State Resources
Minnesota
Minnesota gives away something almost every other state charges for — a free public criminal history search you can run on anyone with a name and a date of birth. Court records are free and statewide too. This is one of the easy ones.
At a glance
| Record | Held by | Cost | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business and entity search | Secretary of State | Free to search | Yes |
| UCC filings | Secretary of State — UCC | Free to search | Yes |
| Professional licenses | Individual licensing boards | Free | By board |
| Property and land records | County recorder and county assessor | Free online in most counties | By county |
| Court records | Judicial Branch — Minnesota Court Records Online | Free | Yes |
| Criminal records | Bureau of Criminal Apprehension — Public Criminal History | Free | Yes |
| Vital records | Department of Health, Office of Vital Records | Certified copies carry a fee | Yes |
| Unclaimed property | Department of Commerce | Free | Yes |
| Voter and resident records | Secretary of State | Free to check status | Yes |
Worth knowing about Minnesota
The criminal history search is free, and that’s close to unique
The BCA runs a public criminal history site at chs.state.mn.us. It’s a free service, open to anyone, and it returns Minnesota public criminal history records.
You need a first name, last name and date of birth — all three. That requirement is the whole design: it stops the site being trawled and it makes the matches far more reliable than a name-only search.
Compare that with the states around it. Wisconsin charges. Kansas charges $30. Indiana charges $16.32. Missouri charges. Minnesota charges nothing.
What it shows is public criminal history, which in Minnesota means convictions and cases that resulted in a conviction. Arrests that went nowhere aren’t public here, unlike Wisconsin’s CCAP. So a clean result means no public conviction record, not that nothing ever happened.
You still want the court records as well
The criminal history site and the court portal answer different questions and you should run both.
Minnesota Court Records Online is free and statewide. It carries civil, family, probate and housing cases that the criminal history site will never show you — and for a locate, housing and civil judgments are usually worth more than the criminal record anyway.
An eviction filing gives you a dated address and a departure. A conciliation court judgment gives you a creditor who already found this person once.
Record by record
Business and entity search
Open business search →- Held by
- Secretary of State
- Cost
- Free to search
Free search of Minnesota entities by name, file number or registered agent. Filed documents are viewable.
Minnesota requires an annual renewal. An entity that stopped renewing was administratively dissolved, and the date it stopped is a dated event you can use on a timeline.
UCC filings
Open filings search →- Held by
- Secretary of State — UCC
- Cost
- Free to search
UCC lien filings are searchable through the same Secretary of State portal as business entities.
A UCC-1 names the debtor, the secured party and the collateral. The secured party is very often a bank, which makes this one of the few free routes to where a business banks.
Professional licenses
- Held by
- Individual licensing boards
- Cost
- Free
No single statewide lookup. Health licensing boards, the Department of Labor and Industry for the trades, and Commerce for insurance and real estate all run their own.
Search the specific board rather than hunting for a central portal.
Property and land records
- Held by
- County recorder and county assessor
- Cost
- Free online in most counties
No statewide property search. Each of the 87 counties runs its own, split between the recorder for documents and the assessor for ownership and value.
Hennepin and Ramsey are excellent and free. Minnesota also still has Torrens-registered land in places, which sits in a separate register from abstract property — if a search comes back empty in a county that uses both, ask which register you searched.
Court records
Open case search →- Held by
- Judicial Branch — Minnesota Court Records Online
- Cost
- Free
Free statewide case search covering the district courts in all 87 counties. Civil, family, probate, housing and criminal.
Remote access shows less than a courthouse terminal does. Minnesota classifies a lot of case detail as accessible at the courthouse but not over the internet, so a thin online record isn’t necessarily a thin file.
Criminal records
Open criminal history search →- Held by
- Bureau of Criminal Apprehension — Public Criminal History
- Cost
- Free
Free, public, and open to anyone. Requires first name, last name and date of birth together — a name on its own won’t run.
Returns Minnesota public criminal history. It doesn’t reach other states, and it doesn’t include non-public data such as arrests that didn’t lead to a conviction.
Vital records
Open vital records →- Held by
- Department of Health, Office of Vital Records
- Cost
- Certified copies carry a fee
Births and deaths from the state office, and any Minnesota county vital records office can issue for an event anywhere in the state — which is unusual and useful. You don’t have to go to the county where it happened.
Certified copies are restricted to people with a tangible interest.
Unclaimed property
Open unclaimed property →- Held by
- Department of Commerce
- Cost
- Free
Free name search of property the state is holding.
The holder named on a reported item is what matters on a locate — the bank, insurer or employer that reported the funds is a confirmed relationship, and they reported a last known address with it.
Voter and resident records
Open voter status →- Held by
- Secretary of State
- Cost
- Free to check status
Individual registration status lookup. Minnesota restricts the bulk voter list to political purposes and prohibits commercial use, so this is a one-subject confirmation tool rather than a data source.
Public records requests in Minnesota
- Statute
- Minn. Stat. Chapter 13 (Government Data Practices Act)
- Response deadline
- Immediately if possible, otherwise within ten business days
- Appeal to
- Commissioner of Administration advisory opinion, or district court
- Appeal window
- No fixed deadline
Minnesota does it differently from most states. Rather than a “public records act,” the Data Practices Act classifies every item of government data as public, private, confidential or non-public, and then works from that classification.
The practical effect is that arguments here are about how a specific data element is classified, not about whether a general exemption applies. Cite the data you want and ask for its classification if you’re refused.
Anyone may inspect public data, and inspection is free — you only pay for copies. You cannot be required to explain why you want it or to identify yourself in order to see public data.
If you’re refused, you can ask the Commissioner of Administration for an advisory opinion. It isn’t binding, but an agency that ignores one loses the ability to claim it acted in good faith, and most of them settle rather than find out.
What Minnesota will not give you
- Non-public criminal history. Arrests that didn’t result in a conviction aren’t public in Minnesota.
- Driver and vehicle records. Closed under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.
- Some eviction records. Removed from public view after a period, or expunged on motion.
- Juvenile records. Not public, with narrow exceptions for serious offenses.
- The bulk voter list. Restricted to political purposes. Commercial use is prohibited.
Related
- Wisconsin — CCAP shows the arrests Minnesota hides
- Kansas — a $30 criminal history anyone can order
- Skip tracing: the order of operations
- UCC filings name the lender
- A FOIA request letter that works
Fees and procedures verified August 2026. Clerks change their counter rules more often than the statutes change — call before you drive.