Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts is the administrative agency of the United States federal court system, established in 1939. It provides legislative, administrative, legal, financial, management, program, and information technology support services to the federal courts. The agency operates PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), which provides programmatic access to case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy courts via the PACER Authentication API and PACER Case Locator (PCL) REST API. The agency also provides CM/ECF developer resources for building tools that interface with the Case Management and Electronic Case Filing system.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts publishes 3 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network: Cases API, Parties API, and Services API. Tagged areas include Courts, Federal Government, Legal, PACER, and Case Records.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ developer surface includes engineering blog, developer portal, signup flow, and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

29.4/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 17/100 agent aware Front door AI 2/6 trace Heartbeat 100/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

2 published contracts 6 Features 5 Use Cases

Courts Federal Government Legal PACERCase RecordsJudiciaryOpen Data

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

Justice & Court Administration Management

BC-3320

CasesParties

POST /cases/find POST /parties/find

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 29.4/100 · thin

Contract Quality 7.9 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 6.1 / 15

Access Clarity 3.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 0.8 / 10

Contract Governance 1.2 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 17/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link

10 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 21.1 — up to +15.8 composite points
Contract Quality scores 42.2 — up to +14.5 composite points
Operational Transparency scores 7.9 — up to +12.0 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
US Federal API Programs (api.data.gov, Login.gov, GSA MAS, FedRAMP)	undeclared	-	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Cases API

The Cases API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 1 operation(s) for cases.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Parties API

The Parties API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 1 operation(s) for parties.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Services API

The Services API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 2 operation(s) for services.

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts PACER Authentication Cases API

OPEN COLLECTION

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts PACER Authentication Cases Parties API

OPEN COLLECTION

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts PACER Authentication Cases Services API

OPEN COLLECTION

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts PACER Authentication API

OPEN COLLECTION

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts PACER Case Locator API

OPEN COLLECTION

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API pricing

Not yet checked against Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Administrative Office Of The U S Courts Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Administrative Office Of The U S Courts Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Administrative Office Of The U S Courts Finops

FINOPS

Features 6

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Federal Court Case Search

Programmatic search across a nationwide index of all Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court cases using the PCL REST API, supporting case search and party search with...

Automated PACER Authentication

Token-based authentication API enabling automated systems to obtain PACER authentication tokens without requiring a user interface, suitable for integration into automated data ...

CM/ECF Developer Integration

Technical resources for developers building tools that interface with the Case Management and Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) system, including XML tag specifications, NextGen C...

Court Lookup Data Feeds

JSON and XML data feeds providing court lookup information for identifying CM/ECF courts and their configurations, available for integration into court filing software.

Bankruptcy Filing Integration

Specialized resources for bankruptcy petition preparation software and case trustee management software vendors, including creditor claim filing specifications and official form...

Bulk Data Access

Commercial users can run large batch data pulls via the PCL API, with recommended off-peak hours (6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Central Time) to minimize system impact.

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API Rules

38 rules · 36 errors 1 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Administrative Office Of The U S Courts Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Administrative Office Of The U S Courts Agentic Access

4 operations · 4 acting

AGENTIC

Use Cases 5

What developers build with this provider.

Legal Research Automation

Law firms and legal research platforms can use the PCL API to programmatically search federal court case indexes and retrieve case and party information for automated legal rese...

Litigation Monitoring

Corporate legal departments can monitor federal court filings involving specific parties, cases, or subject matters using automated PCL API queries.

Bankruptcy Software Integration

Bankruptcy petition preparation software and trustee management applications can integrate with CM/ECF and PACER APIs to file documents, retrieve case data, and manage creditor ...

Court Data Analytics

Academic researchers and legal analytics firms can build datasets of federal court case activity using batch PCL API searches across federal court jurisdictions.

Legal Technology Development

Legal technology companies can build PACER-integrated products for case tracking, docket monitoring, and court record retrieval using the PACER Authentication and PCL APIs.

Integrations 3

Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.

CM/ECF System

Case Management and Electronic Case Filing system for all federal courts.

PACER Case Locator

Nationwide index of federal court cases searchable via REST API.

NextGen CM/ECF

Next-generation electronic filing system with enhanced developer integration support.

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

Signup

Signup

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Contact

Contact

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Website

Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Source (apis.yml)

aid: administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
created: '2024-11-20'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
- Courts
- Federal Government
- Legal
- PACER
- Case Records
- Judiciary
- Open Data
tags_raw:
- Courts
- Federal Government
- Legal
- PACER
- Case Records
- Judiciary
- Open Data
- Federal-Government
description: The Administrative Office of the United States Courts is the administrative agency of the United States federal
  court system, established in 1939. It provides legislative, administrative, legal, financial, management, program, and information
  technology support services to the federal courts. The agency operates PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records),
  which provides programmatic access to case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy courts
  via the PACER Authentication API and PACER Case Locator (PCL) REST API. The agency also provides CM/ECF developer resources
  for building tools that interface with the Case Management and Electronic Case Filing system.
apis:
- aid: administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts:administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-cases-api
  name: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Cases API
  description: The Cases API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 1 operation(s) for cases.
  humanURL: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  tags:
  - Cases
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-cases-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-case-locator-pcl-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/files/PCL-API-Document_3.pdf
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/file-case/developer-resources
- aid: administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts:administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-parties-api
  name: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Parties API
  description: The Parties API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 1 operation(s) for parties.
  humanURL: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  tags:
  - Parties
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-parties-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-case-locator-pcl-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/files/PCL-API-Document_3.pdf
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/file-case/developer-resources
- aid: administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts:administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-services-api
  name: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Services API
  description: The Services API from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts — 2 operation(s) for services.
  humanURL: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  tags:
  - Services
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-services-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-authentication-api-user-guide
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/help/pacer/pacer-case-locator-pcl-api-user-guide
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/files/PCL-API-Document_3.pdf
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/file-case/developer-resources
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-finops.yml
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-capability-edges.yml
  name: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Business Capability Map
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/administrative-office-of-the-u-s-courts-domain-security.yml
- url: https://www.uscourts.gov/feed
  type: Blog
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/administrative-office-of-the-united-states-courts
- type: Website
  url: https://www.uscourts.gov/
- type: Portal
  url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/file-case/developer-resources
- type: Signup
  url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/register-account
- type: Contact
  url: https://pacer.uscourts.gov/contact-us
- type: Features
  data:
  - name: Federal Court Case Search
    description: Programmatic search across a nationwide index of all Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court cases
      using the PCL REST API, supporting case search and party search with immediate and batch result modes.
  - name: Automated PACER Authentication
    description: Token-based authentication API enabling automated systems to obtain PACER authentication tokens without requiring
      a user interface, suitable for integration into automated data pipelines and legal research tools.
  - name: CM/ECF Developer Integration
    description: Technical resources for developers building tools that interface with the Case Management and Electronic
      Case Filing (CM/ECF) system, including XML tag specifications, NextGen CM/ECF documentation, and release notes for appellate
      and bankruptcy systems.
  - name: Court Lookup Data Feeds
    description: JSON and XML data feeds providing court lookup information for identifying CM/ECF courts and their configurations,
      available for integration into court filing software.
  - name: Bankruptcy Filing Integration
    description: Specialized resources for bankruptcy petition preparation software and case trustee management software vendors,
      including creditor claim filing specifications and official form changes.
  - name: Bulk Data Access
    description: Commercial users can run large batch data pulls via the PCL API, with recommended off-peak hours (6 p.m.
      to 6 a.m. Central Time) to minimize system impact.
- type: UseCases
  data:
  - name: Legal Research Automation
    description: Law firms and legal research platforms can use the PCL API to programmatically search federal court case
      indexes and retrieve case and party information for automated legal research workflows.
  - name: Litigation Monitoring
    description: Corporate legal departments can monitor federal court filings involving specific parties, cases, or subject
      matters using automated PCL API queries.
  - name: Bankruptcy Software Integration
    description: Bankruptcy petition preparation software and trustee management applications can integrate with CM/ECF and
      PACER APIs to file documents, retrieve case data, and manage creditor information.
  - name: Court Data Analytics
    description: Academic researchers and legal analytics firms can build datasets of federal court case activity using batch
      PCL API searches across federal court jurisdictions.
  - name: Legal Technology Development
    description: Legal technology companies can build PACER-integrated products for case tracking, docket monitoring, and
      court record retrieval using the PACER Authentication and PCL APIs.
- type: Integrations
  data:
  - name: CM/ECF System
    description: Case Management and Electronic Case Filing system for all federal courts.
  - name: PACER Case Locator
    description: Nationwide index of federal court cases searchable via REST API.
  - name: NextGen CM/ECF
    description: Next-generation electronic filing system with enhanced developer integration support.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  X-twitter: apievangelist
  email: info@apievangelist.com

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API — frequently asked questions

Does Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 3 APIs from Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, including Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Cases API, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Parties API and Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Services API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 3 OpenAPI specifications for Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts API ready for AI agents?

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has a Kin Score of 29.4 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 17.2 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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