How do I get an API key?

Sign up at app.vaquill.ai and generate a key from the dashboard. Self-serve, no sales call. Every request is authenticated with a Bearer token prefixed vq_key_.

How does usage and billing work?

Usage-based credits: each request consumes credits based on what it returns, and a response reports creditsConsumed so you can track spend as you build. Check your current rate anytime at GET /api/v1/api-credits/pricing, no separate pricing page to hunt for. The open dataset is free with no key required if you want to explore before you commit to the API.

Can I use the API for commercial products, or is it free for non-commercial use?

Yes to both. Commercial use is allowed on every plan, for legal-tech vendors building products and in-house teams building internal tools alike. Verified nonprofit legal aid and public interest organizations get the full API free (see vaquill.ai/legal-aid). Other non-commercial use, academic research, student projects, personal projects, is free too: email contact@vaquill.ai with what you are building and we will grant extra credit to your account.

Why use the Vaquill AI API instead of building my own pipeline?

Building a statute pipeline from scratch means sourcing the U.S. Code, the CFR, and separate state code trees, parsing inconsistent document formats, building and maintaining search, handling section hierarchy and amendment history, and keeping everything updated. We have already done all of this across 5M+ sections. One API call gives you what would take months to build.

What does a response look like?

JSON. Each result returns the section citation, title, full hierarchy (title, chapter, section), a relevance score, and direct links to the HTML, PDF, and official government source, so you can render or verify the exact provision.

Is there an MCP server?

Yes, and it is live today. Install vaquill-mcp (pip or uvx) and any MCP-compatible client (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf) gets statute search and section lookup as native tools, with no HTTP client code required.

Is there a free, open dataset?

Yes. Open US Law is the full corpus published on Hugging Face as Parquet. The statutory text is public domain, the compilation is CC BY 4.0, and the scrapers are Apache-2.0. Download it, self-host it, or let the API keep it fresh for you.

How fresh is the data?

Cadence is per source rather than one number: the CFR and executive actions refresh daily, the Federal Register and federal agency guidance weekly, and most state corpora monthly. Every corpus reports what it is current through and when it was last retrieved on the free GET /us/statutes/coverage endpoint, so you can verify freshness yourself instead of taking a number on trust. If you need a fixed release to build against, the Open US Law dataset ships dated snapshots quarterly.

Which formats can I get a section in?

The API returns JSON. Individual sections ship with HTML, plain text, official PDF, and DOCX mirrors where available. The bulk dataset is Parquet, with a machine-readable manifest and a SHA256 for every file.

How is the data sourced, and is it authoritative?

All records link back to their official government publisher via source_url, so any provision can be verified against the authoritative source.

Can I self-host instead of calling the API?

Yes. The scrapers that build the corpus are open source (Apache-2.0) and the compiled data is CC BY 4.0, so you can run the whole pipeline yourself. The hosted API and MCP server exist so you do not have to.

Do you cover case law?

No. We deliberately do one thing, US primary law: statutes, regulations, constitutions, rules, and executive actions. Our goal is to be the best resource for it on the planet.

The open API for US primary law: statutes, regulations, court rules, agency guidance, adjudications, executive orders, with source links.

Vaquill AI gives your AI Agent the real text of US law.

Get API key Book a demo

Free credits for personal projects, student work, and academic research.

5M+: primary-law sections
53: US jurisdictions
3: access paths: REST, MCP and SQL

Available inside Claude

Used by 1,300+ accounts across 150+ organizations, including YC-backed companies

Law firms
In-house legal teams
Legal tech builders
Policy & research
Legal aid
Law schools

In their words

Vaquill is the piece that made statutes verifiable rather than merely findable.

Brent M. ReshAttorneyBrent Resh Law PLLC

Read the story

What builders said when we open-sourced the dataset.

Every US jurisdiction, in one consistent format.

60,170

US Code sections

222,430

CFR sections

196,237

Federal Register rules

1.93M+

State statute sections

429,297

Statutes at Large

Federal law as enacted, 1789 to 2026

CFR annual editions

312,132 sections observed at published dates, since 1996

97,025

Agency guidance documents

53 named sources across 26 agencies

100,920

Agency adjudications

Seven federal tribunals, served as issued

How point-in-time works

Statutes

Statutes + regulations

Statutes + regulations + constitution

Federal agency guidance

How agencies say they read their own rules: 53 named sources across 26 agencies, each one filterable on its own. Guidance is not binding law, and it is stored separately from law that is.

See all 53 sources

Internal Revenue Service

Revenue Procedures
Revenue Rulings
Notices
Announcements
Internal Revenue Manual (procedure, not law)
Written Determinations (PLR, TAM, CCA - not precedent)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Medicare Internet-Only Manuals (procedure, not law)

Department of Justice

Justice Manual
Antitrust Division Business Review Letters
Antitrust Division Leniency Policy
DOJ & FTC Merger Guidelines

Federal Trade Commission

Advisory Opinions
Policy Statements

US Copyright Office

Circulars
Compendium of Copyright Office Practices (Third)

Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division

Opinion, Ruling and Administrator Interpretation Letters
Field Operations Handbook

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Enforcement and Policy Guidance, incl. Compliance Manual

Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control

Sanctions FAQs, with prior versions

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

Administrative Rulings
Guidance (alerts, advisories, notices)
Beneficial Ownership Information FAQs
BOI Rulemaking Q&As
Small Entity Compliance Guide
AML Act of 2020 implementation material

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Consumer Financial Protection Circulars
Supervisory Guidance

Social Security Administration

Rulings

US Patent and Trademark Office

Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP)
Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (TMEP)

US Citizenship and Immigration Services

Policy Manual

National Labor Relations Board

General Counsel Memoranda
Division of Advice Memoranda

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Staff Letters (no-action, exemptive, interpretative)

Federal Reserve

Supervision & Regulation (SR) and Consumer Affairs (CA) Letters

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Bulletins
Interpretive Letters

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Financial Institution Letters (FILs)

Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights

HIPAA Guidance
HIPAA FAQs
Resolution Agreements & Civil Money Penalties

Consumer Product Safety Commission

Office of General Counsel Advisory Opinions
Small Entity Compliance Guides

Bureau of Industry and Security

Advisory Opinions (Export Administration Regulations)

Directorate of Defense Trade Controls

Commodity Jurisdiction Determinations
Policy Guidance

Department of Defense

DFARS Procedures, Guidance and Information (PGI)

Federal Communications Commission

Declaratory Rulings

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Policy Statements

Department of Energy

Appliance Standards Guidance and FAQs

Federal administrative adjudications

Decisions from executive-branch tribunals, served as they were issued. No publisher in this family marks when a later decision overrules an earlier one, so we do not tell you either. Check these the way you would check any decision.

FTC Part 3 administrative filings
SEC Commission opinions and adjudicatory orders
Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)
Board of Immigration Appeals and Attorney General (I&N Dec.)
NLRB Board decisions
DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinions
CFPB enforcement actions

CFR: Refreshed daily
US Code: Refreshed weekly
State regulations: Refreshed monthly
Every source: Pulled from the jurisdiction's own official publisher

See the full coverage matrix and refresh cadence Inspect the ingestion pipeline (open source)

Four ways to reach the corpus.

REST

The hosted API.

If your product looks up law a section at a time.

MCP

The same corpus inside an agent.

If you want Claude or Cursor to look the law up for you, no code.

SQL over the object store

Query the corpus as a database.

If you would rather hold the data yourself and query it.

Vector index

Skip rebuilding retrieval.

If you are building AI search and do not want to index 5M sections yourself.

Try the database claim. This runs against the public object store with no key and no download.

-- No download, no key. DuckDB reads the object store over HTTPS.
INSTALL httpfs; LOAD httpfs;

SELECT citation, section_title, word_count
FROM read_parquet('https://oss-data-us.vaquill.ai/v2026.08/us_ak_constitutions.parquet')
WHERE section_title ILIKE '%search%';

Citation in, section out: Bluebook and the form a state’s own courts print. 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Cal. Civ. Code § 1946.2, MCR 3.709 and N.D.R.Civ.P. 64 all resolve to one exact provision.
Point-in-time: Pass asOf to read a section as it stood on a past date. Every answer says whether it came from a published edition or a reconstruction.
Change alerts: Watch a section or a whole corpus. Signed webhooks and email when the text moves, with the old and new text attached.
Formats per section: Styled HTML, plain text, the publisher’s own PDF and XML, and DOCX where the source offers one.

From key to cited law in one call.

request.sh

curl -G https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/us/statutes/resolve \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VAQUILL_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "cite=42 U.S.C. § 1983"

Title 42 › Chapter 21 › Subchapter I › § 1983

§ 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights

42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2024)

US CodeFederal2024 editionIn force

…officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. 1979—Pub. L. 96–170 inserted “or the District of Columbia” after “Territory”, and provisions relating to Acts of Congress applicable solely to the District of Columbia.

Last amended 1996 · 2 amendments · Pub. L. 104-317, Pub. L. 96-170

Official source (govinfo)HTML PDFUSC_T42_C21_S1983

response.json

{
  "resolved": true,
  "inputCitation": "42 U.S.C. § 1983",
  "section": {
    "actId": "USC_T42_C21_S1983",
    "citation": "42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2024)",
    "citationShort": "42 U.S.C. § 1983",
    "title": "Civil action for deprivation of rights",
    "corpusType": "USC",
    "state": "federal",
    "year": 2024,
    "relevanceScore": 0.0,
    "excerpt": "officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable\". 1979—Pub. L. 96–170 inserted \"or the District of Columbia\" after \"Territory\", and provisions relating to Acts of Congress applicable solely to the District of Columbia.",
    "titleNumber": "42",
    "titleName": "THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE",
    "chapter": "21",
    "chapterName": "CIVIL RIGHTS",
    "sectionNumber": "1983",
    "sectionTitle": "Civil action for deprivation of rights",
    "displayPath": "Title 42: THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE / Chapter 21: CIVIL RIGHTS / Subchapter I: GENERALLY / Section 1983: Civil action for deprivation of rights",
    "breadcrumb": [
      { "type": "title", "num": "42", "label": "Title 42", "name": "THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE" },
      { "type": "chapter", "num": "21", "label": "Chapter 21", "name": "CIVIL RIGHTS" },
      { "type": "subchapter", "num": "I", "label": "Subchapter I", "name": "GENERALLY" },
      { "type": "section", "num": "1983", "label": "Section 1983", "name": "Civil action for deprivation of rights" }
    ],
    "parent": { "corpusType": "USC", "titleNumber": 42, "chapter": "21" },
    "subchapter": "I",
    "subchapterName": "GENERALLY",
    "popularName": "Public Health and Welfare",
    "actStatus": "in_force",
    "goodLawStatus": "good_law",
    "renumberedTo": "",
    "transferredTo": "",
    "crossReferencesUsc": ["28:1343", "8:43"],
    "sourceCredit": "R.S. §1979; Pub. L. 96–170, §1, Dec. 29, 1979, 93 Stat. 1284; Pub. L. 104–317, title III, §309(c), Oct. 19, 1996, 110 Stat. 3853.",
    "amendmentYears": [1996, 1979],
    "lastAmendedYear": 1996,
    "amendmentsCount": 2,
    "publicLaws": ["Pub. L. 104-317", "Pub. L. 96-170"],
    "granuleId": "USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983",
    "packageId": "USCODE-2024-title42",
    "htmlUrl": "https://statutes-us.vaquill.ai/usc/html/2024/title-42/USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983.htm",
    "pdfUrl": "https://statutes-us.vaquill.ai/usc/pdf/2024/title-42/USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983.pdf",
    "govInfoHtmlUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title42/html/USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983.htm",
    "govInfoPdfUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title42/pdf/USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983.pdf",
    "externalUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2024-title42/USCODE-2024-title42-chap21-subchapI-sec1983"
  },
  "processingTimeMs": 703.8,
  "creditsConsumed": 2.0
}

1. Get your key→2. Call the endpoint→3. Ship cited law

The 12 endpoints you will use most, of 20.

Section lookup

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/resolve

Resolve a Bluebook citation straight to its section

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}

Get a section, citation, title, and hierarchy metadata

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/body

Get the full text of a section, HTML and plain text

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/related

Get the sections immediately before and after this one

POST

/api/v1/us/statutes/sections

Batch metadata for up to 50 sections in one call

Discover the corpus

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/laws

Catalog the bodies of law available, by jurisdiction

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/divisions

Walk the statutory hierarchy one level at a time

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/coverage

Self-describing coverage matrix, by jurisdiction and corpus type

Go deeper on a section

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/changes

Get this section's change history

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/cited-by

Find the sections that cite this one

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/definitions

Get the defined terms that govern this section

GET

/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/cross-state

Compare this provision against other states

Full API reference in the docs

Two things you get without building them.

API Playground

Run the API before you write a line of code.

Search the live corpus from the dashboard, see the real response, and copy the request that produced it.

Learn more

Run the API before you write a line of code.

Law Change Alerts

Know when the law you rely on changes.

Watch a jurisdiction, a corpus or a single section. Get the diff by email or signed webhook when it moves.

Learn more

Usage-based credits, not seats.

Every plan includes

The full corpus, both plans. No tier holds back a jurisdiction or a source.
REST and MCP. One key works for both. Runs in Claude, Cursor, and VS Code.
An IP warranty on the data. US primary law cannot be copyrighted, so we indemnify you for the corpus you get from us.
Pay-as-you-go. Keep going after the monthly credits run out. No hard stop.
No query logging. We never store your searches, and never train on them.

Pro

Where most builds start.

20,000 API credits included every month
Up to 2 API keys Enough for a live key and a test key.
Attribution required A visible "Legal data by Vaquill AI" credit, linked to our site, wherever our data reaches your users.
Named as a customer Your name and logo identify you as a Vaquill AI customer on our site and in our marketing.
Law change alerts by email
Email support

Bootstrapped, under 10 people?

Business at a reduced rate. Email contact@vaquill.ai and tell us about your team.

Who this is for

·Businesses testing us as their data backend
·Lawyers verifying answers in Claude or ChatGPT
·Developers evaluating coverage before they build

Start with Pro now

Business

For shipping our data inside your product.

200,000 API credits included every month
Up to 10 API keys
Invite your team
Law change alerts by webhook Signed webhooks and up to 100 watches.
Point-in-time state law Read a section as it stood on a past date, rebuilt from the changes we have tracked.
Statute intelligence The same provision in every other US jurisdiction, what cites it, and its defined terms.
Attribution waived Ship our data in your product under your own brand.
Priority support

Who this is for

·Legal tech products serving their own users
·Compliance platforms tracking every US jurisdiction
·AI teams grounding agents at scale

Start with Business

Not building a business on it yet? Personal projects, student work, and academic research get free credits. Email contact@vaquill.ai with what you are building.

Data licensing and bulk access

Custom

contact@vaquill.ai

What a license gives you

Full corpus daily sync into your own database
The source PDFs and text files we collect
Train and fine-tune on all of it
Redistribution and white-label terms in writing
Volume pricing, custom SLA, and invoicing

SOC 2 Type II underwayNo query logging, no training on your dataSelf-serve key, no sales callUS data residency

US primary law other than case law: statutes, regulations, constitutions, court rules, executive orders, agency guidance, and agency adjudications. Federal plus all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, about 5M+ sections. The coverage section above breaks it down corpus by corpus, and GET /api/v1/us/statutes/coverage returns the live numbers.

Need a source we don't cover yet?

A specific set of government PDFs, or a slice of administrative law shaped for your product. Turning messy government data into clean, structured law is the whole job here, so bring us the hard ones.