To search court case records online, use PACER for federal cases and the clerk of court’s online portal in the county or state where a state case was filed. Both let you search by party name or case number, and both are open to anyone without needing a reason for the search.
Federal Cases on PACER
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records service, known as PACER, is the federal judiciary’s official system. It holds more than one billion documents from federal district courts, appellate courts, and bankruptcy courts.1Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) Registration is free. You will need to provide basic identifying information such as your date of birth and a tax ID number during signup.2Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Register for an Account
Once you have an account, you can search any individual federal court by party name or case number. If you don’t know which court handled the case, the PACER Case Locator runs a nationwide search across all federal courts and returns every court location and case number where a party appears.3Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Search by National Index That is the quickest starting point when all you have is a name.
One boundary worth knowing: PACER does not cover the U.S. Supreme Court. Supreme Court dockets and opinions are searchable for free at supremecourt.gov by case number, party name, or keyword.4United States Courts. Find a Case (PACER)
What PACER Costs
PACER charges $0.10 per page for docket reports, motions, orders, and briefs. Any single document is capped at $3.00 no matter how long it is.5Public Access to Court Electronic Records. PACER Pricing: How Fees Work The cap does not apply to name search results, multi-case reports, or transcripts of proceedings.6Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Pricing Frequently Asked Questions
For most people the system is effectively free. If your account accrues $30 or less in charges during a calendar quarter, those fees are waived entirely.6Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Pricing Frequently Asked Questions A casual search for a handful of dockets will fall well under that threshold.
State and County Cases
Most criminal prosecutions, civil lawsuits, family cases, and probate matters happen in state court, not federal court. State records are decentralized. Each county or circuit maintains its own repository through a local clerk of court, so searching one county’s system will not return results from another. Knowing where the case was filed is the single most important piece of information.
Many state judiciaries now run free online case search portals that show docket information, party names, hearing dates, and case status. Coverage varies. Some portals let you download full document images; others show only an index of filings and require a courthouse visit or written request for the documents themselves. When you are not sure which county to search, the state judiciary’s main website usually links out to the correct local portal.
If online access is limited, most clerk’s offices keep public terminals inside the courthouse where anyone can browse case indexes during business hours. You do not have to prove a connection to the case or explain why you’re looking.
What to Have Ready Before You Search
Good identifiers save time and cut down on false matches. The full legal name of at least one party is the usual starting point. If the name is common, a middle initial or approximate date of birth narrows results quickly. Many court databases support wildcard searches: typing the first few characters of a name followed by an asterisk pulls in spelling variations.
A case number is the most precise tool you can use, because each one is unique to a single proceeding. Case numbers typically encode the filing year, the court location, and the type of proceeding. The approximate filing date or the presiding judge’s name can also help when you are wading through a long result set. Accuracy matters more than people expect. A transposed digit or a misspelled surname can return nothing at all even when the record is right there in the system.
Getting the Documents Themselves
Once you locate a case, how you get the actual documents depends on the court and on what format you need.
Online portals are fastest. On PACER, clicking a docket entry downloads the document as a PDF at $0.10 per page, capped at $3.00.5Public Access to Court Electronic Records. PACER Pricing: How Fees Work State portals that offer downloads set their own per-page or flat fees, which vary by jurisdiction.
A certified copy is a different matter. If you need one for an official purpose, such as proving a judgment or a divorce decree to another agency, you have to request it from the clerk’s office. Certification fees usually include a flat surcharge plus a per-page copy fee and run meaningfully higher than a standard photocopy. Some clerks accept requests online or by mail; others require you to appear in person. Mail requests typically need a written application and prepayment by check or money order.
Turnaround times track the method. Digital downloads are instant. In-person certified copies may be ready the same day or within a few business days. Mail requests take longer, especially when records must be retrieved from off-site storage.
A Free Alternative for Federal Filings
PACER fees are modest, but they add up for researchers or anyone doing broad searches. The RECAP Archive, maintained by the nonprofit Free Law Project through its CourtListener platform, provides free access to millions of federal court documents originally pulled from PACER.7CourtListener. Advanced RECAP Archive Search for PACER The collection grows as PACER users with the RECAP browser extension automatically contribute copies of documents they download.
Coverage is uneven. RECAP contains whatever users have happened to download, plus bulk collections from specific time periods and court types. You may find the exact document you need, or only partial docket information. For a guaranteed complete record, PACER is still the authoritative source. But checking RECAP first often pays off, particularly for high-profile cases many people have already accessed.
Individual federal courts also publish some opinions and orders on their own websites at no cost, and the Supreme Court’s full docket and opinion archive is freely available at supremecourt.gov.
Official Portals vs. Background Check Sites
Searching a name on the open web will surface dozens of commercial background check and people-search sites alongside official court portals. These aggregators pull from multiple public sources and repackage the data for a fee. The convenience comes with a real accuracy problem: aggregated records can be outdated, matched to the wrong person, or missing the disposition that shows a case was dismissed.
When a third-party company assembles a report used for employment screening, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires it to follow reasonable procedures to ensure maximum possible accuracy.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1681e – Compliance Procedures If an employer plans to deny you a job based on the results, they must give you a copy of the report and a chance to dispute errors before making a final decision. That protection exists precisely because these reports frequently contain mistakes.
For your own research, go directly to the official source. PACER for federal, the state judiciary’s portal for state. The data is current, complete, and unfiltered. Third-party sites are best used as a hint about which courts to search, not as a definitive record.
What You Won’t Find in a Public Search
Not everything in a court file is visible to the public. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 requires the person filing a document to redact sensitive personal information before it goes in the record. The filer, not the clerk, is responsible. Protected items include Social Security numbers (only the last four digits may appear), dates of birth (only the year), names of minors (only initials), and financial account numbers (only the last four digits).9Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5.2 – Privacy Protection For Filings Made with the Court
Judges can also seal entire case files. Trade secrets are a common basis in commercial cases. When a case is sealed, the docket entry may still appear in search results, but the underlying documents cannot be opened without a court order.
Juvenile delinquency records get the strongest confidentiality protections in the system and will not appear in a standard public search. Under federal law, juvenile case records must be safeguarded from disclosure to unauthorized persons throughout the proceeding and afterward. Neither the name nor the photograph of any juvenile may be made public in connection with a delinquency proceeding unless the juvenile is prosecuted as an adult. The protections extend to employment, licensing, and civil rights inquiries: responses must be identical to responses for people who were never involved in a delinquency proceeding at all.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 5038 – Use of Juvenile Records State laws add their own layers, and most require a court petition and judicial review before anyone outside the case can see juvenile files.
Older Federal Records in the National Archives
Federal case files that have been closed for some time are often transferred from the courthouse to a Federal Records Center run by the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA stores them, but the courts retain legal custody.11National Archives. Obtaining Copies of Court Records in the Federal Records Centers
To get copies, you can order online through NARA’s reproduction ordering system or submit a request by mail, fax, or email using the form for the appropriate record type: bankruptcy, civil, criminal, or court of appeals. NARA no longer offers on-site review of these files at its Federal Records Centers, so in-person access means contacting the relevant federal court directly.11National Archives. Obtaining Copies of Court Records in the Federal Records Centers Fees follow NARA’s reproduction schedule, and retrieved files typically arrive at the clerk’s office within five to seven business days after payment.