> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://vaquill.ai/docs/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Count the sections in a scope > How many sections sit in a jurisdiction, corpus, code, title, chapter or part. **Cost**: 1 credit. A scope that matches nothing is refunded, because an empty answer here is usually a wrong filter rather than a finding. Use it to size a job before you run it. Walking a container with `/us/statutes/divisions` and hydrating what you find is cheap per call and adds up across a whole corpus, so this is the call that tells you what you are about to spend before you spend it. **There is no `query` parameter, on purpose.** Search ranks over a bounded window, so "how many sections match this query" has no answer beyond the size of that window. This counts a SCOPE, which is exact. Pair the two: count the scope here, enumerate it with `/us/statutes/divisions`, then rank within it using `/us/statutes/search`. The figure counts SECTIONS. Long sections are stored as several passages and are counted once. ## OpenAPI ````yaml https://api.vaquill.ai/external/openapi.json post /api/v1/us/statutes/count openapi: 3.1.0 info: title: Vaquill Developer API description: >- Public API for legal statutes and legislation. **Authentication**: Pass your API key via the `Authorization: Bearer vq_key_...` header. **Credits**: Each call costs API credits. See `GET /api/v1/api-credits/pricing` for the full pricing matrix. ## Jurisdictions | Jurisdiction | Coverage | `countryCode` | |---|---|---| | **United States** | USC and the Statutes at Large, the CFR and its annual editions, all 52 state and territory statutory codes (50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico), state administrative regulations, court rules, federal and state constitutions, federal agency guidance and adjudications, the Federal Register, the Sentencing Guidelines and US tax treaties. | `US` | See the full [Coverage page](https://www.vaquill.ai/docs/api-guide/coverage) for the jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdown, or call `/us/statutes/coverage` for live counts. Coverage is per (jurisdiction, corpusType) pair, so treat that endpoint as the authoritative list rather than this summary. ## Endpoints - **US Statutes**: Search and retrieve any of the corpora above with full text, resolve a citation to its exact section, browse the statutory hierarchy, read a section as it stood on a past date, and follow its change history, cross-references and defined terms - **Board Watches**: Subscribe to a corpus source and get a webhook or email when it refreshes with real changes (free, API key required) - **Pricing**: Credit costs per endpoint (no auth required) ## Rate limits Limits are enforced per API key and scale with your plan. A `429` response includes a `Retry-After` header. | Plan | Per minute | Per hour | Per day | |---|---|---|---| | Vaquill API Pro | 60 | 1,000 | 2,000 | | Vaquill API Business | 150 | 2,500 | 10,000 | For full documentation, visit the [API Reference](https://www.vaquill.ai/docs/api-reference/). version: 1.0.0 contact: name: Vaquill API Support url: https://www.vaquill.ai email: support@vaquill.ai license: name: Proprietary url: https://www.vaquill.ai/terms termsOfService: https://www.vaquill.ai/terms servers: - url: https://api.vaquill.ai description: Production security: - ApiKeyAuth: [] tags: - name: US Statutes description: >- Search and retrieve US primary law. Covers the United States Code and the Statutes at Large, the Code of Federal Regulations and its annual editions, state statutory codes and administrative regulations, federal and state constitutions, court rules, Federal Register rules and Presidential documents, federal and state agency guidance, agency adjudications, state Attorney General opinions, the Sentencing Guidelines and US tax treaties. Scope a search with the `corpusType` filter, and call `/us/statutes/coverage` for the live jurisdiction-by-corpusType list. - **Search**: Search across all USC, CFR, state, and regulatory sections - **Section**: Get metadata, citation, hierarchy, and source links for a specific section - **Body**: Get the full text of a section - name: Board Watches description: >- Law-change alerts. Subscribe to a **board** (a tracked corpus source, identified by `corpusType` plus an optional `state`) and get a webhook or email whenever it refreshes with real changes, naming the exact sections that changed. Fetch old-vs-new text for any amended section via the change diff. Boards refresh on their own existing cadence; watching one does not change how often it refreshes. Every endpoint here is **free**: authenticated by API key and rate-limited, but not credit-metered. See the [Law Change Alerts guide](https://www.vaquill.ai/docs/api-guide/alerts) for the full walkthrough. - name: Pricing description: >- Credit pricing and conversion rates. No authentication required. 1 credit = $0.01 USD. - name: Credits description: >- Your own credit balance: what is spendable right now, where it came from, and what is about to expire. Free and never charged, so it is safe to poll for low-balance alerting or to pre-flight a batch job. externalDocs: description: Full API Reference url: https://www.vaquill.ai/docs/api-reference/ paths: /api/v1/us/statutes/count: post: tags: - US Statutes summary: Count the sections in a scope description: >- How many sections sit in a jurisdiction, corpus, code, title, chapter or part. **Cost**: 1 credit. A scope that matches nothing is refunded, because an empty answer here is usually a wrong filter rather than a finding. Use it to size a job before you run it. Walking a container with `/us/statutes/divisions` and hydrating what you find is cheap per call and adds up across a whole corpus, so this is the call that tells you what you are about to spend before you spend it. **There is no `query` parameter, on purpose.** Search ranks over a bounded window, so "how many sections match this query" has no answer beyond the size of that window. This counts a SCOPE, which is exact. Pair the two: count the scope here, enumerate it with `/us/statutes/divisions`, then rank within it using `/us/statutes/search`. The figure counts SECTIONS. Long sections are stored as several passages and are counted once. operationId: count_statute_sections_api_v1_us_statutes_count_post requestBody: content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/StatuteCountRequest' required: true responses: '200': description: The number of sections in scope, and the scope that produced it. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/StatuteCountResponse' '401': description: Invalid or missing API key. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiDetailError' '402': description: Insufficient credits. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiDetailError' '422': description: Unknown filter value or unknown field. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiDetailError' '429': description: Rate limit exceeded. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiDetailError' components: schemas: StatuteCountRequest: properties: corpusType: anyOf: - type: string enum: - USC - CFR - STATE - CONSTITUTION - FEDERAL_RULES - STATE_CONSTITUTION - STATE_RULES - EXECUTIVE_ACTION - REGULATION - FEDERAL_REGISTER - FEDERAL_REGISTER_NOTICE - AGENCY_GUIDANCE - SENTENCING_GUIDELINES - US_TAX_TREATY - STATE_AGENCY_GUIDANCE - STATE_AG_OPINION - SESSION_LAW - STATUTE_COMPILATION - AGENCY_ADJUDICATION - CFR_ANNUAL - USC_ANNUAL - items: type: string enum: - USC - CFR - STATE - CONSTITUTION - FEDERAL_RULES - STATE_CONSTITUTION - STATE_RULES - EXECUTIVE_ACTION - REGULATION - FEDERAL_REGISTER - FEDERAL_REGISTER_NOTICE - AGENCY_GUIDANCE - SENTENCING_GUIDELINES - US_TAX_TREATY - STATE_AGENCY_GUIDANCE - STATE_AG_OPINION - SESSION_LAW - STATUTE_COMPILATION - AGENCY_ADJUDICATION - CFR_ANNUAL - USC_ANNUAL type: array - type: 'null' title: Corpustype description: Corpus to count, single or list. Omit to count every corpus. examples: - REGULATION state: anyOf: - type: string - items: type: string type: array - type: 'null' enum: - federal - al - ak - az - ar - ca - co - ct - de - dc - fl - ga - hi - id - il - in - ia - ks - ky - la - me - md - ma - mi - mn - ms - mo - mt - ne - nv - nh - nj - nm - ny - nc - nd - oh - ok - or - pa - pr - ri - sc - sd - tn - tx - ut - vt - va - wa - wv - wi - wy title: State description: Two-letter jurisdiction code or `federal`, single or list. examples: - tx code: anyOf: - type: string - items: type: string type: array - type: 'null' title: Code description: State code identifier, e.g. `tx_26`. Pair with `state`. examples: - tx_26 titleNumber: anyOf: - type: integer - type: 'null' title: Titlenumber description: USC or CFR title number. examples: - 42 chapter: anyOf: - type: string - items: type: string type: array - type: 'null' title: Chapter description: Chapter identifier. Pair with `titleNumber` or `code`. examples: - '554' part: anyOf: - type: string - items: type: string type: array - type: 'null' title: Part description: CFR part identifier. Pair with `titleNumber`. examples: - '240' actStatus: anyOf: - type: string - items: type: string type: array - type: 'null' title: Actstatus description: Count only sections carrying this status. examples: - repealed excludeRepealed: type: boolean title: Excluderepealed description: >- Exclude sections whose status is affirmatively dead. A section with no recorded status is KEPT, because a missing status is not evidence of repeal. The US Code is served from a stored annual edition, so a section repealed after it closed is counted here; see the same field on `/search` for the measurement. default: false examples: - true additionalProperties: false type: object title: StatuteCountRequest description: >- Filter-only section count. See `POST /us/statutes/count`. Deliberately takes NO `query`. A count of "sections matching this query" does not exist: ranking runs over a bounded window, so the honest answer to that question is the window size rather than a corpus figure. This counts a SCOPE, which is exact, cheap, and the number an acquisition job actually needs before it starts walking. StatuteCountResponse: properties: count: type: integer title: Count description: >- Sections in scope. This is a SECTION count, not a passage count: long sections are stored as several passages and are counted once. default: 0 examples: - 43638 isExact: type: boolean title: Isexact description: >- True when the figure is an exact count rather than an estimate. Present so a future estimated mode cannot be mistaken for this one. default: true examples: - true scope: additionalProperties: true type: object title: Scope description: >- The filters that produced this figure, echoed back. A count with no scope attached is not reproducible, and an ignored filter would otherwise be invisible. examples: - corpusType: REGULATION state: tx processingTimeMs: type: number title: Processingtimems description: Server-side time for this request in milliseconds. default: 0 examples: - 85.2 creditsConsumed: type: number title: Creditsconsumed description: Credits actually charged for this call. default: 0 examples: - 1 type: object title: StatuteCountResponse description: Response for `POST /us/statutes/count`. ApiDetailError: properties: detail: type: string title: Detail description: >- Human-readable reason, safe to surface to an end user. Branch on the HTTP status rather than on this string: the wording is not part of the contract and may be reworded, but 401 (bad key), 402 (out of credits), 403 (missing scope), 404 (no such resource) and 429 (rate limited) are stable. examples: - Insufficient API credits. type: object required: - detail title: ApiDetailError description: |- Error envelope the API actually returns. All errors (401/402/403/404/422/429/5xx) come back as a single `detail` string (FastAPI default), e.g. `{"detail": "Insufficient API credits."}`. Documenting the real shape so client code can rely on it. securitySchemes: ApiKeyAuth: type: http scheme: bearer bearerFormat: vq_key_* description: >- API key issued from the developer dashboard. Pass as `Authorization: Bearer vq_key_...` ````