Compare
Docket Alarm vs Trellis
Docket Alarm leads with broad, affordable document and docket access; Trellis leads with deeper analytics for state and local trial courts.
Side by side
| Docket Alarm | Trellis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Fastcase (Docket Alarm) | Trellis.Law, Inc. | ||||||||
| Pricing model | Free tier + paid plans | Quote only | ||||||||
| Free tier | Yes | No | ||||||||
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud | ||||||||
| Open source | No | No | ||||||||
| Best for | Litigators who need broad, affordable access to court dockets and filings alongside case analytics. | Litigators and legal-ops teams needing judge and case analytics specifically for state and local courts. | ||||||||
| Pricing | Free plan with limited weekly actions; paid Pay-As-You-Go, per-user Flat-Fee, and volume-based Enterprise plans. PACER/state court document fees billed separately.
Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget. | Subscription licensing by state coverage and seats; not published. Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site. | ||||||||
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Verdict
Docket Alarm and Trellis both give litigators visibility beyond the federal-court-centric tools in this category, but they lead with different strengths. Docket Alarm's core product is direct, often flat-fee access to court dockets and filed documents themselves — PACER federal filings, state courts, and administrative bodies like the PTAB and TTAB — with litigation and motion-outcome analytics layered on top of that document access. Trellis is built the other way around: its focus is analytics depth specifically for state and local trial courts, where the large majority of U.S. litigation actually happens and where docket data has historically been harder to aggregate than the federal system, tracking judges, motion grant/deny rates and case timelines at the county level.
Choose Docket Alarm if
- You need broad, affordable access to filed documents and dockets — federal, state and administrative — not just analytics.
- A transparent, published pricing structure (including a free tier and a flat per-user plan) matters more than best-in-class state-court analytics.
- PTAB or TTAB filing access is part of what you need alongside general litigation research.
Choose Trellis if
- Most of your matters are filed in state or county trial courts, where Trellis's analytics depth is the stated specialty.
- You need judge-level motion grant/deny rates and case-timeline data specific to state litigation, not just document access.
- Outside-counsel benchmarking for state-court litigation specifically is a recurring need for your legal-ops team.
What they share
Both position themselves as more accessible alternatives to the federal-court-centric, publisher-owned tools in this category (Lex Machina, Westlaw Precision, LexisNexis Context) covered in Lex Machina vs Westlaw Precision. Trellis does not publish pricing; Docket Alarm is the exception in this category for transparency, with a free tier, a pay-as-you-go rate that bills document and alert fees separately, and a flat per-user monthly plan with those costs included. See the legal analytics tool guide for how court coverage should shape the rest of your shortlist.
Last reviewed September 22, 2026