Access federal court records through PACER: free account registration, the per-page fee model, and CM/ECF search realities

Steps

1. Register a free PACER account (no registration fee) - the same account is used for the website and for programmatic API access.
2. Call the PACER Authentication API with the account's username/password to obtain an authentication token automatically, avoiding an interactive login step for automated systems.
3. Use that token with the PACER Case Locator (PCL) API to search the nationwide index of federal cases and parties - this searches the same aggregated dataset as the PCL web application, not each individual court's live CM/ECF system.
4. Budget for the standard PACER fee schedule: $0.10 per page for searches, reports, and documents, billed quarterly, with charges waived entirely for a quarter if the account accrues $30 or less.
5. Treat CM/ECF as locally-deployed, per-court software - individual courts customize their CM/ECF instance, so there is no single unified 'CM/ECF API'; the PCL API is the closest thing to a cross-court search.
6. Schedule any bulk/scripted data pulls between 6pm and 6am Central per PACER's developer guidance, since the judiciary may suspend or throttle accounts causing excessive operational disruption during business hours.