Reference
Manufacturer Roofing Certifications, Explained
Five shingle manufacturers run contractor programmes, each with its own ladder of levels and its own badge. A roofer deciding which to pursue and a homeowner reading a badge off the side of a van are asking the same first question, which is what the thing actually is — and the honest answer is narrower than most of the internet suggests.
This page gives the programme name and the tier names each manufacturer currently publishes, the page we read them off, and the date we read it. It also names four widely-repeated programme names that are out of date, and shows less badge artwork than we hold, for reasons worth reading.
These are other companies’ programmes. The National Roofing Directory does not run, grant, award, verify or endorse any of them.
Every programme on this page belongs to the manufacturer named beside it. We are not a partner, a reseller or an assessor for any of them, and none of them has endorsed this directory. We hold no data on which contractors carry which certification, so no listing, profile or search result anywhere on this site shows one of these badges — this page is the only place the artwork appears, and it appears here as illustration of a programme, never as a credential attached to a business.
Membership of a manufacturer programme is also not a licence, not insurance and not a government approval. It is a commercial relationship between a contractor and a manufacturer, on terms that manufacturer sets and can change or withdraw.
What we publish here, and what we deliberately leave out
This is a reference page, so it is built the way the rest of our directory data is built: a programme name and a tier name are copied verbatim from the manufacturer’s own contractor page, with the URL that was read and the date it was read attached to each one. If a manufacturer does not publish a tier structure, this page does not print one.
What you will not find is a requirements list, a qualifying threshold, or a warranty length. Those exist, they matter, and we have not verified them from a first-party source — so restating them would make this page one more confident summary in a field that already has too many. Each card links to the manufacturer’s own site for that.
Why the caution is not theatre
Four of the five programmes below have a name in wide circulation that the manufacturer has dropped, renamed, or never used for that purpose — one of them is a product line that reads exactly like a contractor tier. Those errors are repeated by roofing blogs, by directories, and in badge artwork still printed on trucks. They are listed further down, with what the manufacturer’s own page says instead.
The five manufacturer programmes
In the order they sit in our directory data. Tier names are as published; the order within a card is the order the record carries and is not a ranking we assign.
GAF
GAF Certified / Master Elite (residential); GAF Commercial Certification Program (low-slope)
The most finely split of the five — separate ladders for residential steep-slope work, for commercial low-slope work and for coatings, so one contractor can sit at a different height on each.
Tier names the manufacturer currently publishes
- GAF Certified™
- GAF Certified Plus™
- GAF Master Elite®
- GAF President's Club (1, 2 and 3 Star award, open to Master Elite® contractors)
- GAF Certified™ Commercial Contractor
- GAF GoldElite™ Commercial Contractor
- GAF PlatinumElite™ Commercial Contractor
- GAF CoatingsPro™
- GAF CoatingsPro™+
What the mark looks like
The marks above are trademarks of GAF, shown here as illustration of that company’s own programme. GAF is not affiliated with this directory and has not endorsed it, and no contractor is being described as holding these credentials.
Owens Corning
Owens Corning Roofing Preferred Contractor
Two levels, which makes it the easiest of the five to read off a van: a contractor is in the network or is at the top of it.
Tier names the manufacturer currently publishes
- Preferred Contractor
- Platinum Preferred
What the mark looks like
The marks above are trademarks of Owens Corning, shown here as illustration of that company’s own programme. Owens Corning is not affiliated with this directory and has not endorsed it, and no contractor is being described as holding these credentials.
CertainTeed
CertainTeed Residential Roofing Credentials
The programme whose naming has moved the most, and the one where a badge is least likely to tell you what it looks like it tells you. Company credentials and individual craftsman credentials run side by side.
Tier names the manufacturer currently publishes
- MASTER
- PRO
- PREMIER
- Master Craftsman® Shingle Quality Specialist™
- Master Craftsman® & Master Craftsman SELECT® Roofing Contractor
No badge artwork shown here — why
Every CertainTeed badge in our library is built around the word ShingleMaster, and CertainTeed’s current credentials page does not use it — the company levels there are MASTER, PRO and PREMIER, with Master Craftsman® as an individual credential. The verified record flags "SELECT ShingleMaster" specifically as legacy and instructs that it not be published as the current programme name. So we show the current tier names and none of the artwork. The badges themselves are still out there on trucks and websites; that is a fact about signage, not about who is credentialed today.
IKO Industries
IKO ROOFPRO
Three levels under one programme name. The trap here is a product line whose name reads exactly like a contractor tier.
Tier names the manufacturer currently publishes
- Advantage
- ROOFPRO Select
- ROOFPRO Craftsman Premier
What the mark looks like
The mark above is a trademark of IKO Industries, shown here as illustration of that company’s own programme. IKO Industries is not affiliated with this directory and has not endorsed it, and no contractor is being described as holding these credentials.
Atlas Roofing Corporation
Atlas Pro
The shortest entry on this page, because the verified record is short: a programme name and no published tier structure behind it.
Tier names the manufacturer currently publishes
None. The pages we verified give a programme name and no tier structure behind it, so this page lists none either.
No badge artwork shown here — why
We hold four Atlas marks and are showing none. Each one prints a level — Select, Gold Select, Platinum Select, Pro+ Diamond — and Atlas publishes no tier structure on the first-party pages our record was verified against. On top of that, the programme itself was renamed: it used to be Atlas Signature Select®, and Signature Select survives as the name of a roofing system, so anything carrying the word "Select" here is ambiguous twice over. We are not going to resolve that ambiguity by picking one badge and hoping.
FORTIFIED is not one of these, and the difference matters
FORTIFIED gets asked about in the same breath as the manufacturer programmes and belongs in a different category entirely. It is a voluntary construction standard administered by an insurance research institute, and the thing it designates is a roof, not a roofer. The verified record is explicit that the evaluator who signs a roof off is a separate party from the contractor who built it — which is the entire point, and the reason an insurer treats the designation as worth something.
FORTIFIED (Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety)
FORTIFIED Evaluator
Not a manufacturer programme at all. FORTIFIED is a voluntary construction standard, and what it designates is a roof — verified by an independent evaluator, not by the contractor who built it.
What the programme publishes
- FORTIFIED Roof designation
- FORTIFIED Silver
- FORTIFIED Gold
- FORTIFIED Evaluator network
- Contractor and evaluator training
- Designation directory
No badge artwork shown here — why
Both FORTIFIED badge files we hold read "FORTIFIED — Certified Roofer". Our verified record names the FORTIFIED Roof designation with its Silver and Gold levels, and names the FORTIFIED Evaluator role, and it states plainly that the evaluator is a distinct party from the roofing contractor. A mark that certifies the roofer rather than the roof inverts the thing that makes the standard worth anything, so neither file is published here.
For what the standard actually requires above code, how the evaluator verification works and how credits and grants operate, see What Is a FORTIFIED Roof? in the encyclopedia.
Four names that are out of date
Each of these was checked against the manufacturer’s current first-party page during verification and turned out to be legacy, renamed, or not a contractor level at all. If you are writing marketing copy, a bid letter or a website, these are the four most likely ways to date yourself.
| Name still in circulation | What the manufacturer’s own page says now |
|---|---|
| GAF Master Select™ | Does not appear on GAF’s current commercial certification page. The live commercial levels are GAF Certified™, GoldElite™ and PlatinumElite™ Commercial Contractor. |
| SELECT ShingleMaster (CertainTeed) | Legacy. CertainTeed’s current credentials page uses the company levels MASTER, PRO and PREMIER, plus Master Craftsman® as an individual credential. |
| IKO Shield Pro | Not a contractor level at all — Shield Pro is an IKO product line, and Shield Pro Plus is an underlayment. The contractor levels are Advantage, ROOFPRO Select and ROOFPRO Craftsman Premier. |
| Atlas Signature Select® | The former name of the contractor programme, which is now Atlas Pro. Signature Select survives as the name of a roofing system, so the two are easy to conflate. |
All four corrections come from the verification notes on the manufacturer records in our directory data, checked against first-party pages on 2026-08-25.
The artwork we are not showing
We hold badge files for every programme on this page. A mark is only printed above where the words on the artwork match a name the manufacturer currently publishes, and 13 of the files do not clear that bar or are a second copy of one that does. Quoting what each says, and why it is held back, is more useful than a silent gap — these are the badges most likely to be on the website or the truck door in front of you.
“Top of the House — Certified Preferred Contractor”Owens Corning
No "Top of the House" level appears on the Owens Corning contractor pages our record was verified against, which give two: Preferred Contractor and Platinum Preferred. A third level named only in third-party write-ups was already rejected once during that verification, and this mark is not evidence that overturns it.
“SELECT ShingleMaster — Roofing Contractor”CertainTeed
The exact name our verified record identifies as legacy and forbids publishing as current.
“ShingleMaster — Roofing Contractor”CertainTeed
Same legacy family. "ShingleMaster" is not one of the company tiers on the current credentials page.
“ShingleMaster PRO — Credentialed”CertainTeed
PRO is a current tier, but the mark wraps it in the ShingleMaster wording the current page has dropped. A picture is read faster than a caption correcting it.
“ShingleMaster PREMIER — Credentialed”CertainTeed
PREMIER is a current tier; same problem as the PRO mark above.
“IKO ShieldPRO plus — Roofing Contractor”IKO Industries
Shield Pro is an IKO product line — Shield Pro Plus is an underlayment — and our verified record says so in as many words. The contractor tiers are Advantage, ROOFPRO Select and ROOFPRO Craftsman Premier. Showing this next to them would create a fourth tier that does not exist.
“ROOFPRO Select”IKO Industries
Not a different credential — the same ROOFPRO Select mark at lower resolution. One copy of a mark is illustration; two is padding.
“AtlasPRO+ Select”Atlas Roofing Corporation
Prints a tier Atlas does not publish, using the word left over from the programme’s former name.
“AtlasPRO+ Gold Select”Atlas Roofing Corporation
Same: an unpublished tier.
“AtlasPRO+ Platinum Select”Atlas Roofing Corporation
Same: an unpublished tier.
“Atlas PRO+ Diamond”Atlas Roofing Corporation
Same: an unpublished tier.
“FORTIFIED, a program of IBHS — Certified Roofer”the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)
Depicts a contractor credential our verified record does not carry. FORTIFIED designations attach to the building and are verified by an independent evaluator.
“FORTIFIED, a program of IBHS — Certified Roofer”the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)
The same artwork at a smaller size, and out for the same reason.
A badge on a van is signage, not a live credential
None of this means the contractors using these marks are misrepresenting themselves. Programmes get renamed, artwork outlives the name it was printed under, and a van gets re-lettered less often than a manufacturer refreshes its brand. It means the badge tells you which programme somebody joined, not necessarily what that programme is called today or whether the membership is still current.
If you are a homeowner
- ●A badge is a manufacturer relationship, not a qualification. It is awarded by a company that sells shingles, on its own terms, and it can be granted or withdrawn by that company. It is not issued by a licensing board, a government body, or by this directory.
- ●It is not a licence and not proof of insurance. Those are separate, they are the ones with legal force, and they are the ones to ask for. Our licensing pages cover what your state actually requires.
- ●Check it at the source. The manufacturer is the only party that can confirm a contractor is currently in its programme. Ask the roofer which programme and which level, then confirm it on that manufacturer’s own site — a badge on any website, including this one, is a picture.
- ●A higher tier is not automatically a better roofer. What each level requires is set by the manufacturer, and we have not verified those requirements, so this page will not tell you that one level predicts better work than another. Nobody honest can tell you that from a badge alone.
If you are a contractor deciding which to pursue
We are not going to rank these, and a directory that did would be selling you a preference it had not earned. What the verified data supports saying is narrow and, we think, still useful:
- ●The programmes are tied to product. The one worth pursuing is generally the manufacturer whose shingles you already install and whose lines your supplier actually stocks — a certification for a product you rarely sell buys you a logo you have little use for.
- ●GAF is the only one of the five whose published tiers split residential, commercial low-slope and coatings into separate ladders. If you run a mixed book, that is a structural difference worth understanding before you pick.
- ●Owens Corning publishes two levels and IKO three, so the distance from entry to top is short and legible. Atlas publishes a programme name and no levels at all, which is worth knowing before you build marketing around a tier.
- ●Get the requirements from the manufacturer, in writing, before you commit crew time. The eligibility rules are theirs, they change, and every summary you read elsewhere — including any we could have written here — is a copy of a copy.
Related reading
- ●GAF vs Owens Corning (and Where IKO Fits) — the products behind three of these programmes, compared on what differs on the roof.
- ●What Is a FORTIFIED Roof? — the standard, the sealed deck, and why the independent evaluator is the actual product.
- ●Class 4 Impact-Resistant Shingles — a rating that genuinely is standardised, and what insurers do with it.
Trademarks and independence
GAF, Owens Corning, CertainTeed, IKO, Atlas Roofing Corporation and FORTIFIED, together with the programme, tier and product names on this page, are the trademarks of their respective owners. They are used here nominatively, to identify and explain those companies’ own programmes. No affiliation, sponsorship, partnership or endorsement between any of them and the National Roofing Directory is claimed or implied, in either direction.
Programme and tier names were read from the first-party pages linked on each card. Programmes change; if you find something on this page that no longer matches a manufacturer’s own site, tell us and we will re-verify it against the source.
Links to manufacturer sites are plain references. They are not affiliate links and we are paid nothing for them.