Skip to main content

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.docketlayer.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

DocketLayer is a pay-per-query API that gives AI agents programmatic access to court docket monitoring across US federal courts, all 50 US states, and Canadian federal and provincial courts. Agents submit a case identifier and court code, pay $0.99 in USDC via the x402 protocol, and receive structured docket data with change detection built in.
Developers building AI agents that operate in legal, financial, or compliance workflows — litigation monitoring, debt collection, bankruptcy tracking, insurance, and similar use cases where knowing the moment something is filed in court matters.
No. DocketLayer handles PACER access internally for US federal courts. For state and Canadian courts, DocketLayer accesses the relevant public portals directly. You need a Solana wallet funded with USDC and x402 configured for your agent. Document URLs in responses link to the source court — retrieving the actual document may require credentials at the source, but monitoring docket activity does not.
$0.99 per query. Flat rate, no tiers, no subscriptions. For single-endpoint queries, failed requests are never charged. For batch requests (POST /v2/cases/batch), the payment covers the full batch upfront — if some cases fail within a batch, the full batch amount is still charged.
Payment is authentication. Include a valid x402 payment header with $0.99 in USDC on Solana. No API keys, no accounts, no onboarding required. See the authentication guide for setup details.
DocketLayer refreshes court data continuously. Most courts have a polling interval of 1 hour; select high-priority courts refresh every 15 minutes. The meta.cache_age_seconds field in each response tells you exactly how fresh the data is for the specific case you queried. Data is served from DocketLayer’s normalized cache — not queried from source courts in real time.
DocketLayer covers all US federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts; all 50 US states; and 25 Canadian courts (3 federal, 22 provincial and territorial). Call /v2/status for the complete real-time list with coverage status per court. See the coverage page for the full breakdown and what is not covered.
/v2/monitor returns a lightweight change indicator — changed: true or changed: false, a count of new filings, and the timestamp of the latest one. It is designed for agents running high-frequency monitoring loops where minimizing response payload matters. Use /v2/case when you need the full filing details.
DocketLayer returns a 503 with an estimated recovery time where available. You are not charged. The /v2/status endpoint reflects known maintenance windows.
60 requests per minute and 10,000 requests per day per wallet address. If exceeded, the response includes a retry_after field. For portfolios requiring more than 10,000 daily queries, distribute load across multiple funded wallets.
Yes. Include a callback_url in your GET /v2/case request and DocketLayer will push a signed copy of the result to that URL asynchronously, in addition to the synchronous response. See the callbacks guide for details.
Yes. An agent monitoring a closed case will continue querying and paying $0.99 per cycle with no useful return. Build stop conditions into your monitoring logic — check case.status on each response and remove resolved cases from your portfolio.