Free lookup
Federal case lookup
Type a case number and read the docket. United States federal district courts — all 94 districts, including the territorial district courts. No account, no PACER login, and no charge — not for the first one and not for the hundredth.
Look up a federal case
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 lookup gives you
- The caption — who is suing whom — and the court and case number it is filed under.
- The assigned district judge and the referred magistrate judge.
- The filing date, the current status, the cause of action and the nature of suit.
- How many entries the docket has, which is the fastest measure of how active it is.
- The five most recent docket entries with their real text, not a summary.
- A link to the free copy of a filing wherever one exists in the RECAP archive.
- The time the docket was last read, on the result itself.
If you do not have the case number
It is written down in more places than people expect. In rough order of how quickly it works:
- Any letter or document the court has sent you. It is in the caption at the top of the first page, usually on the right. This is the fastest route and most people already have one in a drawer.
- Anything the other side has served on you. Every filing carries the case number in the same place.
- Ask an AI assistant connected to CaseMagic for the case by name. “Find New York Times v. Microsoft in the Southern District of New York” works; the court has to be in the question, and what comes back is usually several cases to pick from, because a party name is not unique. How to connect one.
- The clerk of the court. The clerk's office will look up a case by party name over the phone or at the counter. They do this all day and it is free.
- CourtListener's own search at courtlistener.com, which searches by party name across its archive, and PACER's case locator if you have an account.
Two limits worth knowing before you try. The form on this page takes a number, not a name — searching by name is something a connected assistant can do and this page cannot. And a name with no court attached is ninety-four searches at once, which times out, so name it.
Getting the district right
A federal case number without its court is ambiguous — the same 2:24-cv-01234 exists in several districts. The court picker above can be searched by the city your courthouse is in, which is how people actually know where their case is: you know you go to the building in Santa Ana, not that it is called cacd.
How to read a federal case number · Check a court case · Keep watching it once you have found it
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
Can I search by party name instead of a case number?
Yes, but not from the form on this page and not without naming the court. An AI assistant connected to CaseMagic can look a case up by its caption — "The New York Times Company v. Microsoft Corporation" — as long as it also says which district. A name is ambiguous, so what usually comes back is several cases to choose from rather than one. Searching a name across all 94 districts at once is not offered: it is 94 searches and it times out. The form here takes a case number.
Which courts does this cover?
United States federal district courts — all 94 districts, including the territorial district courts. State, county and municipal courts are not supported yet. Docket data comes from CourtListener and its RECAP archive.
Do I need a PACER account?
No. The lookup reads public docket data through CourtListener and its RECAP archive. No PACER account of yours is used and no PACER fee is charged to you. If you then open a document that only exists behind PACER, that is between you and PACER.
Is it really free, or free once?
Free, every time. The line is that everything about the past is free and everything about the future is paid: reading what has already happened in a case costs nothing, and being told about what happens next is the subscription.
Why does my lookup say the case was not found?
Nine times out of ten the case number is missing the division digit at the front — the 2: in 2:24-cv-01234 — which makes the search miss entirely rather than nearly. The next most common cause is the wrong district: Los Angeles and Santa Ana are both the Central District of California, but San Diego is the Southern District.
How current is what I am reading?
Every result carries the time the docket was last read, printed on it. A fresh check reads the source and then serves the same answer for a short cache window; a watched case is re-read on a schedule. Nothing here is real time and the page never pretends otherwise.
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