CourtListener Scraper - US Case Law & Court Opinions

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Free Law Project or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "CourtListener" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Search US case law and court opinions via the free CourtListener API (Free Law Project). Search by keyword and get clean rows with case name, court, date filed, docket number, judge, parallel citations, cite count and precedential status. No API key required.

What you get per result

Field	Meaning
caseName / url / id	Case name, CourtListener URL, and id
court / courtId / jurisdiction	Deciding court and jurisdiction
dateFiled / dateArgued	Filing and argument dates
docketNumber / docketId	Docket number and id
judge / status	Authoring judge and precedential status
citation / neutralCite / lexisCite / citeCount	Parallel citations and how often the case is cited
suitNature / posture / syllabus	Nature of suit, procedural posture, syllabus (when recorded)

Input

{ "searchQueries": ["first amendment", "copyright infringement"], "searchType": "opinions", "maxItemsPerQuery": 100 }

• Search terms - keywords, party names or legal phrases, one per line.
• Search type - opinions (case law), recap (PACER dockets) or oral-arguments.
• Import from a file - paste a list, or link a public .txt/.csv, a Google Sheet/Drive link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
• Output fields - trim every record to exactly the columns you need.
• Optional API token for higher rate limits (free from CourtListener).

Leave everything empty and the run returns a small free sample so you can see the shape first.

Reliability

Reads the official CourtListener REST v4 API directly - structured, no headless browser, no scraping of blocked pages. A search that matches nothing, or an import that cannot be read, bills $0 and says why. Long runs stop cleanly before the timeout and save everything collected so far.

Honest limits

• Case-law records vary in completeness. Parallel citations, judge, argument date, syllabus, posture and nature-of-suit are recorded only for the subset of courts/eras that publish them, so those fields are often empty - that is the source data, not a gap. Core fields (case name, court, date filed, docket, status, URL, cite count) are always present.

Pricing

$0.002 per result on the FREE tier (tiered pricing lowers it with volume). Only results actually saved are billed; empty searches and unreadable imports cost nothing.

Output views

• Results - case name, court, date filed, docket, cite count and the URL.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the Apify MCP server - an agent can pull relevant case law for a legal question, build a citation graph, or monitor new opinions on a topic in one call.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

Automate & schedule

Run this Actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API - start runs, fetch datasets and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python - official SDKs.
• Schedules - run it hourly, daily or weekly and keep your dataset current.
• Webhooks - trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/courtlistener-scraper').call({
    "searchQueries": [
        "first amendment"
    ],
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 10
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to thousands of apps - no code required:

• Make - multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier - push new records straight into your CRM or spreadsheet.
• Slack - get notified when a scheduled run finds something new.
• Google Drive / Sheets - auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte - pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub - trigger runs from commits or releases.

FAQ

How is this Actor billed? Pay-per-event: you pay only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The per-event price is shown on the Pricing tab.

Can I schedule it and get results automatically? Yes - create a Schedule and add a webhook or an integration (Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier) to push each run's dataset wherever you need it.

Which export formats are available? Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, HTML or RSS from the Apify Console or the API.

Can I run it from code or an AI agent? Yes - through the Apify API and client libraries, or from Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants via the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape CourtListener? This Actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the output in compliance with applicable laws (including data-protection law where personal data is involved) and the source's terms. See Data & lawful use and the Disclaimer below.

Is this an official CourtListener tool? No. It is an independent, third-party Actor with no affiliation to, endorsement by or sponsorship from the Free Law Project. See the Disclaimer below.

Data & lawful use

The source is an official public register, published so that anyone can consult it. Records can name individuals (parties, attorneys and judges), so the output may contain personal data even though it is public. If you are in the EU or UK you are the data controller for what you do with it: have a lawful basis, honour access and deletion requests, and respect the register's own reuse conditions, which can restrict marketing or commercial use. Sealed, expunged or restricted records are not published by the source and are not returned.

Under Apify's Standard Actor Contract, which governs your use of this Actor, you are the controller of any personal data in your input and output and scrapesage acts only as your processor: that data is processed solely to run your job, written only to your own Apify storage, never used for any other purpose and never shared onward. If you need help with a data-subject request that involves this Actor's output, open an issue on the Issues tab.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Free Law Project or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"CourtListener" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official CourtListener product, is not authorised or certified by the Free Law Project, and does not distribute CourtListener software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome - this Actor is actively maintained.