The largest free index of federal court filings, run by the nonprofit Free Law Project. Most heavily-watched cases are already fully mirrored at zero cost.
PACER charges $0.10 per page. CourtListener charges $0. Every document already in the RECAP Archive is free, permanently, with no account required.
Heavily-watched cases (high-profile bankruptcies, appellate decisions, well-known dockets) are typically already there in full. Search CourtListener first.
Most users finish a search in under three minutes.
Go to courtlistener.com. The site has three main databases: Opinions (judicial decisions), RECAP Archive (filed documents), and Oral Arguments (audio).
For day-to-day case lookups, you want the RECAP Archive. It is the largest free index of federal court filings in existence.
Use the search bar to enter a case number, a party name, an attorney, or a key phrase. Quotes force exact-match. The results page lets you filter by court, date, and document type.
Click any result. The docket page lists every entry that has been mirrored from PACER, with PDFs attached where users have donated them. Entry numbers, dates, and short descriptions appear in chronological order.
The free RECAP extension turns every PACER document you pull into a free document for the next reader. Installing it costs nothing and adds nothing to your PACER bill.
CourtListener supports email alerts for new filings on a case, new opinions matching a search, or new oral arguments. Alerts are free with a CourtListener account (separate from PACER).
Researchers can hit the CourtListener REST API or download bulk dumps. The API is free with rate limits; bulk data is freely available for analysis.
CourtListener also hosts judicial opinions and oral arguments. If a search returns mostly opinions when you wanted filings, switch the database filter to RECAP.
An entry that lists a date and description but no PDF means no one has yet pulled that document with the RECAP extension. The metadata is mirrored, but the document itself is still on PACER.
RECAP donations started in 2009. Older cases may have less coverage simply because no one has gone back to fill them in.
If a court has sealed a filing, it does not appear in PACER public output and therefore does not appear in RECAP either. This is the system working as designed.
Yes. CourtListener is run by the nonprofit Free Law Project. There is no paywall on any document, no fee per page, and no quarterly billing. Search and download are free; an optional account unlocks alerts and saved searches at no cost.
No. CourtListener is a private nonprofit project that mirrors PACER documents donated by volunteers using the RECAP browser extension. It is fully legal and predates many of PACER's own search tools.
RECAP only contains documents that someone has paid for and donated through the RECAP extension. Cases that no one has actively pulled may have only metadata (docket entries) without the underlying PDFs.
Yes. The CourtListener API is free with generous rate limits, and bulk data dumps are available for academic and journalism use. See free.law/api/bulk-data.
Justia and Google Scholar focus on judicial opinions (the published decisions). CourtListener has those plus the RECAP Archive of underlying filings (motions, exhibits, transcripts), plus oral argument audio. For docket-level research, CourtListener is the deepest free source.
No. Search and download work without an account. An account is only needed for alerts, saved searches, and API access. Account creation is free.
You can now search any federal court case for free. A few directions to take next: