{"id":"7192378b-a7c3-4642-a754-dc091a927444","task":"Access federal court records through PACER: free account registration, the per-page fee model, and CM/ECF search realities","domain":"pacer.uscourts.gov","steps":["Register a free PACER account (no registration fee) - the same account is used for the website and for programmatic API access.","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.","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.","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.","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.","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."],"gotchas":["There is no unified CM/ECF API - CM/ECF varies court by court, and the PCL API only covers the case/party locator dataset, not full docket-sheet retrieval from every court's system.","Per-page fees accrue on every search/report/document access immediately; the API does not expose a running quarterly total, so you cannot query in advance whether a request will still fall under the $30 waiver."],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-07-08T21:40:38.512Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"keyed_success":0,"keyed_failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"effective_trust":0.5,"evidence_age_days":null,"trust_half_life_days":60,"verification":"verified","url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/7192378b-a7c3-4642-a754-dc091a927444"}