📱 Add OPR to your Home Screen iPhone & iPad — two quick taps: Every state has a public-records law, but access, exemptions, response times, and available online records differ widely. Open Public Records organizes state, county, city, court, arrest, and police-record resources, explains what is available, and links people to the originating agency whenever a verified source is available. What we grade, and how Six things. Same six everywhere — state, county, or city police department. Each scored zero to four. Add them up, that is the letter grade. No spin, no bonus points. Online access. Free portal, paywalled, or none at all. Fees. What records actually cost compared to the national median. Turnaround. How long a records request takes in real life — not what the law says it should take. E-filing and digital court records. Full, partial, or paper-only. Booking and mugshot policy. Public, restricted, or hidden behind a fee. Live feed health. Is the official portal actually working today, or is it broken? A is 20–24. B is 16–19. C is 12–15. D is 8–11. F is 0–7. Missing data scores zero, and the page tells you why. Every score on every page cites the source it came from. Every page also runs a live check on the official portals when you load it, with the HTTP status and timestamp visible. If the county case-lookup is dead the second you visit, the live data strip says so. We do not hide it. That is the whole point. Read the full methodology →

Today's findings 159 jurisdictions graded so far. Most recent below. What you get on Open Public Records, free A free federal court search across bankruptcies, civil filings, and criminal cases — the same federal court data normally locked behind paywalls. Transparency grades on every state, county, and major city police department, computed from live data. Plain-English explainers on what is actually inside a court record, an arrest record, a background check, and an expungement order. Direct links to every official government source we cite, with the HTTP status of those sources at the moment you visit. We do not sell records. We do not run a paid tier. We do not broker background checks. We do not take advertising from data brokers. Open Public Records is informational only and not FCRA-regulated. Nothing on this site is permissible for employment, tenant, or credit screening. Browse by state → Plain English on the records themselves Most sites tell you a record exists and stop. We tell you what is actually in it, what it means, and what it does not mean. What shows up on a background check, by state. What expungement actually does — and what it leaves behind. The difference between a record being sealed and a record being expunged. Why "arrested" does not mean "convicted" and why that distinction matters in 38 states. What a federal court docket actually looks like. How long a misdemeanor stays on your record before it falls off. How to read a rap sheet without panicking. Why Open Public Records exists Governments love the word "open." Half the time the records sitting behind that word are paywalled, broken, or buried under three logins and a CAPTCHA. Our team has been working in public records for nearly thirty years watching portals come online, get worse, get better, and sometimes go dark for months while no one says anything. We built Open Public Records to put the transparency promise on a scoreboard. If a county runs a free, fast, working portal, we say so loudly. If they hide booking photos behind a $50 fee, we say that loudly too. The grade reads the same in both directions. About the people behind OPR →