Edu APIaustlii.edu.au ↗
Access Australian court judgments via the AustLII API. Browse databases by jurisdiction, filter cases by year, and retrieve full text with citations and metadata.
What is the Edu API?
The AustLII API provides 5 endpoints for discovering and extracting Australian legal case data from austlii.edu.au. The get_case_full_text endpoint returns structured judgment metadata — including medium neutral citation, court name, judges, catchwords, and the complete body text — alongside endpoints to enumerate databases by jurisdiction, list available years, and retrieve prioritized download links in RTF, PDF, or print-friendly formats.
No input parameters required.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/6c24f681-35dd-4b59-b1c9-216b3fc16289/list_databases' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Lists all available legal databases on AustLII organized by jurisdiction and category. Returns database names, URLs, and path identifiers that can be used with other endpoints.
No input parameters required.
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"databases": "array of objects with jurisdiction, category, database_name, url, and path"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"databases": [
{
"url": "https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/cth/HCA/",
"path": "cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/cth/HCA",
"category": "Cth Case law",
"jurisdiction": "Commonwealth of Australia",
"database_name": "High Court of Australia 1903-"
}
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the Edu API
Database Discovery and Navigation
The list_databases endpoint returns every legal database on AustLII organized into jurisdiction and category groupings. Each entry includes a database_name, a url, and a path string — that path value feeds directly into get_database_years and list_cases. Running get_database_years with a path like cgi-bin/viewdb/au/cases/cth/HCA returns an array of year strings in descending order, giving you an accurate picture of how far back coverage extends for any given court or tribunal.
Listing and Fetching Cases
list_cases accepts a required path and an optional year parameter (four-digit string, e.g. 2024). Without a year filter it returns the default listing for the database; with one it narrows results to that year. The response includes a cases array of objects with title and url fields, plus a count integer. Those URLs pass directly to get_case, which resolves download links for rtf, pdf, and eco_friendly_print formats, returning a priority_download_url that favors RTF, then eco-friendly print, then PDF.
Full Text and Structured Metadata
get_case_full_text is the most data-rich endpoint. It returns medium_neutral_citation (e.g. [2004] HCA 52), parallel_citations as an array of strings, court, title, judges, judgment_date, catchwords, and the complete judgment body as plain text — headnote, orders, and all numbered paragraphs included. This makes it suitable for full-text indexing, citation graph construction, or feeding judgment text into downstream NLP pipelines.
Coverage Scope
Coverage spans Australian federal and state jurisdictions, including High Court, Federal Court, Family Court, and state Supreme Courts, among others. The available databases and their year ranges vary — use list_databases and get_database_years to confirm what is available for a specific court before querying case listings.
The Edu API is a managed, monitored endpoint for austlii.edu.au — not a raw scraper you maintain. Every endpoint is automatically health-checked on a schedule, and when austlii.edu.au changes and a check fails, the API is automatically queued for repair and re-verified. It is built to keep working as the site underneath it changes.
This isn't an official austlii.edu.au API — it's an independent, maintained REST wrapper over public data. Where the source has no official API (or only a limited one), Parse gives you a stable contract over a source that never promised one, and keeps it current. Need a new endpoint or field? You can revise it yourself in plain English and the agent rebuilds it against the live site in minutes — contributing the change back to the shared API is free.
Will this API break when the source site changes?+
Is this an official API from the source site?+
Can I fix or extend this API myself if I need a new endpoint or field?+
What happens if I call an endpoint that has an issue?+
- Building a citation graph by extracting
medium_neutral_citationandparallel_citationsacross High Court judgments - Archiving judgments in RTF or PDF using
priority_download_urlfromget_casefor a specified year range - Populating a legal research tool with full judgment text via
get_case_full_textfor keyword or semantic search indexing - Auditing coverage gaps by comparing years returned by
get_database_yearsagainst an internal case inventory - Filtering catchword topics across a court database by iterating
list_casesand callingget_case_full_textfor thecatchwordsfield - Generating structured datasets of Australian case metadata (court, judge, date) for academic or policy research
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 200 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 100 req/min |
| Team | $300/mo | 20,000 | 300 req/min |
| Company | $1,000/mo | 100,000 | 500 req/min |
Each endpoint has a fixed posted price per successful call — most fall between 1 and 10 credits — shown on this API's page before you run it. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does AustLII have an official developer API?+
What does `get_case_full_text` return beyond the judgment body?+
body, the endpoint returns medium_neutral_citation, parallel_citations (an array of strings), court, title, judges, judgment_date, and catchwords. These fields are returned as discrete, typed values rather than embedded in raw text, so each can be queried or stored independently.Does `list_cases` support pagination or return all cases at once?+
cases array and a count integer for the given path and optional year filter. There are no page or offset parameters currently exposed. For databases with large year listings, filtering by year is the primary way to reduce result size. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to add pagination parameters if your use case requires iterating large result sets.Does the API support full-text search across AustLII cases?+
Are tribunal decisions and legislative databases included, or only court judgments?+
list_databases returns all databases organized by jurisdiction and category, which on AustLII includes tribunals, legislation, and journals alongside court judgments. However, get_case_full_text and get_case are designed around case document URLs; metadata fields like medium_neutral_citation and judges are specific to judgment documents and may not populate meaningfully for legislative or secondary-material URLs.