a stale figure is worse than none.
- Whether your employer will agree. Employer policy and unit competencies sit on top of state scope and can be narrower than it — never wider.
And if both states are compact and your license is already multistate, there is nothing here you need: the answer is yes, and the comparison is only confirming it.