Docket Alarm vs RECAP

Docket Alarm is a litigation intelligence platform for searching, tracking and analyzing court dockets and documents. The maker says its collection includes over 1 billion dockets and documents from courts in the United States and elsewhere. Search supports full text, Boolean and phrase queries, with filters for court, date range, judge, party, attorney and case type. Users can follow cases, parties, attorneys, firms, keywords and Nature of Suit categories, receiving email updates up to 16 times daily. They can read indexed filings, connect to PACER and bulk-download case documents. Talk to Docket answers natural-language questions about a docket and cites entries and documents. Analytics cover motion outcomes, time to decision and trends by court and judge; Timeline presents docket entries as a visual chronology. The REST API supports case searches, docket and document retrieval, tracking, and natural-language questions. An ECF connection can deliver tracked filings inside the platform at no cost. Plans range from a free tier with five weekly actions to monthly paid options.

RECAP is a collection of tools for working with PACER, the system for accessing records from U.S. federal courts. Its browser extension adds purchased PACER documents to the searchable RECAP Archive, where documents contributed by others are available without charge. The archive contains tens of millions of documents, including scanned PDF pages. Users can follow cases for email alerts about new filings and save searches to hear when new matches appear in PACER holdings. Attorneys can route PACER notices to a personal CourtListener notification address so RECAP can process the notices and contribute cases and filings. The archive is also offered through an API and as bulk data for journalists, researchers, startups, and developers. Webhooks can connect website events with actions in other systems, and the maker describes a PACER-to-Google-Drive connector demo. The extension says it does not access PACER credentials or transmit information to third parties, while noting it uploads federal records to CourtListener and sends CourtListener queries about requested records. RECAP is free to use; PACER may still charge for purchased documents. Paid access is listed from $10/user/mo.