Ranked by license standing, permit history, review score, and profile completeness — 6 contractors tracked in Osceola County. No paid placements.
One of the more crowded pool-builder markets we track — these Osceola County names rise to the top on license standing, permit history, and real reviews, not who paid for placement. Review volume runs a bit behind the state average here, which is exactly why permit history and license standing carry real weight in this ranking.
A look at real project photos from Osceola County's top-ranked builders, pulled straight from their own profiles.
A real, recent sample of customer feedback for builders serving Osceola County — good and bad, not just the five-star highlights.
“Aqua Pools and Spas offers an impressive range of pool and spa options to fit just about any lifestyle and budget. From custom-designed pools and relaxing spas to water features and outdoor living enhancements, they provide quality solutions tailored to their customers’ needs. Their team is knowledgeable, professional, and focused on helping homeowners create the…”
“Thank you Aqua Custom Pools! We are beyond happy and as we expected from the start the team was great to work with from beginning to end. They always answered our questions, kept us updated, and paid attention to the little details that really made a difference. The finished pool looks incredible and completely changed…”
“Updated: communicated with the owner following this review. He explained the situation that had occurred. He was courteous and professional offering to work with me so that this could be rectified. Unfortunately we had identified a company to work with. I believe he was genuine in his response. I have changed my score accordingly. I…”
“I rarely write reviews, and if I do usually because of something negative but in this case, quite opposite and had to share. We just had our pool resurfaced by Atlantis and are really happy with how everything went. Al was great to work with, very communicative and quick to respond to questions from start…”
“My wife and I will allow more pictures to be what speaks volumes about their workmanship and their ethics. The contract was signed in June and these pictures were taken in Dec. If you enjoy constantly calling /texting them to do the work with endless excuses and when they do something, well look at the…”
How the size and activity of the Osceola County pool-building market stacks up against the rest of Florida — a busier corner of our directory than most. Review volume per contractor runs a bit behind the state average, though.
Osceola County is currently home to 6 pool contractors in our directory — above the statewide average of roughly 5.2 contractors per Florida county. Contractors here have racked up an average of 70 customer reviews apiece, somewhat below the statewide average of 89 — a reasonable proxy for how active and in-demand local pool builders are, since review volume tends to track real project volume over time.
What the license and permit data tells you about builders serving Osceola County, and what still needs a manual check.
100% of contractors serving Osceola County (6 of 6) currently hold an active Certified Pool Contractor (CPC) license on file with the Florida DBPR — roughly in line with the statewide rate of 91%. The rest may be unlicensed, expired, pending renewal, or simply not yet verified in our system, so confirming a contractor's license status directly with the state before signing anything is always worth the five minutes it takes. Building permit history is one of the more reliable signals of real, ongoing work: contractors serving Osceola County average roughly 100.2 permits each, somewhat below the statewide average of 124.8 per contractor — a stronger signal than a star badge on a homepage, which anyone can add regardless of whether it reflects real, permitted work.
Praise like "communication" comes up again and again in Osceola County customer reviews, plus a few habits worth adopting before you hire anywhere in Florida.
Across the customer reviews we've indexed for pool builders serving Osceola County, the most frequently repeated praise themes are communication, recommend, quality. Patterns like these, repeated across many independent reviews from different platforms, tend to be more trustworthy than any single five-star testimonial — look for the same few themes showing up again and again in a contractor's review history before you hire.
Before you hire a pool contractor anywhere in Florida, a few habits go a long way: verify the CPC or CBC license number directly on the DBPR's public license lookup, ask for the contractor's permit history (or pull it yourself from the county building department), read a mix of recent and older reviews rather than just the top-rated ones, and get at least two or three quotes in writing before committing. Florida's pool construction industry has real regulatory teeth — licensing boards and county permitting offices — and using that public data is the fastest way to separate an established, accountable builder from someone who just built a nice-looking website.
Kissimmee and St. Cloud are the only two incorporated cities inside Osceola County, and a lot of the county’s newest neighborhoods sit outside both of them entirely. Celebration, Reunion, ChampionsGate, and large stretches of what people casually call “Kissimmee” on a mailing address are actually unincorporated Osceola County, which means the county’s own Community Development Department runs the permit review, not a city hall. If a property sits inside Kissimmee or St. Cloud city limits, the process instead runs through that city’s own building department — and all three offices use different online systems: the county issues permits through an Accela-based citizen portal, Kissimmee runs its permitting through EnerGov’s self-service system, and St. Cloud handles building-permit status and inspection scheduling through its own separate portal. None of the three cross-reference each other, so applying to the wrong office costs real time.
This causes more confusion in Osceola County than in a lot of Florida counties, because postal addressing here doesn’t reliably track city limits. A “Kissimmee, FL” address is frequently unincorporated county land rather than the actual City of Kissimmee, and Poinciana — one of the area’s largest residential communities — straddles the line between Osceola and Polk counties entirely, so which county issues the permit depends on which side of that line a given section of Poinciana falls on. Before assuming who has authority over a pool project, it’s worth confirming the parcel’s actual jurisdiction rather than going by what the address says.
Regardless of which office reviews the paperwork, Florida’s Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act (Chapter 515, Florida Statutes) governs every new residential pool in the state, Osceola County included. Before final inspection sign-off, the pool needs at least one of the following: a barrier at least 4 feet high with no gaps or footholds a small child could use to climb over; an approved pool cover; door and window alarms rated at 85 decibels or louder at the pool-access points; self-closing, self-latching hardware mounted at least 54 inches up; or an alarm that detects unauthorized entry into the water. Building a new pool without one of these features is a second-degree misdemeanor, though the law gives homeowners a way to cure it — adding a qualifying safety feature and completing a drowning-prevention course within 45 days of a citation.
Pool construction in Florida is a licensed trade under Chapter 489 of the Florida Statutes, regulated statewide by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. A Certified Pool/Spa Contractor (CPC) license is the credential built specifically for this work, though a Certified Building Contractor (CBC) license — a broader credential that also covers pools — qualifies too. Because these are state licenses rather than local ones, a contractor holding either can legally build in Kissimmee, St. Cloud, or unincorporated county territory alike. DBPR’s public license search is the way to confirm a license is actually active, rather than trusting a truck door or a business card.
Whichever office ends up with jurisdiction, the shape of the process is similar: submitted plans go through a review cycle before a permit is issued, and then a sequence of inspections follows at set points in construction — typically steel and pre-deck, electrical bonding and grounding, and a pressure test of the pool’s piping, before a final inspection closes out the permit. How long that takes depends heavily on how busy the reviewing office is at the time, so it’s worth treating any timeline a contractor gives you as an estimate rather than a guarantee — and worth confirming, before applying anywhere, that you’re actually applying to the office with authority over your address.
A meaningful share of the pools going in around Kissimmee and St. Cloud aren’t purely backyard projects, they’re part of homes bought specifically to operate as short-term vacation rentals near the theme parks, and that changes what homeowners tend to worry about first. Rental appeal becomes part of the calculation: a screened, heated pool with a spa spillover reads very differently to a paying guest than a plain rectangle, and homeowners in communities like ChampionsGate, Reunion, or Storey Lake are often weighing that question alongside the more ordinary one of what a project actually costs.
Cost itself is still the most common source of uncertainty, and for good reason: a rectangular pool, a round one, and an above-ground installation land in completely different price tiers, and gunite, fiberglass, and vinyl each carry their own cost curve on top of that. Homeowners frequently wonder whether a number like $20,000 or $30,000 is realistic for an inground pool here. The honest answer is that it depends enormously on size, shape, and site conditions, and the only way to get a number that means anything for a specific lot is to collect quotes from a few licensed contractors rather than anchor to a figure seen online.
Permitting confusion is its own recurring theme, and it’s a genuinely bigger deal here than in a lot of Florida counties, because of how Osceola’s map actually works, covered in more detail in the Permits tab above. Homeowners often look for a way to check on a permit application or confirm what a permit will cost before they’ve even settled whether their address sits inside Kissimmee, inside St. Cloud, or in unincorporated county territory governed directly by the county’s own building division. Figuring out which office actually has jurisdiction matters more here than the search for a fee schedule or a portal.
Timing carries a different wrinkle here than in older, already built-out parts of Central Florida. Because so much of Osceola’s growth is happening inside large, still-being-built subdivisions, it’s common for a pool to go in on a lot that was only recently cleared, with drainage, retention ponds, and HOA architectural review all interacting with the building permit in ways that don’t come up in an established neighborhood. Homeowners in newer developments are often better served checking their HOA’s own pool approval requirements early, alongside whichever building department has jurisdiction, since either one holding things up delays the other.
Trust in the contractor is the last major thread, and it shows up as a fairly practical set of questions: is this company actually licensed, do they have a real track record building in this specific market, and will they still be around if something needs warranty work in a few years. Central Florida’s building boom has drawn plenty of legitimate builders to the Kissimmee and St. Cloud corridor, but it’s also the kind of fast-growing market that attracts contractors who don’t stick around long. Confirming active DBPR licensing status and asking for references from jobs actually completed nearby, not just photos on a website, is a reasonable amount of diligence before signing anything.
It varies more than most people expect, since pool type (gunite, fiberglass, vinyl), size, shape, and site conditions all move the number independently of each other. Rather than anchoring to a figure seen online, the more reliable approach is collecting quotes from a few licensed local contractors and comparing them directly.
It can be for a smaller pool with a simple shape, particularly certain fiberglass or vinyl designs, but a custom gunite pool with screening, heating, or a spa spillover commonly costs more. Rental-focused homes in particular tend to add features that push the budget higher than a basic backyard pool would.
Each jurisdiction maintains its own permit-search tool tied to a property address, and confirming this before applying anywhere is worth the extra step, since the three offices don't share systems. If a project gets submitted to the wrong one, it simply doesn't move forward until it's resubmitted to the office that actually has authority over that parcel.
Yes. Permit fees are standard and generally scale with the declared value of the project; there's no free or no-fee path, and building without a permit doesn't avoid the cost, it just risks a stop-work order, retroactive inspections, or problems at resale later.
Generally yes. Florida's pool-safety requirements, and most local building departments' permit rules, apply to pools of meaningful depth regardless of whether they're in-ground or above-ground, not just full custom installations.
Yes, all three run separate systems: the county's own online permit center, Kissimmee's citizen self-service portal, and St. Cloud's own building-permit portal. None of them share a login or a queue with each other.
Through whichever office actually has jurisdiction over the address, using that office's own online system, rather than assuming the county's portal covers a property inside Kissimmee or St. Cloud city limits.
The full, sortable roster of pool builders we track in Osceola County — a larger list than in most Florida counties.
Looking at a different Florida county? Jump straight to its own ranked list.
Prefer to compare builders by city instead of by county? Every qualifying Florida city we track is listed below.
Add your business for free, or claim your existing profile to keep your info accurate and start showing up when people in Osceola County search for a pool builder.