UK Case Law Scraper (No API Key) + Citation Lookup

$0.2/1K judgments | Search UK court and tribunal judgments from Find Case Law by keyword, court, party or judge. Get citation, court and PDF/XML links, or look up one neutral citation. No login or API key. Not affiliated with The National Archives.

UK Case Law Judgments Search Scraper

Our scraper searches the Find Case Law service of The National Archives and lets you filter by keyword, court or tribunal, party name, judge, judgment date or exact neutral citation. Every row carries the citation, case title, court, judgment date and links to the judgment page, the official PDF and the XML. It is ideal for legal research alerts, litigation monitoring and feeding primary law into your own tools.

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Key Benefits

• No login or API key: the Find Case Law public API is unauthenticated, so there is nothing to set up.
• Low pricing: $0.20 per 1,000 judgments, with lower rates on Scale and Business plans ($0.15 and $0.1 per 1,000).
• Exact citation lookup: set a neutral citation such as [2024] UKSC 1 and get exactly that judgment. A mistyped citation falls back to at most 25 search hits, so it can never run up a large bill.
• Court filters across all 37 collections on Find Case Law, from the Supreme Court to individual tribunal chambers.
• Fresh data: every run reads the live API, so new judgments appear as The National Archives publishes them.

How It Works

1. Provide your search:
   • (optional) Search query (e.g., negligence, data protection). Leave empty to browse the latest judgments matching the other filters.
   • (optional) Courts and tribunals (e.g., uksc, ewca/civ, eat). Empty means all courts.
   • (optional) Party name, Judge name, Judgment date window (e.g., 7d) or a From / To date.
   • (optional) Citation (e.g., [2024] UKSC 1) to look up one judgment; this overrides every other filter.
2. (optional) Turn on Include full text to add parties, judges, the judgment text and cited legislation. This is slower and heavier.
3. Run the Actor and export the dataset.

Run the same search again and you get only judgments you have not received yet; set dedupe.enabled to false to see everything again.

More settings:

• maxItems - Maximum number of judgments to return. Default is 50. 0 means no cap, which is risky on broad queries.
• concurrency - Parallel detail fetches when full text is on. Default is 4.

Licence note: Find Case Law judgments are Crown copyright under the Open Justice Licence. It requires attribution and does not cover computational analysis; that needs a free licence application to The National Archives.

Dates are calendar days, so a window such as 24h includes the whole cutoff day. Parties, judges, full text and legislation references only appear when Include full text is on.

Data You'll Receive

• Judgment: neutral citation, case title, court name, judgment date and slug.
• Links: judgment page, official PDF and Akoma Ntoso XML.
• Revision tracking: a content hash and an updated-at timestamp, so you can tell when a judgment changed.
• With Include full text: party names, judges where marked up, the plain-text judgment and the statutes it cites with legislation.gov.uk links.

Sample output data

Here is an example judgment from this Actor:

{
  "source": "find-case-law",
  "title": "Nigel Bottomley v Information Commissioner",
  "citation": "[2026] UKFTT 1404 (GRC)",
  "court": "First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) – Information Rights",
  "date": "2026-10-13",
  "url": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukftt/grc/2026/1404",
  "xmlUrl": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukftt/grc/2026/1404/data.xml",
  "pdfUrl": "https://assets.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/d-6bff9b2a-e248-4c1b-a4d0-a3ef27cc6384/d-6bff9b2a-e248-4c1b-a4d0-a3ef27cc6384.pdf",
  "slug": "ukftt/grc/2026/1404",
  "fclId": "wbxy6dbh",
  "documentUri": "d-6bff9b2a-e248-4c1b-a4d0-a3ef27cc6384",
  "contentHash": "946d00ad28d29a74dea71f7a67f660869ba3d553bddb111af65e6b53f2e3b734",
  "updatedAt": "2026-10-13T14:04:26+00:00"
}

UK Case Law API

Results are stored in a dataset that you can export as CSV, JSON or Excel, or read on demand through the Apify API. Schedule the same query and compare snapshots downstream to spot new judgments. You can also wire the Actor into Make, Zapier and n8n, or call it from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Support and Feedback

We improve these scrapers from your feedback. If something breaks or you need a filter:

• Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab
• If this Actor saved you time, a short review on the Store helps other users find it.

Run evidence

Start with one input and output

An Apify account is required. Use your Apify API token when calling the API; Console runs do not need that token pasted into the input. No user API-key field is required by this input schema.

Free-tier event rates checked 2026-10-04: result $0.0002; actor-start $0.00005.

Cost: Total = Actor event charges + platform usage if separately billed + any BYO-provider charges. See “Current costs” for your event rates, plan tiers and a calculation. A sample does not promise future billable volume.

Input and output below were read from the same successful run ykHf5emltqPfbT2QL (2026-10-04, immutable build z9BXVIXO74PkPBDMs). This is an observed example, not a guarantee that repeating it returns this row. It used the selected build at capture time.

Input JSON

{
  "includeFullText": false,
  "maxItems": 50,
  "concurrency": 4
}

Matching output excerpt

Long strings and arrays are shortened for display; this is not a complete dataset fixture.

{
  "source": "find-case-law",
  "title": "Sarah Douglas v Ronald Channon",
  "citation": "[2026] EWHC 2475 (KB)",
  "court": "High Court (King's Bench Division)",
  "date": "2026-10-02",
  "url": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026/2475",
  "xmlUrl": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026/2475/data.xml",
  "pdfUrl": "https://assets.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b/d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b.pdf",
  "slug": "ewhc/kb/2026/2475",
  "fclId": "vp7np8np",
  "documentUri": "d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b",
  "contentHash": "5d15acf3ec5469f8ca83f390a71b7627a0b73c7a903eb6fba8c8e44396e0560b",
  "updatedAt": "2026-10-02T09:45:53+00:00"
}

Claude / Codex skill to describe and setup this actor: SKILL.md

Search UK court judgments and tribunal decisions from The National Archives' Find Case Law service (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk) through its public API. Filter by court, party, judge, date or exact neutral citation. Export structured records with optional full judgment text and legislation references. No login, no proxies, no HTML parsing.

Covers the UK Supreme Court, Privy Council, Court of Appeal, High Court, Family Court, Upper and First-tier Tribunals, Employment Appeal Tribunal and more — judgments from 2001 onwards (older for some courts), updated as courts publish.

Why this Actor

• Structured filters. Target a specific court or tribunal (Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, a named chamber), a named party, a named judge, a date range, or one judgment by exact neutral citation.
• Citation lookup with graceful fallback — set a neutral citation and get exactly that judgment (citationExactMatch).
• Legislation references parsed straight from the official judgment XML — statutes cited, with legislation.gov.uk links.
• contentHash to detect when a previously-seen judgment has been revised.

Input

Use fromDate and toDate for an absolute judgment date range, or postedWithin to compute a lower date bound from a relative duration. Find Case Law supplies judgment dates by calendar day: the UTC cutoff's whole calendar day is included, so hour durations do not give hour-level precision. A supplied nonempty postedWithin value takes precedence over both date bounds; omit it or leave it empty to preserve a saved absolute range. Citation lookup ignores all date filters.

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	"negligence"	Free-text search across judgments. Leave empty to browse latest judgments matching the other filters. Ignored when citation is set.
citation	string	(empty)	Look up one judgment by its exact neutral citation, e.g. "[2024] UKSC 1". When set, this takes over the search: query, courts, party, judge and postedWithin are all ignored. Returns the exact citation match(es); falls back to raw (unfiltered) search hits if nothing matches exactly. See Citation lookup below.
courts	array (multi-select)	(empty = all)	Court/tribunal codes to filter by — all 37 collections on Find Case Law, see Court codes. Ignored when citation is set.
party	string	(empty)	Filter on a party's name (claimant, defendant, appellant, respondent...). Ignored when citation is set.
judge	string	(empty)	Filter on the judge's name. Ignored when citation is set.
postedWithin	string	(omitted; form prefill "any")	Relative duration converted to an inclusive UTC calendar-date lower bound: 24h, 3d, 2w, 6m, or any to clear date filtering. The whole cutoff day is included, even for hour durations. Explicit values override both absolute bounds. Ignored when citation is set.
fromDate / toDate	string	(empty)	Inclusive lower / upper judgment date in YYYY-MM-DD. Preserved for saved configurations and API clients; ignored when postedWithin is nonempty or citation is set.
includeFullText	boolean	false	Fetch each judgment's XML and include parties, judges, the full judgment text and structured legislation references. Slower and heavier output.
maxItems	integer	50	Hard cap on judgments considered per run. 0 = no cap (use with care).
concurrency (Advanced)	integer	4	Parallel detail fetches when includeFullText is on. Keep low — this is a public government service.

What UK case-law data does this scraper extract?

One flat JSON record per judgment:

Field	Meaning
citation	Neutral citation, e.g. [2024] UKSC 1
title	Case name (parties as titled by the court)
court	Court / chamber name, e.g. Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
date	Judgment date (YYYY-MM-DD)
url	Judgment page on Find Case Law
pdfUrl	Official PDF
xmlUrl	Akoma Ntoso (LegalDocML) XML
slug	Court/year/number path, e.g. uksc/2024/1
fclId	Find Case Law document ID
contentHash	Content hash — detect judgment revisions
parties	Party names (with Include full text)
judges	Judge names where marked up (with Include full text)
fullText	Plain-text judgment body (with Include full text)
legislationRefs	Statutes cited in the judgment — array of {text, uri, canonical}, e.g. {"text": "Data Protection Act 1998", "uri": "http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/1998/29", "canonical": "1998 c. 29"} (with Include full text)
citationExactMatch	true/false — only present when Citation is set; see Citation lookup

How to scrape UK judgments with this Actor

1. Enter a search query (negligence, data protection, a party name...) — or leave it empty and filter by court/date only. Or set Citation to look up one specific judgment (see below).
2. Optionally restrict by courts (uksc, ewca/civ, ewhc/kb, eat, ...), party, judge, postedWithin.
3. Turn on Include full text if you need parties, judges and the judgment body.
4. Schedule the Actor and compare snapshots downstream when polling the same query for new judgments.
5. Run and export JSON, CSV or Excel — or call it over the API:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("nomad-agent/uk-case-law-scraper").call(build="latest", run_input={
    "query": "negligence",
    "courts": ["uksc", "ewca/civ"],
    "maxItems": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["citation"], "|", item["title"], item["url"])

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nomad-agent~uk-case-law-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "negligence", "courts": ["uksc"], "maxItems": 50}'

Output example

{
  "source": "find-case-law",
  "citation": "[2024] UKSC 1",
  "title": "Paul and another v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust",
  "court": "United Kingdom Supreme Court",
  "date": "2024-01-11",
  "url": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uksc/2024/1",
  "pdfUrl": "https://assets.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uksc/2024/1/uksc_2024_1.pdf",
  "xmlUrl": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uksc/2024/1/data.xml",
  "slug": "uksc/2024/1",
  "fclId": "gxdrmpqf",
  "parties": ["Paul and another", "Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust"],
  "judges": ["Lord Leggatt", "Lady Rose"],
  "legislationRefs": [
    {"text": "Fatal Accidents Act 1976", "uri": "http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/1976/30", "canonical": "1976 c. 30"}
  ],
  "fullText": "Hilary Term [2024] UKSC 1 On appeal from..."
}

citationExactMatch is added on top of this shape when Citation is set — see Citation lookup.

Court codes

All 37 collections published on Find Case Law — every court and tribunal the service carries, with the years each one covers. The Courts & tribunals input is a multi-select of exactly these codes: pick as many as you need, or leave empty for all.

Code	Court	Coverage
uksc	Supreme Court	2009–
ukpc	Privy Council	2009–
ewca/civ	Court of Appeal, Civil Division	2001–
ewca/crim	Court of Appeal, Criminal Division	2003–
ewhc/admin	High Court, Administrative Court	2003–
ewhc/admlty	High Court, Admiralty Court	2003–
ewhc/ch	High Court, Chancery Division	2003–
ewhc/comm	High Court, Commercial Court	2003–
ewhc/fam	High Court, Family Division	2003–
ewhc/ipec	High Court, Intellectual Property Enterprise Court	2013–
ewhc/kb	High Court, King's / Queen's Bench Division	2003–
ewhc/mercantile	High Court, Mercantile Court	2008–2014
ewhc/pat	High Court, Patents Court	2003–
ewhc/scco	High Court, Senior Courts Costs Office	2003–
ewhc/tcc	High Court, Technology and Construction Court	2003–
ewcr	Crown Court	2020–
ewcc	County Court	2019–
ewfc	Family Court	2014–
ewcop	Court of Protection	2009–
eat	Employment Appeal Tribunal	2021–
ukut/aac	Upper Tribunal, Administrative Appeals Chamber	2011–
ukut/iac	Upper Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber	2007–
ukut/lc	Upper Tribunal, Lands Chamber	2014–
ukut/tcc	Upper Tribunal, Tax and Chancery Chamber	2016–
ukftt/tc	First-tier Tribunal, Tax Chamber	2019–
ukftt/grc	First-tier Tribunal, General Regulatory Chamber	2009–
ukftt/hesc	First-tier Tribunal, Care Standards	1985–
ftt/pc	First-tier Tribunal, Land Registration Division	2024–
ftt/phl	First-tier Tribunal, Primary Health Lists	2025–
ukiptrib	Investigatory Powers Tribunal	2023–2024
siac	Special Immigration Appeals Commission	2003–
ftt/claims	Claims Management Services Tribunal	2010–2011
ukftt/credit	Consumer Credit Appeals Tribunal	2008–2013
ukftt/estate	Estate Agents Tribunal	2010
ukit	Information Tribunal	1990–2010
ukist	Immigration Services Tribunal	2001–2009
ftt/transport	Transport Tribunal	2000–2009

Citation lookup

Set Citation to a neutral citation (e.g. [2024] UKSC 1) to look up one specific judgment instead of running a broad search. When set:

• query, courts, party, judge and postedWithin are all ignored.
• The Actor searches Find Case Law for that citation text, then keeps only the result(s) whose citation matches exactly (whitespace/case-insensitive) — tagged "citationExactMatch": true.
• If nothing matches exactly (e.g. a slightly malformed citation), it falls back to returning the raw, unfiltered search hits for that text instead, tagged "citationExactMatch": false, so you still get something useful to inspect. The fallback is capped at 25 records, so a mistyped citation can never run up a large bill.

Integrations

Export results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or wire this Actor into Make, Zapier or n8n; call it programmatically with run-sync-get-dataset-items; or use it from AI agents via the Apify MCP server.

Pricing

Check the Actor's current Apify pricing panel for metadata and full-text rates. Your run's maximum total charge limits billed output.

Use cases

• Legal research: track new judgments by topic, court or judge
• Litigation intelligence: monitor cases naming a company or party
• Feed RAG / AI legal assistants with authoritative primary law
• Academic analysis of UK courts and tribunals
• Compliance and news alerting on precedent-setting decisions

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape this data? Yes — Find Case Law is The National Archives' official open service and this Actor uses only its documented public API. Judgments are Crown copyright, re-usable under the Open Justice Licence. Note: the licence requires attribution and does not cover programmatic computational analysis (e.g. bulk text/data mining) — that needs a (free) licence application to The National Archives. Retrieval, research, republication with attribution are fine; check the licence for your use case.

Do I need an API key or login? No. The Find Case Law public API is unauthenticated.

How far back does coverage go? Consistently from 2001–2003 onwards depending on court; the archive grows as The National Archives ingests older judgments.

How fresh is the data? Every run hits the live API — new judgments appear as courts publish them, often same-day.

Something broken or missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — it is monitored and fixes ship fast.

Fast setup and source code

Public repository · Agent setup skill.

Use the Actor’s current input form for filters, or start with its documented API example. Select the latest build. Read the dataset together with the run summary: a successful status alone does not show that every source was reached.

Restrictive filters or repeat-delivery suppression can produce zero results.

Observed output example

Selected fields from a real source record inspected on 2026-10-03; consult the output schema for the full contract. Values change with the source.

{
  "source": "find-case-law",
  "title": "Sarah Douglas v Ronald Channon",
  "citation": "[2026] EWHC 2475 (KB)",
  "court": "High Court (King's Bench Division)",
  "date": "2026-10-02",
  "url": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026/2475",
  "xmlUrl": "https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026/2475/data.xml",
  "pdfUrl": "https://assets.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b/d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b.pdf",
  "slug": "ewhc/kb/2026/2475",
  "fclId": "vp7np8np",
  "documentUri": "d-31654798-dd10-4a9c-8170-97785f6ddb6b",
  "contentHash": "5d15acf3ec5469f8ca83f390a71b7627a0b73c7a903eb6fba8c8e44396e0560b",
  "updatedAt": "2026-10-02T09:45:53+00:00"
}

Product guides and related tools

• Product overview and public links
• Public setup guide

Current costs

Current Actor event rates, checked 2026-10-16. USD; use the Pricing tab for your plan and later changes.

Event	Free	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Platinum	Diamond
Judgment result (result)	$0.0002	$0.0002	$0.00015	$0.0001	$0.0001	$0.0001
Actor start (actor-start)	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005	$0.00005

For example, 100 × result, 1 × actor-start totals $0.02005 in Actor event charges on Free. This is an arithmetic example, before any waiver; actual charged events depend on the run and selected options. It is not a promise of output or a charge for simply setting an item cap.

Your total is the charged Actor events, plus platform usage only if this Actor’s Pricing tab bills it separately, plus any external provider you use with your own key. Do not add platform usage twice when it is included. Apify credits and plan discounts affect your invoice. Set a run cost limit in Console before starting.

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Independent tool. We built and run this Actor ourselves. The National Archives does not operate, sponsor or endorse it, and its name is used only to say which source the data comes from.