How this site works
CourtRecordsFree is free to use and paid for by advertising. It does not sell reports, charge for removals, or keep a private database of people.
Where the data comes from
| Source | What it covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| CourtListener / RECAP Free Law Project |
Federal district, bankruptcy and appellate dockets; millions of published state and federal opinions | Free |
| GDELT | Worldwide news index, filtered here to US coverage mentioning a name alongside legal terms, roughly the last 90 days | Free |
| State judiciary portals | County and state trial-court records — linked directly, searched by you on the official site | Varies by state |
What live search actually covers
This is the single most important thing to understand about any court records site, including the ones that charge money:
The great majority of criminal cases in the United States are handled by county courts, and county records are not available through any national API. A DUI in Hamilton County, Ohio exists in Hamilton County's system and nowhere else. Sites that claim to search "all criminal records nationwide" are either reselling stale bulk data or overstating what they have.
So this site does two different things:
- Live search covers federal courts and published appellate opinions. This is genuinely comprehensive for what it covers — federal criminal prosecutions, civil suits, bankruptcies, and appellate decisions.
- The state directory takes you to the official portal for the jurisdiction you care about, with a plain-language note on whether it's free, what it covers, and where the gaps are. You do the final search on the government's own site, which is always the most current and most authoritative version.
Mugshots
We do not host or aggregate booking photographs, and this is a deliberate choice rather than a technical limitation.
At least eighteen states — including California, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Virginia and Utah — have passed laws restricting commercial mugshot publication, most aimed squarely at sites that post booking photos and then charge for removal. Virginia sets statutory damages at a minimum of $500 per violation plus attorney's fees. Beyond the legal exposure, Google's advertising policies treat mugshot-removal-fee businesses as prohibited content, so the business model tends to collapse anyway.
Where a sheriff's office or department of corrections publishes booking or inmate information on its own official site, we link to that source. That keeps the photo in the custody of the agency that took it, subject to that agency's own correction and expungement processes.
Why some records are missing
- Sealed and expunged records are removed from public systems by court order. They will not appear, and that is the system working correctly.
- Juvenile records are confidential in nearly every state.
- Dismissed and diverted cases may be purged after a set period.
- Recent filings can lag by days or weeks before appearing online.
- Data entry errors happen. Names get misspelled, dates get transposed, cases get attached to the wrong person.
Verifying what you find
Anything you plan to act on should be confirmed with the clerk of the court that issued it. A record found online is a pointer to a paper file, not a substitute for it. Certified copies are what courts, employers and lawyers actually accept.
Two failure modes are worth naming specifically:
- Same-name confusion. There are thousands of people named James Wilson. Matching on name alone is not identification. Confirm with a date of birth, a case number, or a middle name.
- Charge ≠ conviction. A docket showing an arrest or an indictment tells you a case was filed. It says nothing about the outcome. Read the disposition before concluding anything.
What this site is not for
CourtRecordsFree is not a consumer reporting agency, and what you find here is not a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If you are screening someone for a job, an apartment, a loan, or an insurance policy, federal law requires you to use an FCRA-compliant screening company — which gives the person notice, the right to dispute inaccuracies, and other protections this site cannot provide. Using free public-records sites for those decisions exposes you to real liability. See our terms of use.
Corrections
If a record shown here is inaccurate, refers to someone else, or has been sealed or expunged, tell us on the corrections page. We never charge for a correction or removal — not as a courtesy, but because charging would be illegal in much of the country and we think it's a bad practice regardless.