DocketEye
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New York & New Jersey · service of process on an LLC

The state already knows where to mail your lawsuit. Do you?

In New York the Secretary of State is the agent for service on every LLC from the day it is formed. A plaintiff serves Albany, and the state mails the papers to the address you filed at formation. Service is legally complete whether or not that letter reaches you.

Free, and there is nothing to fill in but a company name — no account, no card. Address read-back is New York today: New Jersey's free search does not publish the registered agent address.

We never ask for your EIN or your Social Security number. We do not collect them and we do not store them.

Where the record comes from

New York publishes its Corporation and Business Entity Database as open data. We read the same rows, live, with no key and no login. New Jersey’s free name search is read the same way.

What a service-of-process address is

It is the address the Department of State mails process to when the Secretary of State is served on your company’s behalf. It is often a formation service, a first office, or an agent whose arrangement has since lapsed.

What this check cannot tell you

Whether anyone opens the mail at that address, whether it is forwarded, or whether a case has already been filed. It reports a register. Everything it cannot see is named on this page and on the coverage page.

01 How it happens

A default judgment needs nothing from you at all

DocketEye reads the address the state holds for a company, tells you plainly what the register says, and watches the court sources named further down this page — one by one, with the gap in each one printed beside it.

Service on a New York LLC — the law's track and the mail's track 1 · A lawsuit is filed Someone sues your company. 2 · Albany is served The Secretary of State is the agent for service on every LLC. N.Y. LLC LAW §303 · N.Y. BCL §306 THE LAW — THIS HAPPENS EITHER WAY Service is legally complete when Albany is served The case moves forward without you Default judgment. The account is restrained. THE MAIL — THIS IS THE PART THAT FAILS Albany mails the papers to the address you filed at formation 123 OLD BROADWAY The letter does not reach you Service on a New York LLC — the law's track and the mail's track 1 · A lawsuit is filed Someone sues your company. 2 · Albany is served The Secretary of State is the agent for service on every LLC. N.Y. LLC LAW §303 · N.Y. BCL §306 THE LAW — THIS HAPPENS EITHER WAY Service is legally complete when Albany is served The case moves forward without you Default judgment. The account is restrained. THE MAIL — THIS IS THE PART THAT FAILS Albany mails the papers to the address you filed at formation 123 OLD BROADWAY The letter does not reach you
Service on a New York LLC. The upper track runs whether or not the lower one does. That is not a loophole and it is not anybody's mistake — it is how the statute is written, and it is the whole reason this product exists. The plaintiff's obligation ends at step 2; most owners learn of the case when a bank account is restrained or a title search turns up a lien.

New Jersey works the same way, with less warning

Service is by mail to the registered office — the same address whose failure caused the problem — and it completes at the earliest of receipt, return receipt, or five days after the papers are deposited with USPS.

N.J.S.A. 42:2C-89 also means New Jersey cannot send an electronic notice of service the way New York now can: the LLC Act does not authorise electronic delivery of court pleadings. There is no equivalent signal to subscribe to, at any price.

N.J.S.A. 42:2C-17(e) · N.J.S.A. 42:2C-89

The cheapest fix is a $30 filing, and we do not sell it

If the address the state holds is wrong, correcting it is a Certificate of Change filed with the Department of State. Thirty dollars. You file it yourself, or your attorney does.

Reading your address back to you is free here and needs no court data at all. What to do about anything you find is a question for an attorney: DocketEye does not give legal advice, and DocketEye is not a registered agent.

N.Y. LLC LAW §303 · N.Y. BCL §306

02 Four steps

None of which requires you to have done anything wrong

Nobody has to hide from you, lie to you, or fail to find you. Each step below is somebody following the statute exactly as it is written.

1

An address was filed once, at formation

Under LLC Law §303 and BCL §306 the Secretary of State is the agent for service on every New York LLC, and the state forwards process to the address on file. For a great many companies that address is a lawyer's old office, a first apartment, or a formation service whose account lapsed years ago. Nothing prompts you to revisit it.

N.Y. LLC LAW §303 · N.Y. BCL §306

2

Someone sues. Albany is served, and that is service on you

The plaintiff does not have to find you, write to you, or knock on your door. Serving the Secretary of State is service on the company. Two copies of the papers and a fee are handed over in Albany, and the plaintiff's obligation ends there.

3

The state mails it on — to the address it was given, not to you

The Department of State forwards the papers by mail to the service-of-process address in its record. If that record is stale, the letter is posted to a door with somebody else's name on it, and no one involved has done anything irregular.

4

The letter does not arrive. The case runs anyway

Service is legally complete on mailing, not on receipt. Nobody is waiting to hear from you. The case is called, a default is taken, a judgment is entered, and it is docketed. Owners typically learn all of this at once, on the morning a bank account is restrained or a title search turns up a lien against a property they were about to close on.

An alert carries the court, the docket, the caption, the filing date, a link, and a line telling you to consult an attorney. It never contains a deadline, a calculation of one, or advice about what to do — working out what a filing means for you is practising law, and we do not.

03 What we watch

Court by court, with what each source cannot see

This is the whole list. A source that is not in this table is not being read, and the section below names those by hand. We do not describe this product as watching "New York" — that word covers courts nobody publishes.

Sources configured for DocketEye accounts

13 sources · New York and New Jersey
All 13 sources, court by courtwith what each one cannot see
SourceStateWhat it coversWhat it does not seeRuns
S.D.N.Y.
U.S. District Court		 NY Civil cases filed in the Southern District of New York, from the court's own public docket feed. The feed carries the case caption. Most complaint captions name only the first party on each side: in a one-day sample of S.D.N.Y. filings, 25 of 34 ended in "et al". A company named as a later defendant may not appear in the caption we read. configured
hourly
E.D.N.Y.
U.S. District Court		 NY Civil cases filed in the Eastern District of New York. Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y. configured
hourly
N.D.N.Y.
U.S. District Court		 NY Civil cases filed in the Northern District of New York. Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y. configured
hourly
S.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy NY Bankruptcy cases filed in the Southern District of New York. Feed titles are debtor names rather than truncated captions. Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. configured
hourly
E.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy NY Bankruptcy cases filed in the Eastern District of New York. Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. configured
hourly
N.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy NY Bankruptcy cases filed in the Northern District of New York. Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. configured
hourly
W.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy NY Bankruptcy cases filed in the Western District of New York. Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. The district court for the same region publishes no feed at all — see below. configured
hourly
D.N.J.
U.S. District Court		 NJ Civil cases filed in the District of New Jersey. Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y. configured
hourly
D.N.J. Bankruptcy NJ Bankruptcy cases filed in the District of New Jersey. Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. configured
hourly
New York entity change filings NY Filings the Department of State records against your entity, including a change of the address it mails lawsuits to, resignation of a registered agent, and dissolution by proclamation. Records paperwork filed with the Department of State. It is not a court record and does not show lawsuits. configured
daily
New York State tax warrants NY Tax warrants docketed by the State of New York. A warrant is already a docketed judgment with a lien attached. Centralised filing began 1 July 2025; warrants docketed in a county before that date are not in this source. Filings appear one to five days after docketing. not running yet
daily, once it starts
New York City agency judgments NY Judgments docketed by New York City agencies against a named respondent. City agency matters only. It is not a court docket. not running yet
daily, once it starts
New York Supreme Court, new cases NY New civil cases filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, county by county. Supreme Court only. It does not include New York City Civil Court, small claims, housing court, or the 1,174 town and village courts. One of New York's 62 county Supreme Courts is not reachable through this source. not running yet
daily, once it starts

"Configured" means a collector is set up for that source. It changes to "running" here only once that source has actually finished a successful run, and it says "not running yet" until one has. Once you have an account, the same table inside the app shows the date each source last finished a run and flags any that is overdue.

See what we watch, court by court

04 What we do not watch

Not covered — read this part

Every line below is a court or a case type we do not read. None of them is a roadmap item dressed up as a limitation; where something is permanent, it says so.

Why a company can be sued and never appear in the caption we read 1:26-cv-04821 · S.D.N.Y. · FILED SEP 16 ACME SUPPLY CO. v. 118 CLIFTON AVE LLC et al everyone else is behind these two words NOT IN THE CAPTION WE READ SECOND DEFENDANT MERIDIAN 42 HOLDINGS LLC — the company you watch FOURTH DEFENDANT Why a company can be sued and never appear in the caption we read 1:26-cv-04821 · S.D.N.Y. · FILED SEP 16 ACME SUPPLY CO. v. 118 CLIFTON AVE LLC et al everyone else is behind these two words NOT IN THE CAPTION WE READ SECOND DEFENDANT MERIDIAN 42 HOLDINGS LLC — the company you watch FOURTH DEFENDANT
The widest gap we have. Most complaint captions name only the first party on each side. In a one-day sample of S.D.N.Y. filings, 25 of 34 ended in "et al". If your company is the fourth defendant, the caption we read may not contain its name at all.
NOT COVERED

Read this part as carefully as the table

  • W.D.N.Y. (U.S. District Court) — this court publishes no public docket feed. District cases filed in Western New York are not watched. Its bankruptcy court is covered, and is in the table above.
  • New York City Civil Court, including small claims and housing court. A large share of consumer-debt and landlord matters live here and we do not read it.
  • New York's 1,174 town and village courts. No online record of these exists anywhere, for anyone, at any price. This is a permanent gap, not a roadmap item.
  • New Jersey state courts. The Judiciary's notice of 19 March 2024 revokes all system access for any user automating it, so we do not touch njcourts.gov. New Jersey coverage today is the two federal courts named above and nothing else.
  • Cases served the old way. Personal delivery, a sheriff at your door, or mail sent straight to your office produce no feed entry at the moment of service. We see the case when it reaches a docket we read, if it reaches one.
  • Companies named behind "et al". The widest gap we have, drawn in the figure above: a company sued as a later defendant may not appear in the caption we read.
  • The New Jersey address check. The state's free search does not publish the registered agent address, so the address read-back is New York only.

We do not promise how fast an alert arrives or that a filing will be found. What we will do is print what runs, when it last ran, and what it does not see — on this page, on the coverage page, and inside your account.

05 Pricing

Priced by state, because that is what it costs us

One pull of a court's new filings serves one customer or ten thousand identically. Your tenth company in the same state costs us nothing extra; a second state is a second integration. So the price follows states, not companies — and it is one annual invoice for the whole portfolio, never one per company.

$99per year

Single

One company, in one state.

A second company is an upgrade to the portfolio plan, not an add-on.

$499per year

Portfolio

Up to 25 companies, in one state. $25 a year for each company beyond 25.

Twenty companies cost $499, not $1,000. This is the plan almost every multi-entity owner lands on, and it is why the price is not per company.

+$199per year, per state

Additional state

Added to either plan. Court watching in that state begins when its coverage begins, not when the company was added.

Added part-way through a year, what it costs for the rest of that year is settled on the invoice before it is raised.

What is free, and stays free

  • The company lookup at the top of this page — no account, no card.
  • Reading back the service-of-process address New York holds for a company.
  • Creating an account, and adding the companies you own.
  • Re-running that address check yourself, whether or not you ever buy a plan.

Court watching is the part that needs a plan, and it begins the day the plan starts — not the day you added the company.

There is no checkout on this site yet. No page here takes a card. A plan is arranged and invoiced by hand: write to support@docketeye.com and a person answers. We would rather say that here than let you find it at the end of a signup.

The terms, in the open

  • Our liability is capped at the fees you paid us.
  • Consequential damages are excluded.
  • Claims must be brought within one year.
  • We are not your registered agent, and we do not accept service for you.
  • We do not give legal advice and nothing we send is advice.

There is no pay-out promise attached to being sued. A product that pays you when a fortuitous event happens is insurance, and we are not an insurer. The full text is in the terms.

Start with the free half

Type a company name at the top of this page and read the address a lawsuit would be mailed to. No account, no card, and no court data needed to answer that question. Watching the courts is the part that needs a plan, and it is offered after the answer, not before it.

Check a company Sign in

DocketEye is not a law firm, not a registered agent, and not a consumer reporting agency. The lookup reads a public business filing; it is not a people search, and it may not be used for credit, employment, housing, insurance or tenant-screening purposes. You may only add companies you own or control to a watchlist.