California Court Records: Why There's No Statewide Portal, and How Each County Search Works

California is the country's largest state court system, and it has no statewide website for searching a case by name. Each of the state's 58 Superior Courts maintains its own records, and California Rule of Court 2.503 places the duty to provide electronic access on whichever court maintains them, only to the extent that court finds it feasible. The real answer to how do I search California court records therefore depends entirely on which county the case is in.

California also has a fact worth knowing before you search at all: some categories of case are public but courthouse-only, which is why a county portal will not show them even when the case itself is fully public. The rule carves out one narrow exception, for criminal cases only, described below.

Information last verified on 2026-08-10. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This guide is part of a broader look at court records by state. For the general mechanics of federal versus state versus county searches, see how to look up court records and are court records public.

Why There's No Single California Court Records Website

There is no statewide portal because there is no statewide court records system to put behind one. Under Government Code section 68150, trial court records may be created, maintained, and preserved in any form, including electronic media, and it is each Superior Court that keeps its own.

California Rule of Court 2.503 works on top of that structure rather than creating it. The rule requires a court that maintains its records in electronic form to provide electronic access to them, both remotely and at the courthouse, but each of its access duties is qualified by the phrase to the extent it is feasible to do so. Subdivision (d) defines feasible by the court's own assessment: a court is required to provide electronic access to the extent it determines it has the resources and technical capacity to do so.

So the rule does not assign custody, and it does not direct a centralized state system either way. The absence of a single statewide search tool is an administrative and budgetary fact about 58 separately resourced courts, not something Rule 2.503 decrees. The consequence for a reader is the same: identify the county where the case was filed, then use that county's own tool, which can differ in cost, coverage, and how far back records go.

The Statewide Rule Everyone Shares: Rule 2.503(c)

Even though access is county-by-county, one part of the rule is genuinely statewide. Rule 2.503(c) lists categories of case that are public in the legal sense, meaning a member of the public may view them, but that no California Superior Court may make available through public remote access. The rule's own list covers records in a Family Code proceeding, a juvenile court proceeding, a guardianship or conservatorship proceeding, a mental health proceeding, a criminal proceeding, proceedings to compromise the claims of a minor or a person with a disability, a civil harassment proceeding under Code of Civil Procedure section 527.6, a workplace violence prevention proceeding under section 527.8, a private postsecondary school violence prevention proceeding under section 527.85, an elder or dependent adult abuse prevention proceeding under Welfare and Institutions Code section 15657.03, and a gun violence prevention proceeding under Penal Code sections 18100 through 18205.

The practical effect: for any of these case types, going to a courthouse in person is normally the only way to view the file, whichever county and whichever portal is involved.

Rule 2.503(e) carves out one narrow exception, and it reaches criminal cases only. Notwithstanding the criminal-proceeding entry at (c)(5), the presiding judge of the court, or a judge assigned by the presiding judge, may exercise discretion to permit remote access by the public to all or a portion of the public court records in an individual criminal case if two conditions are met: the number of requests for access to documents in the case is extraordinarily high, and responding to those requests would significantly burden the operations of the court. That is a case-specific release a judge authorizes for a high-demand file, not a general opening, and the other ten categories in subdivision (c) have no equivalent.

This is distinct from sealing. A sealed record under Rule of Court 2.550 is excluded entirely, even from courthouse viewing; a Rule 2.503(c) record is fully public, just not remote.

Los Angeles County: A Real Per-Search Fee

Los Angeles Superior Court's Case Summary and Public Access Online Services charge for name searches. Per the court's own fee schedule, a registered user pays on a sliding scale from $1.00 per search (for searches 1 through 10) up to $4.00 per search (for searches over 10,000), while a guest user pays a flat $4.75 per name search regardless of how many results come back. The court's own FAQ explains the logic: each search incurs a public access fee to reimburse the court for the costs of providing public access to its electronic records, and the fee applies to each search regardless of the number of results returned. Document images cost $1.00 per page for the first five pages, then $0.40 per page after that, with a $40.00 cap per document. LA's civil, small claims, family law, and probate records are searchable this way; criminal records use a separate index.

Santa Clara County: Free Search, Paid Copies

Santa Clara County Superior Court's Case Information Online tool covers civil, small claims, probate, some family, traffic and local ordinance, and criminal cases, and the search itself is free. The court's own page is direct about what is missing: case documents, meaning the actual filings, are not generally available online. For a document, the copy fee is $0.50 per page, which is not a Santa Clara figure but the statewide rate every California court clerk must charge under Government Code section 70627(a). The court's page also carries a standard access caveat: information provided is subject to applicable law, court rules, and public access guidelines, and the court may limit access to certain information where confidentiality is required by statute or rule.

Other counties, including San Diego, run comparable index-search tools with their own search-fee structures, so confirm the specific county's current search pricing and coverage directly. Copy and certification fees, by contrast, are fixed statewide by statute rather than set county by county.

California's Three Tracks for Hiding a Criminal Record

California does not have one sealing law. It runs three separate, non-overlapping tracks, and mixing them up leads to wrong conclusions about what a record shows.

The first is Penal Code section 1203.4, colloquially called expungement, but legally a plea-withdrawal-and-dismissal. The underlying case is dismissed after a successful petition, but the record remains visible to law enforcement and certain licensing bodies.

The second is automatic record relief under Penal Code sections 851.93 (arrests) and 1203.425 (convictions), created by SB 731 and AB 1076. This is the track most likely to be described online as sealing, and the California Department of Justice's own page corrects that framing directly: automatic record relief is not a dismissal, sealing, or expungement of a person's state summary criminal history information record. The department reviews arrest and conviction records for eligibility on a monthly basis, without requiring a petition, but eligible records simply become subject to a narrower disclosure rule under Penal Code section 11105 rather than being dismissed, sealed, or erased.

The third is civil sealing under Rule of Court 2.550, a motion-based process inside a lawsuit, evaluated under a five-factor overriding-interest test. This track has nothing to do with criminal history; it applies to civil case records a party asks the court to protect.

For the eligibility rules and process for petition-based relief and automatic record relief, see California expungement laws, which this guide does not duplicate.

Certified Copies

A certified copy of a California court document comes from the Superior Court clerk in the county where the case was filed, and the price is set by state statute rather than by county policy.

Government Code section 70627(a) requires the clerk of the court to charge fifty cents ($0.50) per page to cover the cost of preparing copies of any record, proceeding, or paper on file in the clerk's office. Government Code section 70626(a)(4) then sets a fee of forty dollars ($40) for certifying a copy of any paper, record, or proceeding on file in the office of the clerk of any court. So a certified copy generally runs $40 for the certification plus $0.50 per page copied, and that arithmetic is the same in every county.

What does vary by county is the mechanics rather than the price: whether you order by mail, in person, or through an online request form, how long turnaround takes, and how the court accepts payment. Check the specific court's clerk page for those details, and for any additional service fees it charges separately from the two statutory amounts above.

Using California Court Records the Right Way

County portals are built for checking a specific case, whether it is your own or one you have a legitimate reason to look into, not for compiling a background file on someone else. If a California court record is used to screen a job applicant or a tenant, that use is governed separately by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and by California's own background-check rules. Because automatic record relief is a disclosure restriction rather than a true sealing or dismissal, a record covered by it may still be treated differently depending on who is asking and under what legal authority, which is a genuinely more layered picture than in most other states.

Related Resources

Court Records by State covers the full 50-state picture. See also How to Look Up Court Records, Are Court Records Public?, California Expungement Laws, California Background Check Laws, California Warrant Search, and California Public Records Laws.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about California's county-by-county court records model and its three record-relief tracks. It is not legal advice. Portal fees and coverage change and vary by county; verify current details with the relevant Superior Court or a licensed California attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-10. Portal facts and fees reflect their published status as of August 2026.