PACER API: How to Get Federal Court Data Programmatically

Short answer: yes, PACER has an official API. It is two services: one that logs your program in, and one that searches a nationwide index of federal cases and the parties named in them. It does not return docket entries or documents. For those you either pay PACER's per-page rate on the court websites, read what the free RECAP archive already holds, or hire a commercial vendor to do the pulling. Every search in the real (production) system is billed, so work out the budget before you write the loop.

TL;DR

• PACER publishes two APIs, an Authentication API and the PACER Case Locator API (PCL). The Judiciary updated the PCL guide in August 2026.
• PCL searches an index that is refreshed once a day. It returns case and party details. It returns no docket entries and no documents.
• You need a PACER account. Production searches cost 10 cents a page today and 12 cents from January 1, 2027, with the free quarterly amount rising from $30 to $40.
• Free routes exist: the RECAP archive through CourtListener, written opinions on govinfo, and case statistics from the Federal Judicial Center. Each has limits you should read first.
• Commercial docket vendors sell dockets and filings by API. Ask whether they pull from the court live or serve a copy.

Figures below come from the Judiciary's and other publishers' own pages as they stood on October 5, 2026.

What PACER's own API does

PACER stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts runs it for the federal courts. An API (application programming interface) is a way for software to ask another system for data without a person clicking through a website. The Judiciary lists two of them on its developer resources page.

The first is the Authentication API. Your program sends a PACER username and password and gets back a token, a long string that proves you logged in. If the account uses multi-factor authentication (a one-time code from an app as a second step), the request can carry that code too. The token stays valid for an extended period, so you log in once and reuse it. The PCL guide says plainly not to log in before every search.

The second is the PACER Case Locator API. The Case Locator is a nationwide index covering the appeals, district and bankruptcy courts. The API runs the same searches over the same data as the Case Locator website. You can look up cases, using things like the case number, the case title and the date filed. You can also look up parties, meaning the people and companies named in a case.

Some mechanics a developer wants to know:

• Format. Requests and answers use JSON or XML, two common data formats.
• Paging. An immediate search returns 54 results at a time and stops at 5,400 results, which is 100 pages.
• Batch jobs. For bigger pulls, a batch search runs in the background and returns up to 108,000 results in one download. The guide caps how many batch jobs can run at once and how many finished ones it will store, and says those limits can change.
• Test system. A separate test environment holds sample data, and searches there are not billed. It needs its own test account, apart from your real one.

What comes back for a case is the court, the case number, the title, key dates (filed, closed, reopened, dismissed), the case type, the nature of suit (the standard subject category for a civil case) and, for bankruptcies, the chapter. For a party you get the name, a party type and a role. The guide's list of returned fields has no docket entries and no documents in it.

What it does not do

Being exact here saves a week of work.

• No docket entries. A docket is the running list of everything filed in a case, and each line on it is a docket entry. The index tells you a case exists. It does not list what is in it.
• No documents. There is no way to fetch a complaint or an order through these two APIs.
• No same-day freshness. PACER says the nationwide index is updated once daily, while a search of one court's own system is updated immediately. The API covers the index only.
• No alerts. The guide describes searches and batch jobs. It does not describe notifications when a case changes.
• No bulk data. Free Law Project's PACER fact sheet says PACER has no bulk data download. The largest single batch the API offers is the 108,000 results above.

Docket sheets and documents live in each court's own system, called CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Files). PACER is the public window into it. The developer page lists only the two APIs above, plus technical notes for people building filing software. It adds that the system differs from court to court, so code written against one court may not work the same in another.

You will see pages that say PACER has no API. That was true once, and the history below shows when it changed.

Who can use it, and what it costs

The Judiciary says anyone can register for PACER, and there is no registration fee. With a card on file you get access once the card is checked. Without one, an activation code arrives by mail in 7 to 10 business days, so a no-card account cannot start your project this afternoon. There are four kinds of account: case search only, attorney filer, non-attorney filer, and a group billing account that lets an organization get one invoice for many logins. The organization owes for all of them.

Multi-factor authentication is required for filing accounts. Accounts that only search can opt in. This matters for automation, because a script that logs in has to supply the one-time code. The Judiciary publishes a code-generation sample for that. Third-party tools may lag behind: Free Law Project's fetch documentation says it does not currently support accounts with multi-factor authentication turned on.

Now the fees, from the Judiciary's fee page:

• 10 cents a page for documents, search results and reports.
• $3 a document at most (the fee schedule words this as thirty pages). Searches and reports have no cap, and neither do transcripts.
• A search that finds nothing still bills. The page says you are charged "even if the search displays 'no matches found.'" Its tip is to search by case number, because a common party name can return a lot of pages.
• $2.40 for an audio file of a hearing.
• Quarterly waiver. You are billed only if you accrue more than $30 in a quarter. Free Law Project reads that to mean the whole amount is billed once you cross it. That is their reading, so check it with PACER.
• Opinions are free. The fee schedule says no fee is charged for judicial opinions.

In the guide's examples, one page of results is one billable page at 10 cents. A full 100-page immediate search is therefore 100 billable pages, or $10 by simple arithmetic. The first $30 of a quarter covers roughly 300 such pages.

Courts can exempt some users: people who cannot pay, pro bono attorneys, academic researchers and nonprofits. The conditions matter to anyone building a product. The fee schedule says researchers must show the work is scholarly, limited in scope and "not intended for redistribution on the internet or for commercial purposes." Anyone exempted must agree not to sell the data and not to transfer it unless the court allows. An exemption is not a way to feed a product.

The 2027 change. In a June 26, 2026 announcement, the Judiciary said the fee rises from 10 to 12 cents a page on January 1, 2027, and the automatic exemption rises from $30 to $40 a quarter. The increase stays for five years. It is the first change since 2012, when the fee went from 8 to 10 cents. The Judiciary's press release describes the document cap as 30 pages. If that holds, the cap would become $3.60, which is our arithmetic and not a published figure. The official fee schedule document still carries its 2020 numbers. Our buyer's guide to legal data tells the longer story of why PACER charges at all.

The rules for automated access

Read the policy page before you automate. Three lines matter most. The account is "for my use only, unless specifically designated otherwise." Any attempt to collect data "in a manner that avoids billing is strictly prohibited and may result in criminal prosecution or civil action." And misuse includes "using an automated process to repeatedly access those portions of the PACER application that do not assess a fee" to collect case information. The Judiciary may also suspend or reduce service to an account that causes "an unacceptable level of congestion," and it may treat accounts it finds to be related in the same way.

The developer page speaks to scripts directly. It asks commercial users who run data-scraping scripts to do large pulls between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Central Time, and says the Judiciary may suspend or reduce access for any account causing an unacceptable level of disruption.

The pages do not set out a general rule on reselling data you paid for. If that is your plan, ask the PACER Service Center in writing at pacer@psc.uscourts.gov, and keep the answer.

A short history of PACER's API

The Judicial Conference approved PACER in September 1988. Our buyer's guide covers that and the fee fight, so here is the API side.

• 2012. The per-page fee rose from 8 to 10 cents, according to the Judiciary.

• January 2013. A Hacker News commenter named rprasad wrote of PACER: "PACER was designed and implemented in the days when AOL and Compuserve were the Internet. It doesn't have an API."

• Before the new API. An older Case Locator interface did exist. Free Law Project hosts its documentation and says that API "has been declared 'Legacy.'"

• December 2020. A Judiciary town hall slide deck introduced a new REST version of the PCL API (REST is a common style for web APIs) and asked for 45 volunteer testers, starting January 19, 2021. Testers needed experience "automating access to PACER or the legacy PCL."

• December 2021. The Authentication API guide shows its first version.

• April and May 2025. The Authentication API guide added multi-factor authentication.

• August 2025 onward. In March 2026 judges told the Judicial Conference that added security measures, deployed since August 2025, protect sealed documents from cyber intruders.

• March 10, 2026. Two federal judges outlined an accelerated plan to replace CM/ECF. The Judiciary's account of that session says "Improving the search functionality of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system is a key component of the modernization project."

• September 17, 2026. The Director of the Administrative Office told the Conference the first component is on track for release before the end of 2026, and "By year end 2027, we will move all new district court cases into CMM. The appellate and bankruptcy courts will follow." CMM is the new case management system. The Judiciary's report has the details.

The fee increase pays for that replacement. The press release puts PACER fee collections at about $147 million a year and the modernization cost at $700 million to $800 million over six years. Of the increase, the Director said: "Raising user fees, even temporarily, is a last resort."

None of these announcements says what happens to the Case Locator API or to the court websites as the new system rolls out. Treat that as an open question when you plan.

The ways developers actually get federal court data

RECAP and CourtListener. RECAP is a browser extension and archive from Free Law Project (the group behind CourtListener). When a user buys a document on PACER, the extension saves a copy for everyone, and later users get it free. Free Law says the archive holds "tens of millions of PACER documents, including every free opinion in PACER." Since May 7, 2026, any CourtListener member can reach all of its APIs, including the PACER ones that used to need special permission, per Free Law Project. Our guide to the CourtListener API covers the mechanics and the current rate limits.

The terms matter for a business. Free Law's usage rules say membership access "may not be used to power a revenue-positive commercial product, service, or feature," and that internal tools for organizations count as commercial use. Commercial users should contact the project for an agreement. That is a fair deal for a small nonprofit, and it means a product team should plan on the agreement from the start.

Free Law's fetch API buys documents from PACER on your behalf using your own credentials. The API is free, but "you'll still have to pay your PACER bill," and it queues up to 30 requests a minute. Gaps are normal, because a document appears only after someone has bought it. Our look at how reliable CourtListener data is covers coverage.

govinfo opinions. The Government Publishing Office hosts a US Courts Opinions collection for selected appeals, district and bankruptcy courts, generally back to 2004. It follows the E-Government Act's requirement that written opinions issued after April 16, 2005 be available in searchable text. The files are digitally signed. Opinions are also reachable through govinfo's developer API, which needs a free key and lists a default limit of 36,000 requests an hour. Free Law Project's fact sheet warns that courts label opinions inconsistently, so a document you would call an opinion may be missing.

Federal Judicial Center statistics. The Center's Integrated Database holds civil and criminal filings and terminations in district courts, plus bankruptcy and appeals data, from 1970 to the present. It is built from what courts report to the Administrative Office. It suits research on case volumes, and it holds no filings.

Commercial docket APIs. Several companies sell dockets and documents by API. Docket Alarm's API page lists searching, a search of PACER, getting a docket, downloading a filing and tracking a case, across federal courts, state courts and more. UniCourt's enterprise API page describes a Court Data API that includes its own PACER API, and "140+ million federal (PACER) and state court records." Trellis's API page says its second version, from May 2024, added federal and PACER integration, and lists alerts, docket refresh, documents and webhooks. We describe what each page says. Check current terms with each company.

What developers say

On Hacker News, a forum popular with developers, the argument runs two ways. In November 2019, when Free Law Project announced its fetch API, a commenter named equivocates defended the meter: "PACER charges 10 cents per page for access and I don't have a problem with that. These fees keep the federal courts open to do vital business when Congress decides it's a good time for a shutdown." The Judiciary's 2026 announcement makes a similar case, tying the new fee to security and modernization.

Another commenter, ikeboy, described a working routine in the same thread: "I tend to browse Pacer side by side with courtlistener, e.g. get the docket, read through docket on courtlistener, then click through to buy the documents I want." That is the free-first, pay-for-the-gap pattern most teams end up with.

Free Law Project's Michael Lissner wrote in the fetch API announcement that his team has "literally hundreds of regression tests on our parsers," and added: "Trust us that you don't want to be in the crawling business if you can avoid it." He is describing his own project's experience, and it is a fair warning to anyone budgeting for a home-built crawler.

What to check before you choose

1. Which layer do you need? An index of cases, a docket, or the documents themselves. PACER's API covers only the first.
2. How fresh must it be? A once-a-day index will miss this morning's filing.
3. Who pays the PACER fees? Ask a vendor whether they pass them through or bundle them, and what happens when you request a large docket.
4. Live or cached? Ask whether a docket request goes to the court at that moment or returns a stored copy, and how old the copy can be.
5. What may you do with the data? Storing, displaying, reselling and training AI on it are four different questions. Get the answers in writing.
6. Which courts and years are covered? Federal-only or state too, and how far back.
7. What happens as courts move to the new case system? The Judiciary has not said. A vendor may have a view.

Our list of ten questions to ask a legal data vendor goes further, and court records APIs versus court data APIs explains the two lanes.

This guide is part of US Law Data: The Complete Guide, a map of where US law comes from and how to use it.

FAQ

Does PACER have an API?

Yes. The Judiciary publishes an Authentication API that returns a login token, and a PACER Case Locator API that searches a nationwide index of federal cases and parties. Both are documented on pacer.uscourts.gov. They do not return docket entries or documents.

Is the PACER API free?

No. A production account pays per page of search results, 10 cents today and 12 cents from January 1, 2027. The first $30 a quarter is waived today, rising to $40. A test environment with sample data is not billed.

How do I get a PACER API key?

There is no separate key. You register for a PACER account, then your program trades the username and password (plus a one-time code if you use multi-factor authentication) for a token. A card on file speeds activation. Without one, the activation code comes by mail.

Can I download docket sheets or documents through the API?

Not through the two APIs the Judiciary lists. Dockets and documents come from the courts' own systems at the per-page rate, from the RECAP archive if someone has already saved them, or from a commercial vendor.

Is there a free alternative to PACER's API?

Partly. The RECAP archive through CourtListener holds many dockets and documents, govinfo carries opinions from selected courts, and the Federal Judicial Center publishes case statistics. Each has limits, and Free Law Project's membership terms do not cover revenue-making products.

Can I use PACER data in a commercial product?

The policy pages do not set a general rule on reselling data you have paid for. They do bar reselling data obtained under a fee exemption, and they bar avoiding billing. Ask the PACER Service Center in writing about your plan.

How up to date is PACER's data?

PACER says the nationwide index behind the Case Locator is updated once daily. A search of a specific court's own system is updated immediately. The API reaches only the index.

Will the January 2027 increase change the $3 cap?

The announcement raises the per-page fee and the quarterly waiver. The Judiciary's press release describes the document cap as 30 pages, which would make it $3.60 at 12 cents. That is our arithmetic. The official fee schedule still shows the 2020 numbers.

If your product also needs the statutes, regulations and court rules those federal cases cite, Vaquill AI's US primary law API retrieves them by citation.

Priyansh Khodiyar

Co-Founder & CTO

Priyansh leads engineering and AI at Vaquill AI: the pipelines that pull statutes, regulations and court rules from every US jurisdiction's official publisher, and the REST API, MCP server and open dataset that serve them.