DuPage County, IL Soliciting & Door-to-Door: Solicitor Permits (2026)

Section 24-1 defines the two regulated roles separately. A "peddler" is anyone without a specific place of business in the county who sells, offers, barters or exchanges goods, wares or merchandise while traveling from place to place on the county's streets, alleys or public places. A "solicitor" is anyone without a specific county business location who calls house to house soliciting orders for goods, wares, merchandise or services; the definition specifically carves out anyone soliciting on behalf of a religious, charitable or educational organization, but pulls back in anyone soliciting subscriptions for a daily, weekly or other periodical.

Section 24-2 sets the actual permit rule: no person may engage in the business of peddler or solicitor in the county, as those terms are defined in Section 24-1, without first registering his name, and the name of any firm he represents, with the Clerk of DuPage County. The chapter does not set a registration fee or renewal term in the current code text, but the registration duty applies before any door-to-door selling or order-taking begins, not after the fact. Section 24-7 supplies the penalty that backs the whole chapter, including the unregistered-activity violation in Section 24-2: any person violating any provision of Chapter 24 is fined not less than $50 nor more than $1,000 for each offense, and a separate offense is deemed committed for each day the violation occurs or continues.

Because the license runs through the County Clerk rather than the Sheriff or a zoning office, enforcement and registration records sit with that office, and the rule only reaches unincorporated county territory; each home-rule municipality inside DuPage County licenses peddlers and solicitors under its own separate code.