RECAP (PACER Document Archive)

A crowdsourced open archive of federal court documents from PACER, operated by the Free Law Project.

RECAP is a platform that collects and freely distributes US federal court documents originally filed in the PACER system. Operated by the Free Law Project, RECAP provides both a browser extension (Chrome and Firefox) that automatically uploads documents users view — and removes the PACER paywall for those documents — and an archive of over 1 billion docket entries and millions of documents.

Data Access

The RECAP Archive is searchable via the CourtListener platform, which indexes all collected documents and docket entries. Users can search by party name, case number, court, nature of suit, and date. Documents are available for free download without the usual $0.10 per page PACER fee. The archive includes docket sheets, filed documents, and appellate records. The RECAP API provides programmatic access.