Free Online Tool
Search Government Documents & Public Records
Search FOIA releases, filings, and public records for a name, term, or figure \u2014 across long documents, privately.
Search FOIA releases, public records, and government filings for names, terms, and figures. Free, private full-text PDF search \u2014 nothing uploaded, handles long releases, no account.
Built for public records
The tool’s original use case — long official documents
Name & term search
Whole-word matching for names and defined terms
Local & private
Records are parsed in your browser, never uploaded
Searching a document dump for what matters
Public-records work was where this tool started. FOIA releases, agency filings, council packets, and voter or property records tend to arrive as long PDFs — sometimes hundreds of pages — and the task is almost always “find every mention of this name, address, or term.” It’s a search problem at heart, and doing it a page at a time doesn’t scale to a document dump.
Load the release and search once: every occurrence of a name or term comes back with page numbers, so you can cite the exact page in a report or request. Whole-word matching keeps a surname from matching an unrelated common word. Across a multi-file release, bulk PDF search tells you in one pass which documents mention what.
Two honest realities of government PDFs. First, many are scans — some with an OCR text layer, some without — so a release can be a mix of searchable and image-only pages; the text-layer test tells you which is which. Second, because everything is parsed in your browser and never uploaded, sensitive records stay on your machine, which matters for journalists and researchers handling them.
How it works
- 01
Load the release or records
Drag the FOIA release, filings, or record set onto the upload zone. Long documents and multi-file releases are both fine.
- 02
Search a name or term
Type the name, address, or keyword. Use whole-word mode so a surname doesn’t match an unrelated common word.
- 03
Find every mention
Results group by document with page numbers and context, so you can cite the exact page in a report or follow-up request.
- 04
Export the findings
Download all matches to CSV — document, page, excerpt — for reporting, a records log, or a research dataset.
Frequently asked questions
Can I search a long FOIA release?+
Yes. Releases of several hundred pages search in seconds because the work happens locally in your browser. Each file can be up to 50 MB.
Can I search across a multi-file release?+
Yes. Load the whole release — up to 200 files — and run one query; results group by document so you can see which files mention a name or term.
Why do some government PDFs return no matches?+
Because they’re scanned images without an OCR text layer. Search for a word you can see on the page — no match means that file is image-only and needs OCR first.
Are the records kept private?+
Yes. Documents are parsed in your browser and never uploaded, so sensitive public-records material stays on your device — important for journalists and researchers.
Can I match a name exactly?+
Yes. Whole-word and case-sensitive search let you match a specific name or defined term precisely without catching unrelated words.
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