What Happened to Casetext? The Shutdown and Your Alternatives

Thomson Reuters shut down the standalone Casetext product on March 31, 2025, less than two years after acquiring the company for 650 million dollars in 2023. Casetext's technology did not disappear. It lives on as CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters' AI assistant, which is now sold in per-user tiers inside the broader Westlaw ecosystem. For the solos, small firms, and litigators who relied on Casetext as an affordable, self-serve research tool, the practical result is that the low-cost standalone option they signed up for no longer exists, and the continuation costs significantly more.

Here is the full timeline, what changed for users, and the alternatives worth shortlisting if you are looking for a replacement.

The Casetext timeline, in brief

Why did Thomson Reuters shut Casetext down?

Thomson Reuters bought Casetext primarily for CoCounsel and the team behind it, not to keep running a low-priced competitor to its own flagship, Westlaw. Once the technology was integrated, maintaining a separate, cheaper Casetext brand alongside Westlaw made little commercial sense. So the standalone product was retired and its AI capabilities were rebuilt into CoCounsel, which Thomson Reuters positions as the AI layer across its professional software, including Westlaw.

That is a rational move for a large vendor. It is a harder outcome for the small firms who chose Casetext precisely because it was independent and affordable.

What Casetext users lost, and what CoCounsel changed

The biggest change is price and packaging. Casetext offered a relatively low, transparent standalone subscription. CoCounsel is sold in per-user tiers, and many small firms report the effective cost is several times what they paid for Casetext, especially once the fuller capabilities are bundled with a Westlaw subscription. We break the numbers down in how much CoCounsel costs, but the short version is roughly 104 to 639 dollars per user per month. If you are a two-lawyer shop, an AI research assistant that assumes you also carry enterprise seats changes the math.

• No more standalone product. You cannot buy Casetext on its own anymore; the path forward is CoCounsel within the Thomson Reuters ecosystem.
• Higher, tiered pricing. Core research and drafting sit in the lower tiers, with the full feature set aligned to Westlaw, so the entry point for a small firm rose.
• A different buying motion. The self-serve, credit-card feel of Casetext gave way to the enterprise sales and packaging that surrounds Westlaw.

Is CoCounsel the same as Casetext?

CoCounsel is built on Casetext's technology and the same team, so it is best understood as the continuation of Casetext rather than a brand-new product. What is different is where it sits and what it costs. Casetext was a standalone, affordable tool aimed at solos and small firms; CoCounsel is an AI assistant embedded in Thomson Reuters' professional suite and priced accordingly. If you loved Casetext for its independence and price, CoCounsel will feel familiar in capability but different in cost and packaging.

The best Casetext alternatives for solos and small firms

If the appeal of Casetext was affordable, self-serve, plain-English research, these are the replacements worth comparing. Prices are current as of July 2026 and change often, so confirm with each vendor.

For a solo or small firm that mainly wants what Casetext used to deliver, an affordable, self-serve tool that answers a question in plain English with cited case law, Casesearch is the closest fit. You ask a legal question the way you would ask a colleague, and you get on-point precedents with plain-language holdings and a still-good-law signal, from 39 dollars per month with no enterprise contract. You can run a question in the console before you decide, and the full breakdown lives on our Casetext alternative page and the head-to-head Casesearch vs Casetext comparison.

One practical note for litigators making the switch: research is only one part of the workload. Many of the same small firms that lost Casetext also spend hours pulling facts out of discovery, and increasingly rely on tools that extract structured data from scanned documents so the manual review is faster. It is worth scoping both when you rebuild your legal-tech stack.

How to choose a replacement in one sentence

If you are already invested in Westlaw, CoCounsel is the natural continuation; if you want the affordable, standalone, plain-English experience Casetext used to offer, start with a self-serve tool like Casesearch and keep a free database such as CourtListener as a backup. For a wider shortlist, see our guide to the best AI legal research tools for small firms.

Frequently asked questions

When did Casetext shut down?

The standalone Casetext product was discontinued on March 31, 2025. Thomson Reuters, which acquired Casetext in August 2023, retired the separate product and continued its technology as the CoCounsel assistant inside the Westlaw ecosystem. Existing Casetext access was migrated toward CoCounsel rather than kept as a standalone tool.

Is Casetext still available?

No, not as a standalone product. Casetext's capabilities now live in CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters' AI assistant, which is sold in per-user tiers connected to the broader Westlaw stack. If you want an independent, self-serve research tool similar to what Casetext offered, you need a different vendor.

What is the best free Casetext alternative?

CourtListener and Google Scholar are free and good for reading raw opinions, but they do not answer questions in plain English or tell you whether a case is still good law. For deadline-driven billable work, a low-cost paid tool that returns cited holdings and a good-law signal is faster and safer than a free keyword database.

How much did Casetext cost versus CoCounsel now?

Casetext offered an affordable, transparent standalone subscription aimed at small firms. CoCounsel is sold in per-user tiers aligned to the Westlaw ecosystem, running roughly 104 to 639 dollars per user per month, which many small firms report is several times higher than Casetext's standalone price. See our full Casesearch vs CoCounsel comparison, and confirm current pricing with Thomson Reuters, since tiers and bundles change. If you were pushed toward vLex's assistant instead, our Casesearch vs Vincent AI comparison weighs that path too.

Casesearch is a legal research tool, not legal advice. Always read the full opinion and verify citations before relying on them.