How to Pull Almost Any U.S. Court Record for Free

A landlord, an ex, a contractor, a company you're about to trust — court records tell you who they've fought and how it ended. Here's how to read them yourself, free.

There's a particular kind of dread that hits when you're about to sign something big. A lease. A contract with a roofer. A deal with a "partner" a friend swears by. You get the feeling you should know more than they've told you — but you don't know where to look, and the websites that promise answers want $35 and your card number first.

Here's the thing those sites bury: most of what they sell came from a court file that is already public and already free. A lawsuit is a public act. When someone sues or gets sued, the filing, the judgments, the bankruptcies — those become records the government is required to keep open. You can read them yourself. This is how.

First, figure out which courthouse holds the file

The single biggest mistake is searching the wrong system. The U.S. has two separate court worlds, and they do not talk to each other:

• Federal courts handle bankruptcies, federal crimes, patent and civil-rights suits, and disputes between people in different states. These live in PACER.
• State and county courts handle the everyday stuff — evictions, divorces, small claims, most criminal cases, contract fights, traffic. These live in dozens of separate state portals.

So ask: was this likely a federal matter or a local one? Bankruptcy and big interstate cases are federal. An eviction or a DUI is almost always state. Check both if you're not sure.

PACER: the federal system

PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) covers federal district, appellate, and bankruptcy courts. Start at pacer.uscourts.gov and register for an account — it's free to create, but they require a credit card to bill any usage.

The cost structure is gentler than it sounds. Searching and viewing run $0.10 per page, and any single document is capped at $3.00 no matter how long it is. Better: if you run up $30 or less in a calendar quarter, the bill is waived entirely. For one person checking a few cases, you will almost never pay a cent.

To find cases without knowing which court, use the PACER Case Locator at pcl.uscourts.gov — a national index you can search by party name across all federal courts. Once you find a case, the docket is the table of contents: every motion, ruling, and judgment listed by date. Read the docket first (cheap), then only buy the specific documents you actually need.

CourtListener and RECAP: the free workaround

Here's the part the paid sites really don't want you to know. The Free Law Project, a nonprofit, runs courtlistener.com — and it hosts RECAP, a giant public archive of PACER documents that other users have already paid for and uploaded. Millions of federal filings are sitting there, fully free, no account needed.

So the smart order of operations is:

1. Search the case name on courtlistener.com first. If the docket and documents are already in RECAP, you're done — free.
2. Only if it's missing do you go pay PACER's dimes.

There's also a free RECAP browser extension (Chrome and Firefox). Install it, and whenever you do pull something from PACER, it automatically donates a copy to the public archive — and it tells you when a document you're about to buy is already free in RECAP. It quietly saves you money and helps everyone behind you.

CourtListener is also the best free home for judicial opinions — the actual written rulings — searchable by full text, party, judge, or court.

State and county courts: the patchwork

State court records are where it gets uneven, because there is no single national portal. The trick is the same search every time. Type into any search engine:

"[county name] [state] court records search" or "[state] judicial case search"

Examples of what you'll land on: many states run a unified portal (search "[state] courts case search"); large counties post their own clerk-of-court lookups. Most let you search by party name for free and view the docket; some charge a small fee only to download the full PDF, and a few still make you visit the clerk's office in person.

A few reliable patterns:

• Eviction and small claims are usually at the county or municipal level — search "[county] clerk of court."
• Criminal records are often in a statewide system, sometimes through a state's "judicial branch" or "public access" site.
• Property-tied disputes (liens, foreclosures) may show in both the court system and the county recorder's office.

Read it like a record, not a verdict

Finding the file is half the job. Reading it honestly is the other half:

• A filing is an accusation, not a fact. Anyone can sue anyone. What matters is how it ended — look for the judgment, dismissal, or settlement on the docket, not just the complaint.
• Names collide. "John Smith" sued in Ohio may not be your John Smith. Confirm with a second identifier — middle name, address, case details — before you believe it.
• A blank result isn't innocence. It means this system has nothing. The case could be in a different county, sealed, or simply old enough to predate online records.
• The law limits how you use this. Using court records to make credit, employment, tenant, or insurance decisions triggers the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. And public does not mean fair game for harassment.

The takeaway

The whole paid people-finder industry is a tollbooth on a road that's already free. The pattern never changes: decide federal or state, search CourtListener before you ever pay PACER, fall back to the county clerk's portal for local matters, and read the docket to the end before you judge anyone. Do that, and you'll know more — for free — than the report someone else paid forty dollars for.