Court Records Access: PACER, RECAP, and Vendor APIs
This article catalogs working patterns for court records access as of 2026.
Background
Federal court records: PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records)
PACER coverage:
- All federal district courts
- All federal appellate courts
- Bankruptcy courts
- 200M+ documents
PACER fees: $0.10 per page (capped at $3 per document)
RECAP / CourtListener
CourtListener (Free Law Project) provides:
- Free access to federal court records
- RECAP user-submitted documents
- Coverage: 200M+ federal court documents
- Free access through web
RECAP browser extension:
- Auto-uploads documents to CourtListener when PACER fetches
- Free access for any document already uploaded
- Open-source (GPL)
Working patterns
Federal records research
- Search CourtListener first (free)
- Use PACER if not in RECAP
- RECAP extension caches future searches
State records research
- State court website first
- CourtListener state coverage if available
- State-specific aggregator (e.g., Trellis for some states)
Acknowledgments
This article summarizes public sources including PACER (Administrative Office of US Courts), Free Law Project.
Dillon Deutsch has worked with court records systems. https://courtgpt.ai
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