CourtAPI — Federal Court Data MCP server

CourtAPI MCP Server

Search and retrieve US federal court cases, dockets, claims, and documents via PACER — directly from Claude and other MCP-compatible AI assistants.

What it does

This MCP server exposes CourtAPI as a set of tools that let an AI assistant:

• Find cases by party name, case number, or free-text keywords across all federal courts
• Get case metadata — title, chapter, judge, filing dates, assets/liabilities, and what sub-resources have been purchased
• Get dockets — full docket sheets with filing history, keyword search, and date filtering
• Download documents — PDFs attached to docket entries, with cost-checking before purchase
• Get claims — bankruptcy claims registers with creditor names, amounts, and claim types
• Get parties — all parties and attorneys in a case
• Get creditors — scheduled creditors (Schedules D/E/F), separate from filed claims
• Search PACER NCL — National Case Locator for cross-court party searches
• List courts — all ~200 PACER courts with their codes
• Manage PACER credentials — store and validate PACER username/password

Coverage: all US federal courts — bankruptcy, district, and appellate. State courts are not supported.

Prerequisites

CourtAPI account — Get credentials (APP\ID + APP\KEY) at the developer portal. A free 30-day sandbox is available (150 API calls/day, 500/month) — contact support@courtapi.com to start one.

PACER account — Required for fetching live data (docket updates, document downloads). Register free at pacer.uscourts.gov. PACER charges per page for documents; CourtAPI passes these fees through at cost.

Installation

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claudedesktopconfig.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claudedesktopconfig.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "courtapi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@courtio/courtapi-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "COURTAPI_APP_ID": "your_app_id",
        "COURTAPI_APP_KEY": "your_app_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The hammer icon will show CourtAPI tools listed.

Other MCP clients

The server uses stdio transport by default, which is compatible with any MCP host. Use the same command/args/env pattern above.

HTTP mode (Streamable HTTP transport)

For clients that use HTTP rather than stdio (e.g. the OpenAI Responses API remote tools):

COURTAPI_APP_ID=your_id COURTAPI_APP_KEY=your_key PORT=3000 \
  npx @courtio/courtapi-mcp --http

From source

git clone https://gitlab.com/courtio/courtio.git
cd courtio/mcp/courtapi
npm install && npm run build
# then point Claude Desktop at dist/index.js instead of npx

Environment variables

Quick start

Once connected, try these prompts in Claude:

"Find the Sbarro bankruptcy case and show me the latest docket entries"

"Search for Chapter 11 cases filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court in 2024"

"Get the claims register for case 1:14-bk-10557 in the SDNY bankruptcy court"

"Set my PACER credentials to username johndoe and password mypassword"

Tools

find_cases

Discover cases you don't have a court code or full case number for. Pass a party/company name, partial case number, or free-text keywords. The tool automatically picks the best search endpoint:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.