US Federal Court Cases Scraper

US Federal Court Cases Scraper: federal dockets from CourtListener, no PACER account needed

Search terms or filters go in: a court, a filing date window, a nature-of-suit code, a party, an attorney or the assigned judge. One row per federal case comes out, with the caption, court, docket number, filing date, nature of suit, cause, judge, parties, counsel and a link to the public docket on CourtListener. It returns the case index, not the filings, so there is no complaint, no motion, no opinion and no PDF, and it is not fast: about 80 cases a minute.

🔍 What US Federal Court Cases Scraper does

Each search term runs as its own search over the docket record, which covers the caption, the cause, the parties and the filing descriptions. Quote a phrase to hold it together. Your filters narrow every term the same way, and a case found twice in one run is delivered once.

Every row is checked against every filter you set before it is charged. A case from the wrong court, date, code, party or judge is dropped, and a free row tells you how many went and why.

Results come 20 to a page at a steady pace. A measured run of 200 copyright cases took two and a half minutes, so give 1,000 cases about twelve.

Party and counsel names come through exactly as the court published them. The internal person ids the source attaches to each party and attorney are dropped, so the rows cannot be joined into a profile of anyone.

📥 What you give it

{
  "searchTerms": ["\"artificial intelligence\" copyright"],
  "courts": ["mad", "cand", "nysd"],
  "natureOfSuit": ["820"],
  "filedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "maxItems": 100
}

An input with nothing to search for, such as {} sent through the API, returns one free sample row so you can see the shape first.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a real run:

{
  "ok": true,
  "charged": true,
  "recordType": "case",
  "docketId": 74812464,
  "caseName": "UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Suno, Inc.",
  "caseNameFull": null,
  "court": "District Court, D. Massachusetts",
  "courtId": "mad",
  "courtCitation": "D. Mass.",
  "docketNumber": "1:26-cv-14275",
  "dateFiled": "2026-09-18",
  "dateTerminated": null,
  "dateArgued": null,
  "natureOfSuit": "820 Copyright",
  "natureOfSuitCode": "820",
  "cause": "17:101 Copyright Infringement",
  "jurisdictionType": "Federal Question",
  "juryDemand": "Plaintiff",
  "assignedJudge": "F. Dennis Saylor IV",
  "referredJudge": null,
  "parties": [
    "UMG Recordings, Inc.",
    "Ultra Records, LLC",
    "Capitol Records, LLC",
    "Suno, Inc.",
    "Arista Music",
    "Volcano Entertainment III, LLC",
    "Sony Music Entertainment",
    "Arista Records, LLC",
    "Zomba Recording LLC",
    "John Does 1-10",
    "Sony Music Entertainment US Latin, LLC",
    "Alamo Records, LLC",
    "Records Label, LLC",
    "LaFace Records, LLC"
  ],
  "partyCount": 14,
  "lawFirms": [],
  "attorneys": ["Daniel J. Cloherty", "Alexandra Arnold"],
  "bankruptcyChapter": null,
  "pacerCaseId": "306399",
  "docketUrl": "https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74812464/umg-recordings-inc-v-suno-inc/",
  "addedToCourtListener": "2026-09-18T15:08:42.969152Z",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-30T02:25:54.911Z"
}

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row can share a dataset.

To keep only real cases, filter on recordType == "case".

NO_RESULTS and NETWORK are the pair to tell apart. The first means there is nothing there. The second means nobody looked, which is how somebody ends up believing a company has never been sued.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open US Federal Court Cases Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Type into Search terms, or clear it and use the filters. The form arrives with "artificial intelligence" copyright and Filed on or after set to 2026-01-01. 3. Narrow it with Courts or Nature of suit codes, or under People and firms with Party name or Judge. 4. Set Maximum cases. At about 80 a minute, 200 makes a sensible first run. 5. Click Start, then download the dataset as CSV, JSON or Excel.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.50 per 1,000 cases, which is $0.0005 a case, flat on every Apify plan. Two hundred cases come to ten cents, and the pace between pages costs you nothing extra.

You pay for case rows and nothing else per row. The sample row and every diagnostic row are free, and so are cases dropped for not matching your filters and repeats inside one run. If you set a maximum charge on the run, it stops at that figure instead of going past it.

💡 What people use it for

• Following a wave of litigation while it happens, such as every new copyright suit against an AI company this quarter, refreshed on a schedule.
• Watching one company's federal docket, so a new suit shows up the day it is filed rather than the week somebody notices.
• Counting rather than reading: patent cases per district per year, as a table you can chart.
• Building a case list for a practice area, say every Fair Labor Standards Act case in a set of districts, with the judge and counsel already in columns.

🚧 What it does not do

• The index, not the documents. No complaint, motions, orders, opinions, docket entries or PDFs. The docketUrl opens the public docket page.
• Federal, not state. District, bankruptcy and appellate dockets only. County and state trial courts are not here.
• Not every federal case. Coverage follows what has reached CourtListener's public database, deep in busy districts and thinner elsewhere. A missing case means not in the source, never that it does not exist.
• Not always a judge or counsel. In one run of 200 copyright cases filed since 2025, 115 named an assigned judge and 188 listed counsel.
• No profiles of people. Names come as the court published them. Nothing is joined to other sources and the person ids are dropped.
• No judgement. No outcome, risk score or summary. A filed case says nothing about its merit, and a terminated one nothing about who won.
• Not fast. About 80 cases a minute. A million rows by this afternoon is the wrong job for it.

🧭 Which public records scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need a PACER account or a CourtListener API key? No. There is nothing to sign up for, and the run will never ask you for a key.

Can I get the complaint or the judge's opinion? Not from this one. You get who, which court, which statute and which dates, plus a link to the public docket page.

I searched for a judge and got another judge's cases. Why? You should not. Every case is checked against the judge you named before it is charged, and any that slip through are dropped and counted on a free BAD_INPUT row.

Are the party names real people? Some are. A docket names whoever is in the case. They come through as the court published them, nothing is added, and the ids that would link one person across cases are dropped. If you are making decisions about individuals, remember that names collide and records go stale.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. A daily schedule with filedAfter set to yesterday picks up new filings, and docketId is a stable key for comparing runs.

How far back does it go? As far as CourtListener's public database goes for that court. The depth is uneven, so try a filedBefore date and see.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page and send the run ID with the input you used. The errorCode and details on a diagnostic row usually name the reason already.