State Resources
Pennsylvania
One free statewide case search covering every court, and a criminal history check anyone can buy online for $22. The trap is the lower court tier — magisterial district judges handle a huge share of what you’re looking for, and people miss it.
At a glance
| Record | Held by | Cost | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business and entity search | Department of State — Business Search | Free to search | Yes |
| UCC filings | Department of State — UCC | Free to search | Yes |
| Professional licenses | Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — PALS | Free | Yes |
| Property and land records | County recorder of deeds and county assessor | Varies by county | By county |
| Court records | Unified Judicial System — UJS Portal | Free | Yes |
| Criminal records | Pennsylvania State Police — PATCH | $22 per name | Yes |
| Vital records | Department of Health, Division of Vital Records | Certified copies carry a fee | Yes |
| Unclaimed property | Pennsylvania Treasury | Free | Yes |
| Voter and resident records | Department of State | Free | Yes |
Worth knowing about Pennsylvania
Magisterial district courts are where half of it lives
Pennsylvania has a lower court tier that catches people out, the same way municipal courts do in Ohio.
Courts of Common Pleas are the county trial courts — felonies, big civil cases, divorce, custody, estates.
Magisterial district judges handle everything underneath: summary offenses, traffic, preliminary arraignments and hearings on every criminal case, landlord-tenant, and civil claims up to $12,000.
The good news is that the UJS Portal covers both, so you don’t have to go hunting. The bad news is that people filter to Common Pleas, see nothing, and stop. Landlord-tenant judgments and summary offenses sit in the district courts, and for a locate the landlord-tenant docket is frequently the best dated address record you’ll find.
Note too that every criminal case starts in front of a magisterial district judge, so a case that never got past a preliminary hearing may exist only at that level.
PATCH: anyone can run a Pennsylvania criminal history for $22
Pennsylvania State Police run PATCH — Pennsylvania Access to Criminal History — and it’s open to the public. A requester can apply for a criminal background check on an individual basis for $22, online.
No consent form, no fingerprints for the standard name-based check. That puts Pennsylvania in the small group of states where you can simply buy the answer, alongside Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Washington.
It returns what was reported to the state repository. Cross-check anything it shows against the UJS Portal docket for that case — the repository tells you a charge exists, the docket tells you what happened to it.
Record by record
Business and entity search
Open business search →- Held by
- Department of State — Business Search
- Cost
- Free to search
Free search of Pennsylvania entities by name, and filings are viewable. Registered office address, officers where reported, and formation date.
Pennsylvania moved to an annual report requirement, so entity information is refreshed more often than it used to be. Older filings may still carry addresses that are a decade stale — read the date on the document, not the entity.
UCC filings
Open UCC information →- Held by
- Department of State — UCC
- Cost
- Free to search
Secured filings searchable by debtor name. A UCC-1 names the debtor, the secured party and the collateral, and the secured party is usually a lender — which makes it one of the few free routes to where a business banks.
Professional licenses
Open license search →- Held by
- Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — PALS
- Cost
- Free
PALS is a genuine single portal covering the great majority of Pennsylvania licensing boards — medical, nursing, cosmetology, real estate, accountancy, the trades and more.
Verification gives you a legal name, license status, issue and expiry dates and usually a city, plus any disciplinary action. A dated suspension often explains a sudden change in someone’s circumstances.
Property and land records
- Held by
- County recorder of deeds and county assessor
- Cost
- Varies by county
No statewide property search. Each of the 67 counties runs its own, split between the recorder of deeds for documents and the assessment office for ownership and value.
Philadelphia and Allegheny run the best of them. Rural counties are thin, and several put deeds behind a paid subscription rather than a free index.
Court records
Open UJS Portal →- Held by
- Unified Judicial System — UJS Portal
- Cost
- Free
One free statewide search covering the Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth courts, the Courts of Common Pleas and the magisterial district courts. No account needed.
Search by participant name, or by docket number if you have it. Docket sheets and court summaries download as PDFs, and the docket sheet is the useful one — it carries the charges, the disposition and the sentence.
Criminal records
Open PATCH →- Held by
- Pennsylvania State Police — PATCH
- Cost
- $22 per name
Open to the public, online, $22 per individual request. See above.
Pennsylvania also allows a broad range of records to be sealed under its Clean Slate law, which seals many older non-violent convictions automatically. A sealed record won’t appear on a PATCH check run by a member of the public.
Vital records
Open vital records →- Held by
- Department of Health, Division of Vital Records
- Cost
- Certified copies carry a fee
Births from 1906 and deaths from 1906 held by the state. Earlier events are with the county or the city of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania restricts certified copies to people with a direct interest, so this is a confirm-a-death resource for most work rather than a research tool.
Unclaimed property
Open unclaimed property →- Held by
- Pennsylvania Treasury
- Cost
- Free
Free name search. On a locate, the value is the holder named on each item — the bank, insurer or employer that reported the funds. That is a confirmed institutional relationship, and it frequently answers a bank locate you were about to spend hours on.
Voter and resident records
Open voter status →- Held by
- Department of State
- Cost
- Free
Individual registration status lookup. Confirms whether a named person is registered and in which county.
Pennsylvania sells the full voter file rather than publishing it, and restricts its use, so treat this as a one-subject confirmation tool.
Public records requests in Pennsylvania
- Statute
- 65 P.S. § 67.101 et seq. (Right-to-Know Law)
- Response deadline
- Five business days
- Appeal to
- Office of Open Records
- Appeal window
- 15 business days from the denial
Pennsylvania has one of the better enforcement structures in the country. An agency must respond within five business days, and if it says nothing that silence is a deemed denial you can appeal.
Appeals go to the Office of Open Records, an independent agency that issues binding determinations. It costs nothing to file and you don’t need a lawyer. That combination — a real deadline, a free appeal, and a decision-maker who can order release — is rare.
You have 15 business days from the denial to appeal, and that one is strict. Miss it and your only route back is a fresh request.
What Pennsylvania will not give you
- Records sealed under Clean Slate. Automatic sealing of many older non-violent convictions. They won’t appear on a public PATCH check.
- Driver and vehicle records. Closed under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.
- Juvenile records. Not public.
- Criminal investigative records. Broadly exempt from the Right-to-Know Law, which is the biggest weakness in an otherwise strong statute.
- The full voter file. Sold rather than published, with use restrictions attached.
Related
- Ohio — the same two-tier court trap, without a statewide search
- New York — no unified case search at all
- Appealing a public records denial
- UCC filings name the lender
- Reading a civil docket
Fees and procedures verified August 2026. Clerks change their counter rules more often than the statutes change — call before you drive.