How federal court records search works
Federal court records are public, but they are not in one friendly place. Every federal case lives in the court where it was filed, and the official index — the PACER Case Locator — charges by the page and returns bare rows of data. This page is the shortcut: one box that searches federal cases, with the explanation of what you are looking at underneath.
Which courts are covered
The federal trial system is 94 district courts, one for each district of the United States and its territories, plus a bankruptcy court attached to each district and 13 courts of appeals above them. A federal case is civil (a lawsuit between parties, or against the government) or criminal (the United States prosecuting a defendant). The toggle above switches between those two, and each search also reaches appellate matters.
What is not here: state courts, and bankruptcy by name. Landlord-tenant disputes, most divorces, most car accidents, and nearly every traffic case are state matters, and no federal system indexes them. Bankruptcy cases are federal, and a bankruptcy case number typed into the box above will resolve, but a party-name search does not reach bankruptcy dockets. To search bankruptcy by name, use the PACER Case Locator.
Searching by party name versus docket number
A docket number is exact. Type 1:23-cv-12345 and you land on one case. The digits before the colon are the division of the court, the two digits after are the filing year, the letters are the case type, and the rest is a sequence number.
A party name is fuzzy, and that is where searches go wrong. Parties appear exactly as they were captioned: a company may be filed under a subsidiary, a person may or may not have a middle initial, and one defendant can appear under several spellings. If a name search comes back empty, search a shorter fragment of it, then narrow with the district and filing-year filters rather than adding more words. Full walkthrough: how to find a federal court case.
What PACER charges, and what we charge
PACER bills ten cents a page for documents, docket sheets, and search results. The 30-page cap — $3.00 today — covers individual case documents and case-specific reports such as docket sheets; it does not cover transcripts or non-case-specific reports, including general search results. The quarterly waiver is all or nothing: if a quarter's total stays at $30 or less it is waived entirely, and going over bills the whole quarter. Both figures change on January 1, 2027, when the rate rises to 12 cents and the waiver to $40. Searches are billed on the pages they generate even when they find nothing, which is why careless name searches cost money.
Searching here is free. When you open a document that has to come from PACER, it is counted against the pages included with your plan at PACER's own ten cents a page, with the 30-page cap applied. The $199.99 subscription includes 150 pages a month, 10 PacerAlerts, and unlimited judge analytics; if you run out, more pages are $9.99 per 30-page pack, which is above PACER's own rate. Details are on the pricing page and the full fee breakdown is in our guide to PACER fees.
What RECAP is
RECAP is a free archive of federal court filings run by the nonprofit Free Law Project. When someone using the RECAP browser extension buys a document from PACER, a copy is donated to the archive, so tens of millions of filings are already public at no cost. We check RECAP before spending one of your pages, which means popular dockets are often free to read.
The limit is built into the idea: RECAP has a document only because somebody already paid for it. Very new filings and quiet dockets are frequently missing, and that is when a live PACER pull is the only way to get the file.
Do I need a PACER account to search here?
No. You can run searches on this page without an account of any kind. A PACER account of your own is only necessary if you want to use the government system directly.
Are federal court records public?
Most are. The exceptions are sealed filings, grand jury material, and information redacted for privacy such as full financial account numbers and the names of minor children. A sealed entry usually still shows on the docket; you simply cannot open it.
Why can I not find a case I know exists?
The usual reasons are a differently spelled name, a state case rather than a federal one, a sealed matter, or a case old enough to predate electronic filing. Cases also move: transfers between districts and consolidation into multidistrict litigation both change the number.
What do the entries on a docket mean?
A docket is a numbered list of everything filed, in order. Some entries have no document attached at all — a minute entry is the clerk's note of something that happened in the courtroom. Our legal glossary defines the terms you will meet most, including motion to dismiss, summary judgment, and superseding indictment.
How current is the data?
Searches run against current federal case data, and the government's own nationwide index is refreshed once a day. For a case you are actively following, an alert is more reliable than re-running a search: PacerAlerts email you when a watched docket moves.