New Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 Filings from PACER RSS Feeds

The source and its limits

Courts used in this guide, from the Actor's registry (sweep of 2026-10-17):

The input below uses the four with feeds of every entry type. Of the others, the New Jersey feed's advertised types do not include a petition type, and the Eastern District of Virginia and Northern District of Illinois bankruptcy feeds did not answer from a datacenter IP at the sweep. The Actor still tries any court you name, and the run's summary says what each one returned.

How bankruptcy entries are read

• Most bankruptcy courts put a prefix before the entry text, for example Type: bk Office: 1 Chapter: 7 Trustee: …. The Actor reads bankruptcyChapter, trustee and office from it, or the chapter from the entry text.
• bankruptcyChapters keeps entries under the chapters you list (7, 9, 11, 12, 13 or 15). Entries without a chapter are dropped when it is set.
• newCasesOnly keeps document number 1 of each case, which in a bankruptcy case is the petition. caseTypes: ["bankruptcy"] leaves out adversary proceedings, which have their own case type.
• Bankruptcy case numbers often have no type code (26-11511), and some courts append judge initials or the chapter. The Actor keeps the number as published and adds a normalized caseNumberShort.

Limits worth knowing

• Each feed covers only the trailing 24 hours. Schedule hourly or at least daily.
• The feed carries the case title and the short docket text only; open docketUrl on PACER for the filing itself.
• This page describes public docket data and how to filter it. It is not legal or financial advice.

Fields you get

Example output

Shape of a new Chapter 11 petition record (field names from the Actor; the debtor and numbers are placeholders):

{
  "recordType": "docket-entry",
  "court": "deb",
  "courtName": "U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware",
  "courtType": "bankruptcy",
  "state": "DE",
  "caseNumber": "26-10000",
  "caseNumberShort": "26-10000",
  "caseTitle": "Example Holdings, Inc.",
  "caseType": "bankruptcy",
  "bankruptcyChapter": 11,
  "trustee": null,
  "office": "1",
  "entryText": "Voluntary Petition",
  "entryCategory": "petition",
  "documentNumber": 1,
  "docketUrl": "https://ecf.deb.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/DktRpt.pl?000000",
  "likelyNewCase": true,
  "matchedFilters": [
    "caseType:bankruptcy",
    "chapter:11",
    "newCase"
  ],
  "isNew": true,
  "source": "pacer-rss"
}

Use cases

Hourly Chapter 11 alerts

Schedule the input below hourly with a webhookUrl. Only petitions not seen on earlier runs are sent.

Chapter 7 only, one court

Set courts: ["deb"] and bankruptcyChapters: ["7"] for the README's ready-made Delaware Chapter 7 feed.

Every live court in a state

Use a state code such as courts: ["TX"], which expands to every court in that state with a live feed at the last sweep, district courts included. caseTypes: ["bankruptcy"] keeps only bankruptcy cases.

How to run it

You need an Apify account and its API token (Console → Settings → API & Integrations). Each run is billed per result to your account; set a maximum total charge for the run to cap spend.

With curl

The sync endpoint starts a run, waits up to 300 seconds and returns the dataset items. New Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 petitions in four bankruptcy courts, new since the last run:

export APIFY_TOKEN=<your Apify API token>

curl -sS -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/owlabee~pacer-docket-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APIFY_TOKEN}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "courts": [
    "deb",
    "nysb",
    "txsb",
    "txnb"
  ],
  "caseTypes": [
    "bankruptcy"
  ],
  "bankruptcyChapters": [
    "11",
    "7"
  ],
  "newCasesOnly": true,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "stateStoreName": "new-ch11-ch7-petitions",
  "maxEntriesPerCourt": 500,
  "notifyOnlyOnResults": true
}'

From an AI agent (MCP)

Apify hosts an MCP server. This config exposes only this Actor to the agent:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "owlabee-pacer-docket-monitor": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=owlabee/pacer-docket-monitor",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${APIFY_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask, for example: Alert me every hour to new Chapter 11 petitions filed in Delaware (deb) and SDNY Bankruptcy (nysb), only ones not seen before.

Python, Node.js and more examples

Runnable curl.sh, python.py, node.mjs and mcp.json files for this Actor are in examples/pacer-docket-monitor on GitHub.

No code: Zapier, Make or n8n

Apify's official apps on these platforms can run this Actor and pass its results on. Step-by-step recipes: Get New PACER Docket Entries in Slack with Zapier.

FAQ

Where does the chapter come from?

From the "Chapter:" prefix most bankruptcy courts publish before the entry text, or from the entry text itself.

Why are adversary proceedings left out?

They have their own case type, adversary. Remove caseTypes, or add adversary, to include them.

Does the first run send everything?

The first run with onlyNewSinceLastRun is a baseline. Later runs emit only entries not seen before.

Can I watch for a specific debtor?

Yes. partyKeywords matches the case title, and caseNumbers follows one case.

Is this legal or financial advice?

No. It describes public docket data and how to filter it.