How to Use PACER to Look Up a Case

The federal judiciary is organized into U.S. district courts (the trial courts) and bankruptcy courts, the U.S. courts of appeals for the regional circuits, and the Supreme Court of the United States as the highest court. Federal case records filed through the CM/ECF system are searched nationwide through PACER; the free CourtListener/RECAP archive mirrors many of the same documents.

PACER — Public Access to Court Electronic Records — is the federal judiciary's single window into cases filed in the US district courts, bankruptcy courts, and courts of appeals. It is not one giant database so much as a front door to each court's own electronic filing system (CM/ECF), plus a nationwide index called the Case Locator. Looking up a case takes five steps.

Register for a PACER account. Create a free account at the PACER Service Center. Registration itself costs nothing; you are only billed when you actually view documents. You provide contact details and, to view documents, a payment method that is charged after you cross the free quarterly threshold.
Choose the right search. To search across all federal courts at once, use the PACER Case Locator. To work inside one court — for example, a specific US district or bankruptcy court — go to that court's own CM/ECF system, which the uscourts.gov court locator will point you to.
Search by party name or case number. A case number pulls a single case directly. A party-name search returns every matching case; narrow by court, date filed, or case type (civil, criminal, bankruptcy, appellate) to find the right one.
Open the docket and pick documents. The docket sheet lists every filing in the case. You can read the docket, then open individual filed documents — complaints, motions, orders, opinions — where they are available electronically and not restricted.
Track what you are billed. Viewing pages costs $0.10 each, capped at $3.00 for most documents. If you accrue $30 or less in charges in a calendar quarter, the fees are waived, so light research is effectively free. Written opinions are always free to view.

Is There a Free Version of PACER?

Sort of — and in two senses. First, PACER itself is free for light users: if you run up $30 or less in charges in a calendar quarter, those charges are waived, so occasional research usually costs nothing. Written judicial opinions are always free to read regardless of how much you use the system. Second, a genuinely free alternative exists outside PACER. The Free Law Project's CourtListener hosts the RECAP Archive, a crowd-sourced mirror of documents that PACER users have already paid for and donated back. For many well-known cases, the filings are already there at no cost.

Is Anyone Allowed to Access PACER?

Yes. PACER is open to the public — you do not need to be a lawyer, a party, or a journalist to register and search. Anyone can create an account and look up federal cases. What registration adds is the ability to view and download documents (which is what triggers the per-page fees); the underlying records are public, consistent with the general presumption that court proceedings are open. The only things you cannot see are filings the court has sealed or otherwise restricted.

What Documents Are Available on PACER?

PACER gives you the docket sheet for a case — the chronological list of every filing and event — and the electronic documents behind it: complaints and indictments, motions and briefs, court orders, judgments, and written opinions. Coverage is broadest for cases filed in the electronic era; older cases may show only a docket, or may have to be pulled from the National Archives. Sealed filings, juvenile matters, and grand-jury material are not available, and personal identifiers such as Social Security and financial account numbers are redacted under the federal privacy rules.

PACER Fees, Explained

The pricing is simple once you see it laid out. Viewing costs $0.10 per page. A single document is capped at $3.00 — the equivalent of 30 pages — no matter how long it is, and that cap does not apply to name-search results or transcripts. Audio recordings of hearings are billed at a flat rate per file. Then comes the part that makes casual research free: at the end of each calendar quarter, if your total charges are $30 or less, the whole balance is waived. In practice a curious member of the public who looks up a handful of cases never pays. Written opinions carry no charge at all, so if all you want is a judge's ruling, PACER is free by design.

CourtListener and RECAP: The Free Archive

CourtListener, run by the non-profit Free Law Project, is the most useful free complement to PACER. Its RECAP Archive collects federal court documents that PACER users have already downloaded and contributed back, so popular and high-profile cases are often available there for free. Installing the RECAP browser extension also means that when you do pay for a document on PACER, a copy is donated to the archive for the next person — the fee you paid keeps working. CourtListener adds full-text search across millions of opinions, alerts, and a citation tool that PACER does not offer. It will not have every sealed or brand-new filing, but for reading decisions and following major litigation it is frequently all you need.

Finding Federal Case Records by Court

If you already know which court has the case, you can go straight to its CM/ECF system instead of the nationwide index. Federal trial cases are heard in the 94 US district courts, bankruptcy matters in the bankruptcy court for that district, and appeals in the regional circuit courts of appeals. The federal judiciary's court locator, linked above, maps any location to its district and circuit. When you are not sure which court — or the case might be in state court instead — start from our how to look up court records guide, which walks through identifying the right court before you search.

Federal court records are public information, not a background-screening product. They must not be used to make employment, tenant, or credit decisions governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Legal Journal hosts no records and provides no legal advice.

Federal Court Records: How to Use PACER (and Free Alternatives)