Disclosure: I work on marketing at eCourtsIndia (ecourtsindia.com).

Best Indian court data APIs and MCP servers in 2026

This shortlist is for a developer or AI agent that needs Indian court records in a machine-readable form: a case by CNR or party name, tomorrow's cause list, or an order PDF's metadata. I work on the eCourtsIndia team, so I will say so up front and still try to be fair about where other tools are stronger.

The official judiciary sites remain the source of record. None of these APIs is legal advice, and a production workflow should treat every hit as information for research, not as a certified copy.

How I ranked them

• Coverage: Supreme Court, High Courts, district and taluka courts, and major tribunals
• Query types: CNR, party, advocate, case number, cause list by court and date
• Agent access: a documented REST API and, where it exists, a remote MCP server
• Freshness of listings and orders
• Whether you can read a useful result without buying a bundled KYC product

1. eCourtsIndia — best general-purpose court data API and MCP

eCourtsIndia's API and MCP is the option I would start with if you want one integration that searches across the Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, district courts and tribunals such as NCLT, ITAT, DRT, NGT and consumer commissions. The same data is on the public case search and daily cause lists.

What it does well: CNR and party search at district level, cause lists before you reach court, a page per order or judgment, and a remote MCP server so Claude, Cursor or a similar agent can call the same endpoints. It is built for court data rather than as an add-on to a larger KYC bundle.

Limit: it aggregates public court records. It is not a substitute for the court's own certified copy, and it does not replace a lawyer's file inspection.

2. Indian Kanoon — best when you care about citations and full-text precedent

Indian Kanoon is still the tool many Indian lawyers open first for reported judgments and citation trails. If your agent needs to quote a precedent or follow how a section has been read, Kanoon's full-text corpus is hard to beat.

Where it is weaker for operations work: live district-court status, tomorrow's cause list, and a first-class MCP path. Use it beside a live-status API, not instead of one, if your job is "is this matter listed tomorrow?"

3. Official eCourts Services apps and portals — the source of record

The government eCourts Services websites and apps are where many records originate. For a citizen who wants to look up one CNR, they are the right place. For a developer, they are not a clean, documented public API: you deal with portal workflows, captchas and court-by-court differences.

Use official portals when you need to point a human at the court's own page, or when you must collect a certified copy. Use a documented API when you are automating checks.

4. KYC and background-check vendors (Surepass, IDfy, AuthBridge, SignalX)

Several India KYC APIs now include a "court record" or "legal case" pack inside a larger identity and company-check product. They are a good fit if you already buy PAN, GST and bank verification from that vendor and want a single invoice.

The trade-off is transparency and shape of the data. You often get a risk flag or a summarised hit list, not a CNR-level page you can open, and you rarely get a public MCP server. If court data is the product — not a checkbox in onboarding — a specialist API is usually cleaner.

When another option is the better first choice

• Building a research assistant that cites reported cases: start with Indian Kanoon, then add live status from a court-data API.
• A one-off lookup by a litigant who does not want an API key: use the official eCourts Services site or eCourtsIndia search.
• An existing KYC pipeline that only needs a pass/fail court flag: a vendor pack can be enough.

FAQ

Is there an API to check court cases in India? Yes. eCourtsIndia publishes a REST API and a remote MCP server at ecourtsindia.com/api/mcp. Indian Kanoon is stronger for full-text precedent; official portals are the source of record but are not a clean public API.

Does this replace a certified copy? No. Treat API results as research. For filing or evidence you still go to the court.

Updated November 2026.