Free lookup
Check a court case
Type the case number. You get the caption, the assigned judge, the filing date, the status and the five most recent docket entries with their real text — free, with no account and no PACER login.
Check your case now
United States federal district courts — all 94 districts, including the territorial district courts. State, county and municipal courts are not supported yet.
No account needed to checkFederal courtsResults in seconds
What a federal case number is telling you
A district court number like 2:24-cv-01234-ABC-DEF is five separate facts, and knowing which is which is usually enough to find a case that seems to have vanished.
| Part | Means |
|---|---|
2 | The division of the district the case was filed in. |
24 | The year it was filed. |
cv | Civil. A criminal case is cr. |
01234 | The sequence number within that year. |
ABC-DEF | The district judge and magistrate judge initials. These change when a case is reassigned, so CaseMagic ignores them when matching — one lawsuit stays one lawsuit. |
The number alone does not say which district. That is why the court field exists, and why leaving it blank makes CaseMagic search rather than fail.
What you get back
A docket is a list of everything filed in a case, in order, each entry numbered and dated. The free check returns the identity of the case and the top of that list: caption, court, case number, assigned and referred judges, filing date, whether it is open or terminated, the cause of action, the nature of suit, the total number of entries, and the five most recent entries with the court's own text — plus the time the docket was last read, so you know how fresh the answer is.
What is free and what is paid
Everything about the past is free. Everything about the future is paid. Checking a case costs nothing and needs no account.
Free, every time
- the case caption, court and case number
- the assigned and referred judges
- filing date, status, cause of action and nature of suit
- the total number of docket entries
- the five most recent docket entries with their real text
- a link to the free copy of a filing where one exists
- the time the docket was last checked
What a subscription adds
- continuous monitoring, so you are told about new activity instead of checking
- a permanent CaseMail address for the case
- the Case Passport, which accumulates docket activity and correspondence together
- access from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and other MCP-capable assistants
A free check reads the court source and then serves the same answer for 15 minutes. A watched case is re-checked about every 6 hours. Nothing here is real time, and every result carries the time it was last checked.
Pricing
Every plan includes Watch, CaseMail, the Case Passport and AI access. 7-day free trial, card required, cancel any time.
Individual
$99/month
1 monitored matter. One monitored matter.
Professional
$299/month
Up to 10 monitored matters. For a small practice with several active matters.
Practice
$599/month
Up to 50 monitored matters. For a firm running a full docket.
Questions people ask before they start
Do I need a PACER account?
No. CaseMagic reads the docket through CourtListener and its RECAP archive, so the lookup costs you nothing and needs no federal court login.
What if I get the court wrong?
If the number exists somewhere else, CaseMagic says which courts it found it in instead of just saying no. The court field is optional for that reason: leaving it blank is often the fastest way to find the case.
Why does my case show fewer entries than PACER?
The free check deliberately shows the five most recent entries. The full docket history is in your Case Passport once the case is connected.
Is the free check limited?
There is a rate limit on anonymous lookups so the endpoint cannot be scraped as a docket mirror. Normal use — checking your own case, or a handful of them — never reaches it.
Using it from an AI assistant
The same lookup and the same monitoring are available inside the assistant you already use. How that works · ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini · Grok