PACER API (US Federal Courts)
US federal government REST API (CASE Search API) providing programmatic access to federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate court dockets and documents via the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Government-operated system; TLS enforced but basic auth credentials are username/password with no token rotation; no scope granularity — full account access or none
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You need authoritative, comprehensive access to US federal court dockets and documents with full coverage of all federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts.
Avoid When
Cost per page view is a concern at scale, you only need opinions (use CourtListener), or you need state court records.
Use Cases
- • Automated monitoring of federal court dockets for litigation tracking and alerts
- • Legal data companies building comprehensive federal court record databases
- • Attorneys and paralegals programmatically retrieving case filings and docket entries
- • Investigative journalism tools tracking federal litigation activity
- • Corporate legal departments monitoring litigation involving their entities
Not For
- • State court records (PACER covers federal courts only)
- • Historical cases predating PACER's electronic filing period
- • Free bulk access to opinions (CourtListener provides better free coverage)
- • Applications requiring full web UI feature parity (API is a subset of PACER capabilities)
Interface
Authentication
HTTP Basic authentication using PACER account credentials; same credentials as web PACER login; registration required at pacer.uscourts.gov; free to register
Pricing
Registration is free. Costs accrue per page of documents and search results accessed. Quarterly billing. Accounts with under $30/quarter are exempt. High-volume access can become expensive quickly.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Every API call that retrieves documents or docket pages incurs $0.10/page billing — agent retry loops can become expensive
- ⚠ No webhooks or push notifications; agents must poll for docket updates
- ⚠ CASE Search API covers case metadata but full document retrieval requires additional PACER court-specific endpoints
- ⚠ API coverage is a subset of full PACER web interface; some functions unavailable programmatically
- ⚠ Court-specific PACER systems have slightly different behaviors; not all federal courts have uniform API behavior
- ⚠ No sandbox or test environment; all development incurs real charges
- ⚠ Basic auth over HTTPS only; no token rotation or modern auth mechanisms
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for PACER API (US Federal Courts).
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.