CourtListener Federal Docket Scraper

Search federal court dockets via CourtListener / RECAP — Free Law Project's open mirror of PACER. Returns case name, docket number, court, parties, attorneys, law firms, judge, nature-of-suit, jurisdiction, hearing schedule, and document counts. Built for litigation paralegals, e-discovery vendors, insurance investigators, financial firms tracking litigation risk on tickers, prisoner-rights advocates, and journalists doing court-watching.

This is a PACER alternative that doesn't charge you $0.10/page. Runs against CourtListener's official v4 REST API with cursor pagination. Optional API token for higher rate limits.

What you get

Field	Type	Notes
case_name	string	Short caption (e.g. "Brown v. Civil Rights")
case_name_full	string	Long caption with all parties
docket_number	string	Court docket number (e.g. 2:26-cv-00356)
docket_id	integer	CourtListener internal ID
court	string	Court name (e.g. "District Court, E.D. Texas")
court_id	string	Court code (e.g. txed, ca9, scotus)
court_citation	string	Bluebook citation (e.g. "E.D. Tex.")
date_filed	string	ISO date the case was filed
date_terminated	string	ISO date or null
assigned_to	string	Judge name
referred_to	string	Magistrate judge name
nature_of_suit	string	NOS description
cause	string	Statute basis (e.g. "42:1981 Civil Rights")
jurisdiction_type	string	"Federal Question" / "Diversity" / etc.
jury_demand	string	"Plaintiff" / "Defendant" / "None"
chapter	string	Bankruptcy chapter (7/11/13) when applicable
parties	string[]	Party names
party_ids	integer[]	CourtListener party IDs (for cross-joins)
attorneys	string[]	Attorney names
attorney_ids	integer[]	CL attorney IDs
firms	string[]	Law firm names
firm_ids	integer[]	CL firm IDs
pacer_case_id	string	PACER ID for direct cross-reference
docket_url	string	Public courtlistener.com URL
recap_documents_count	integer	Number of RECAP documents in this docket

Use cases

• Litigation tracking for public companies — pull every new federal docket naming Tesla / Apple / Microsoft weekly, surface to legal-ops dashboard.
• Paralegal docket review — search by judge, by NOS code, by date range to build a bench memo for a new case.
• Insurance underwriting — flag commercial insureds with newly-filed federal litigation before binding.
• Journalist court-watching — alert when a notable plaintiff or defendant is named in a new filing.
• Bankruptcy practice intel — filter by chapter=11, court, date to monitor new filings in your district.
• Distressed-debt funds — scan all chapter 11 filings nationally for upstream creditor positioning.

Quick start

Input JSON:

{
  "search_query": "patent infringement",
  "court": "txed",
  "date_filed_after": "2024-01-01",
  "max_results": 100
}

Sample output item:

{
  "case_name": "Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics, Co. LTD.",
  "docket_number": "2:26-cv-00356",
  "docket_id": 73287997,
  "court": "District Court, E.D. Texas",
  "court_id": "txed",
  "court_citation": "E.D. Tex.",
  "date_filed": "2026-05-01",
  "jurisdiction_type": "Federal Question",
  "cause": "35:271 Patent Infringement",
  "parties": ["Omni MedSci, Inc.", "Samsung Electronics, Co. LTD."],
  "attorneys": [],
  "docket_url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73287997/omni-medsci-inc-v-samsung..."
}

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/courtlistener-federal-docket-scraper").call(run_input={
    "search_query": "Samsung",
    "court": "txed",
    "date_filed_after": "2025-01-01",
    "max_results": 200,
})
for d in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(d["date_filed"], d["docket_number"], d["case_name"])

cURL example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~courtlistener-federal-docket-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"search_query":"chapter 11","court":"deb","max_results":50}'

Integrations

• Zapier / Make.com / n8n — push new dockets into Slack / Airtable / Microsoft Teams in real time.
• Postgres / Snowflake / BigQuery — sync via Apify webhooks for litigation-intel warehouses.
• Lex Machina / Bloomberg Law alternative — combine this actor with our other legal-data actors for a self-hosted analytics pipeline.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

• Actor start: $0.00005 (one-time per run)
• Per docket returned: $0.008

Cost calculator:

Dockets	Approx. cost
50	$0.40
100	$0.80
500	$4.00
1,000	$8.00
5,000	$40.00

Premium pricing reflects the fact that PACER charges $0.10/page (capped at $3.00/document) for the same underlying records — at any meaningful volume this actor is dramatically cheaper than PACER.

FAQ

Q: Do I need a CourtListener API token?
A: No, but the anonymous tier is shared across all datacenter IPs (~5K req/day). For sustained use, free signup at https://www.courtlistener.com/help/api/rest/ and pass the token via apiToken. Tokens get you ~5K req/day per token.

Q: How fresh is the data?
A: RECAP coverage is excellent for high-traffic federal dockets (anything any RECAP user has fetched is mirrored within minutes). For obscure / sealed / never-fetched dockets, coverage may lag PACER. CourtListener's daily Recap-from-PACER batch keeps the index hot.

Q: What about state courts?
A: This actor focuses on federal RECAP dockets (district / circuit / SCOTUS / bankruptcy). For state-level coverage CourtListener has limited support; pair with our court-records-search actor for select state systems.

Q: Can I get the underlying PDFs?
A: This actor returns docket metadata including a count of available RECAP documents. To download the PDFs themselves, follow the docket_url in your downstream code or use CourtListener's per-document API endpoint (/api/rest/v4/recap-documents/).

Q: How do I find court IDs?
A: See https://www.courtlistener.com/help/api/jurisdictions/. Common ones: scotus, ca1-ca11 + cadc + cafc (circuits), nysd/cand/txed/etc. (districts), *-bankr for bankruptcy variants.

Q: Are sealed cases included?
A: No. CourtListener mirrors only public PACER dockets. Sealed records are by definition not in the dataset.

Related actors from nexgendata

• Court Records Search — broader court-records aggregator covering state and county systems beyond federal.
• Government Contracts Search — pair litigation tracking with federal contracting history for compliance / due-diligence workflows.
• SEC EDGAR Search — cross-reference public-company litigation against material disclosures.

About nexgendata

Built and maintained by nexgendata — 160+ actors and MCP servers for compliance, civic data, lead gen, and developer workflows. Need higher volume, custom output, or a private fork? Email steve_corbeil@hotmail.com.