SearchSystems.net is a directory. We are not a database. We do not store records. We do not sell reports. What we do is curate roughly 70,000 links to official government sources of public records in the United States and more than 70 other countries, and arrange those links so you can find the right office for the record you need. This page explains how to use the site effectively, what public records are and are not, and the common pitfalls that send searches in the wrong direction.
If you read this page once, you will save yourself hours.
🧭 Why public records are harder to find than they should be
The United States has roughly 3,143 counties, plus thousands of cities with their own municipal courts and clerks, plus 50 state systems, plus the federal court system, plus dozens of regulatory agencies. Every one of them holds a piece of someone's public record. None of them automatically share with the others. There is no single national database of court records, criminal records, or property records that the public can search. There is no federal index that ties someone's records together across states.
This fragmentation is not an accident. It is the way American government was designed. Records are kept by the agency that made them, in the jurisdiction where they were made. A divorce decree from Travis County, Texas lives in Travis County. A property deed from Cuyahoga County, Ohio lives in Cuyahoga County. A federal criminal conviction from the Southern District of New York lives in PACER. Each of these systems is its own world, with its own search tools, its own fees, its own retention rules, and its own quirks.
This is the problem SearchSystems.net was built to solve. We tell you which office holds the record, link you directly to the official government source, and stay out of the middle. We have done this since 1997.
🗺️ The two ways to navigate this site
There are two paths into the directory, and choosing the right one for your search saves time.
By geography. If you know where the event happened (where the person lived, where the property is, where the case was filed), use the geographic navigation. Drill down from country to state to county to city. The geographic pages list every type of record we have for that jurisdiction in one view. This is the path most people use, and it is the right path for most searches.
By category. If you do not know where the event happened, or you want to compare what is available across jurisdictions for a specific type of record, use the category navigation. Pick the record type (criminal, court, property, vital, business, professional license, inmate, sex offender, voter, unclaimed property) and browse what is available across the country.
The category view is also useful when you are doing a sweep search and need to check the same record type across multiple states.
A search box at the top of every page lets you query both at once. Type "California courts" and the system returns the available civil, criminal, and probate court links for California. Type a county name and it returns every record type listed for that county.
📂 Understanding what counts as a public record
A public record is any record made or kept by a government agency that the law requires to be available to the public. Every state has a public records statute (often called a Freedom of Information Act, Open Records Act, Public Information Act, or Sunshine Law) that establishes the presumption of access. Federal records are governed by the federal Freedom of Information Act, which works similarly.
The general principle is simple: if a government agency made it or kept it in the course of official business, the public can usually see it, unless a specific statute exempts the record (sealed cases, juvenile records, active investigations, certain personnel records, certain medical records).
The categories most people are looking for break down as follows.
⚖️ Court records
Court records include civil cases, criminal cases, family law cases (divorce, custody, child support), probate cases (wills, estates, guardianships), traffic citations, and juvenile cases (mostly sealed). Most states run a centralized court records portal that lets you search across all of the state's trial courts in one query. A few states require you to search county by county. Federal courts are entirely separate and use PACER.
What you typically see in a court records search: case number, party names, filing date, case type, hearing dates, docket entries showing every filing in the case, and the disposition. Whether you can read the filed documents online varies. Some states give full PDF access. Others require a courthouse visit or a copy fee.
What is generally not visible: sealed cases, expunged records, certain juvenile cases, and any matter where the court has issued a sealing order.
🚓 Criminal records
Criminal records include arrests, charges filed, convictions, sentences, and probation status. They are held in three places: the arresting agency (sheriff or police department) for the booking record, the prosecutor's office for charging information, and the court for the case file. Sentenced inmates are tracked by the state department of corrections (state prison) or the county sheriff (county jail).
For an official, comprehensive criminal history, most states require a fingerprint-based check through the state police or department of public safety. Fees typically run $20 to $50. Turnaround runs from a few days to a few weeks.
For a quick, free, name-based check, the state court records system covers convictions filed in court. It will not catch out-of-state cases and it will not catch federal cases, but it is the most accessible starting point.
A separate category called arrest records captures bookings before adjudication. Many county sheriffs publish daily jail rosters online. These are useful for very recent arrests and are the only way to find someone who has been arrested but has not yet had a court case filed.
🏠 Property records
Property records are kept at the county level by two different offices. The recorder (sometimes called the clerk-recorder, register of deeds, or auditor depending on the state) keeps the document index: deeds, mortgages, liens, easements, restrictive covenants. The assessor keeps the tax roll: ownership, parcel boundaries, assessed value, square footage, sale history.
Both offices are usually free to search online by address, parcel number, or owner name. Certified copies cost a small fee. For older records, particularly anything before about 1990, you may need to visit the office in person because not everything has been digitized.
🪪 Vital records
Birth, death, marriage, and divorce records are kept by the state vital records office, with copies often available from the county where the event happened. Marriage records are typically the most accessible because they originate at the county clerk. Birth records are the most restricted because birth certificates are also primary identity documents and modern records are tightly controlled.
A useful rule: if you need a certified copy for legal use (name change, immigration, settling an estate), order from the official office and prepare to show ID and proof of eligibility. If you just need to confirm that an event happened, the public index at the county clerk or court is usually enough and is usually free.
For older records, restrictions ease over time. Births more than 75 to 100 years old, deaths more than 50 years old, marriages and divorces of similar vintage, generally become open records and are useful for genealogy work.
🏢 Business filings
Corporate, LLC, partnership, and limited partnership filings are held at the state level by the Secretary of State (in most states) or the Department of State or Corporations Division. Free name searches are universal. You can pull formation date, current status (active, dissolved, suspended), registered agent, principal address, and annual reports.
What is harder to find: the actual owners of an LLC. Member disclosure varies wildly by state. Wyoming, Nevada, and Delaware are particularly opaque. New York and California disclose more.
For a business operating under a fictitious name without forming a separate entity (a sole proprietorship doing business as something else), the record lives at the county or city level under DBA or fictitious business name filings, not at the state.
🔒 Inmate and offender records
State prison inmates are searchable through the state department of corrections. County jail inmates are searchable through the sheriff's office. Federal inmates are at the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator. All three are free and online.
Sex offender registries are public databases run by the state, searchable by name, zip code, or address radius. The federal NSOPW search ties together all 50 state registries for a nationwide query.
📜 Professional license records
State licensing boards regulate licensed professions: medicine, nursing, law, real estate, accounting, contracting, insurance, cosmetology, and more. Each state has its own structure. Most license lookups are free and show the licensee's status, license number, and discipline history.
A note on discipline: a "current and active" license does not mean a clean history. Many state boards keep prior disciplinary actions on the record but display the current status more prominently. If a clean disciplinary history matters, look specifically for the disciplinary search, which is sometimes a separate database from the basic license lookup.
📋 Other public records
Voter registration, unclaimed property, UCC filings, professional license disciplinary actions, environmental permits, building permits, food service inspections, bid awards, public employee salaries, campaign finance reports, lobbyist registrations. Each of these is public somewhere, depending on the state. The directory lists what we have found that is publicly accessible.
🗽 Why one state has more online records than another
Public records access varies dramatically state to state. Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and Virginia have invested heavily in digital court systems and have extensive online access. Other states with older infrastructure, tighter budgets, or stronger privacy traditions have less. Within a state, individual counties also vary: a large urban county usually has better online access than a rural county next door.
Some specific patterns worth knowing.
Florida is one of the most open states in the country. The state Sunshine Law is broad, and most records are easily accessible online. Florida is also where mugshots became an industry: state law has historically treated booking photos as fully public.
New York restricts much more than most people expect. The state criminal history is restricted to fingerprint-based requests. Court records are accessible but not as openly as in other states. The Civil Rights Law Section 50-a previously sealed police personnel records (repealed in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests).
California has the California Public Records Act and the California Constitution provision creating a right of access. It is generally open, but the state added significant restrictions on mugshots through Penal Code 13665, restricting law enforcement from posting booking photos for non-violent offenses.
Texas has the Texas Public Information Act and a generally open culture, with broad online access at both state and county levels.
Some states (Massachusetts, Wyoming, South Dakota, Delaware) are notably restricted on bulk criminal records access.
For the purposes of using this site: do not assume that what works in one state works in another. Each state has its own rules, its own statute citations, and its own quirks.
💵 What is free, what costs money
Most of the database links on this site are free. Some are pay sites. Each link is labeled so you know in advance.
The free sources are the official government databases themselves. A free search of a county recorder typically costs nothing to look at the index, with a small fee only when you order a certified copy. A free state court records search costs nothing for the docket; copies cost a per-page fee.
The pay sources are commercial aggregators that have purchased data from multiple jurisdictions and merged it into searchable databases. These can be useful when you need to scan multiple states at once, but the underlying records are still the official government records, which are free at the source. If you have time, go free. If you need speed and breadth across multiple states, the paid aggregators have their place.
There is a third category to be aware of: the predatory data brokers who advertise heavily on Google with promises of "background checks for $1." These are typically subscription traps. Read the fine print before paying anything to a service you have not heard of.
🌍 International records
We maintain links for record sources in more than 70 countries. The deepest coverage is in English-speaking countries (Canada, the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) where systems are similar to the United States. European Union countries have varying levels of access, generally with more privacy restriction than the US under the General Data Protection Regulation. For other countries, coverage depends on what each government has chosen to put online.
Foreign records sometimes require an in-country agent or local language work. We point you to the official government source. The rest of the search may take some additional steps that are outside the scope of this site.
⚠️ Common mistakes that derail searches
A few things go wrong over and over again.
Searching the wrong jurisdiction. Records live where the event happened. If someone got divorced in Cook County, Illinois, the record is in Cook County, not in the state where the person now lives. The single most common mistake is searching the searcher's location instead of the record's location.
Assuming national coverage. No public criminal records database covers the entire country. No public court records database covers all 50 states plus federal. Commercial aggregators get close on some categories but always have gaps. If a single search returns nothing, that does not mean nothing exists.
Confusing arrest with conviction. An arrest record is a charge that was filed. A conviction record is the disposition of that charge after the case closed. Most states distinguish between them and treat them differently for various uses.
Trusting common-name searches. A search for "John Smith" will return many results, most of them not the person you want. A real search uses date of birth, address history, and known aliases to narrow down. The Social Security Number trace is often used as the first step in serious investigations precisely because it produces an address history that points the rest of the search to the right counties.
Expecting current data. Public records have reporting lag. A recent arrest may take 30 to 90 days to appear in commercial databases. A recent court filing may not be in the searchable index for a few weeks. Real-time data does not really exist for most public records.
Treating "no results found" as "nothing exists." It usually means the database you searched does not have a record matching your query. Try a different spelling. Try a different jurisdiction. Try a different database. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
🚫 What public records will not tell you
Public records are a slice of a person's life, not the whole picture. They are useful for what they capture: things that ended up in court, things that ended up in a deed, things that ended up in a state license database. They are silent on everything else.
Public records will not tell you:
Whether someone is a good employee, a reliable tenant, a safe person to date, or a competent professional.
What someone earns. Income is not in any public record outside of public employees, executives of public companies (proxy statements), and certain political candidates (financial disclosures).
Whether someone has a current address with a phone number. People-search aggregators sell address and phone data, but these are commercial products built from credit headers and utility records, not from government databases.
What someone has in a bank account. Bank account information is protected under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Anyone offering to find bank accounts without legal authority is offering to commit a federal crime.
Whether someone has done something they were never charged with. Public records start when the legal system starts. Things that never made it to court are not there.
📑 The legal framework around public records use
Looking at public records is generally lawful for any purpose. Using them for certain purposes triggers federal and state regulation that does not apply to casual research.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Federal law that governs the use of consumer reports for employment, tenant screening, credit, and insurance decisions. Background checks for any of these purposes must be conducted by a licensed Consumer Reporting Agency that follows specific notice and dispute procedures. SearchSystems.net is a directory; we are not a CRA, and our directory is not for FCRA-regulated decisions.
The Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA). Federal law that restricts who can obtain motor vehicle records and for what purposes. The 14 permissible uses include government use, court proceedings, motor vehicle safety, insurance, employer verification of CDL holders, and use with the consumer's consent. Pulling driving records without permissible purpose is a federal violation.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Federal law that protects financial information. Pretexting (impersonating someone to obtain their financial records) is a federal crime under GLBA.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Federal law that protects health information. Most medical records are not public.
State public records laws. Each state has its own public records statute. They generally favor access, with specific exemptions. When a record is denied, the agency must cite the specific exemption.
Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Governs access to records held by federal agencies. FOIA requests have legal deadlines and a defined dispute process.
🛠️ Tips for power users
A few practices that experienced researchers use.
Start with the address history. Before you search criminal or court records, find out where the person has lived. The address history points the search to the right counties.
Search by case number when you have one. Name searches are noisy. Case numbers are exact.
For business research, pull the formation documents. Articles of incorporation list the original incorporators. Annual reports list the current officers. Side-by-side comparison shows who has come and gone.
For property research, check the assessor for ownership and the recorder for the chain of title. The two together tell a complete story.
For court records, read the full docket, not just the headline disposition. The docket entries show the real shape of the case: what was filed, what was heard, what was settled, what was withdrawn.
For older records, expect to make a phone call. Not everything has been digitized. The phrase that opens many doors is "I am looking for a record from [year]; what is the best way to request it?"
When you cannot find a record online, try the index. Most counties have a separate public-records request process for things that are not in the online search. The clerk's office can pull paper files for a fee.
🔎 Searching your own records
You have an absolute right to search your own records, and it is worth doing periodically. Identity theft, clerical errors, and outdated information are all real problems. A self-check shows what other people would find if they searched.
For your own criminal history, request a record review through the state police or department of public safety. Most states have a process specifically for this, separate from the third-party request process. It is usually free or low-cost.
For your own credit report, you are entitled to one free copy per year from each of the three bureaus through annualcreditreport.com. This is the only authorized free credit report site.
For your own driving record, request from the state DMV. Small fee, usually under $20.
For your own court records, search by your name in the state court system.
For your own vital records, you can order certified copies of your own birth certificate, marriage certificate, or divorce decree from the issuing office.
If you find an error, dispute it at the source. Public records can be corrected, but the process is specific to each agency. Misinformation that has propagated to commercial databases will eventually update if the source record is corrected, but it takes time.
✉️ Getting in touch
If you cannot find what you are looking for, if a link is broken, or if you know of a free public record source that is not in our directory, we want to hear about it. Use the contact link to send us a note. Submissions are reviewed and added to the directory if the source meets our criteria (free or clearly labeled, official government or authorized provider, public access).
SearchSystems.net is operated by Search Systems SR LLC, founded in 1997 as the first free public records directory on the internet. We have maintained an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau since inception. We are not a data broker, we do not sell personal information, and we do not aggregate profiles. Every link on this site points to a government portal or official public agency.
For phone support, call 1-(888)-717-3223.