Dockets, filings, and court records
PACER
PACER is the federal judiciary's public access system for court records, charging ten cents a page with most single documents capped at thirty pages.
PACER stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. Registration is free, and charges are waived entirely if you accrue thirty dollars or less in a quarter, which covers most occasional users. Search results are billed on the pages they generate, even when a search returns no matches. A temporary increase raises the rate to twelve cents a page and the quarterly waiver to forty dollars on January 1, 2027.
PACER is deliberately plain. It gives you the docket and the documents, not summaries, analytics, or explanations, and each court's system is searched separately unless you use the nationwide PACER Case Locator.
PACER is also the source behind most commercial court research products. When a service says it has federal dockets, it usually means it buys from PACER, mirrors the free RECAP archive, or both, so the underlying record is the same and the difference is in the search and the presentation.
How it appears on a docket
A PACER receipt at the bottom of a search reads Search Criteria: Last Name Rodriguez; Billable Pages: 3; Cost: 0.30.
Governing rule
Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule (effective January 1, 2020)
Related terms
- PACER Case Locator — The PACER Case Locator is the federal judiciary's nationwide index of district, bankruptcy, and appellate cases, used to find which court a case is in.
- RECAP Archive — RECAP is a free public archive of federal court filings, built from documents that PACER users bought and donated through the RECAP browser extension.
More on dockets, filings, and court records
See this term in a real case
Search federal court records and read the filings where pacer actually shows up. New to federal dockets? Start with how to find a federal case.