“Yes — in Rakesh Sharma v. State of Punjab, (2016) 9 SCC 428, the Supreme Court capped anticipatory bail at ninety days.”
Fluent. Confident. And the citation does not exist.*
For one advocate paying out of their own pocket, the arithmetic is this. SCC Online's published AI Pro plan is ₹51,500 per user per year plus 18% GST. Manupatra publishes no annual individual price at all. Indian Kanoon is free. Lawgger is ₹19,999 a year and carries research, live court boards, cause lists, drafting, limitation clocks, matters and billing in one subscription. What the incumbents still hold and Lawgger does not is decades of editorial headnotes and parallel citations. Prices verified July 2026 — verify current figures with each vendor.
Below: what each one actually costs a single user, a feature-by-feature matrix, and an honest note on when you should choose someone else. Our own price is on the pricing page, in rupees, without a sales call.
The same law of the land. Very different bills — and very different platforms at the end of them.
Firm-library quotes of ₹1.5–3 lakh a year are real, but they are multi-seat institutional figures — not what one advocate is offered. So this table uses published single-user pricing only, and says so plainly where a vendor publishes nothing.
Prices verified July 2026
| Platform | Published single-user price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Lawgger | ₹1,999/month or ₹19,999/year | Research with pin-cites and good-law verdicts, live boards for all 25 High Courts, cause lists, CNR tracking, limitation clocks, drafting, matters and billing |
| SCC Online | ₹51,500 per user/year + 18% GST (AI Pro; higher tiers above, discounted starter packages for junior advocates) | Case law research with editorial headnotes and parallel citations |
| Manupatra | Not published for individuals — a 24-hour pass and a pre-paid card are visible; the rest is quoted on request | Case law, statutes and tribunal material |
| LexisNexis India | Not published — quoted on request, typically as a firm or library subscription | Case law and international material |
| Indian Kanoon | Free | Full-text search over reported and unreported judgments |
| Law Finder (Chawla) | Indicative ₹10,000–₹20,000/year | Case law database with citation notes |
| Free government court apps | Free | Case status and cause lists, court by court, with no research layer |
Two things follow. First, the honest gap for a single advocate is roughly ₹40,000 a year against SCC Online, not ₹2.8 lakh. Second, price is not the only axis — read on for where the incumbents genuinely win, or go straight to the full cost breakdown for Indian legal research.
Qualitative reads from public product pages, kept deliberately fair — including the government's own free apps.
Qualitative reads from public product pages, verified July 2026 · ✓ built in · ~ partial · ✕ not offered · verify with vendors.
No platform wins on every axis. Here is where each alternative is genuinely stronger, and what you give up either way.
For finding the law, checking whether an authority still stands and pin-citing it in a brief — yes. Lawgger reads 2.07 crore Indian judgments in full text across the Supreme Court and all 25 High Courts, and every answer carries a paragraph-level pin-cite with a good-law verdict attached.
Choose SCC Online if your practice turns on editorial work: headnotes written by editors, ratio tagging, parallel citations, and reports the bench recognises on sight. That editorial layer has been built over decades and Lawgger does not replicate it. If a judge asks for the SCC citation and you need the SCC report, keep the subscription. Many advocates run both and drop the second research seat. The longer write-up sits on the SCC Online alternative page.
Manupatra's strength is breadth of statutory and tribunal material built up over a long period, and firms with an existing institutional licence rarely have a reason to move. Its weakness for a sole practitioner is that you cannot find out what it costs without asking.
Choose Manupatra if your work is heavily tribunal-led and your chamber already has a licence you are not paying for personally. Choose Lawgger if you want a published price, a 14-day trial with no card, and court data — live display boards, cause lists and CNR tracking — in the same subscription as the research. More detail on the Manupatra alternative page.
Plenty of advocates should not. Indian Kanoon is free, fast, and holds an enormous body of reported and unreported judgments; as a way to pull up a case you already know, it is hard to beat.
Choose Indian Kanoon if you mostly need to pull up a citation you already know and you are content to verify its current status yourself. Add Lawgger if you need the checking layer on top: a good-law verdict on every authority, a Table of Authorities generated from a pasted brief, the limitation clocks, and drafting. See the Indian Kanoon alternative page.
For structuring an argument, summarising a document you paste in, or tightening prose — genuinely useful, and cheaper than any of this. For finding Indian authority — no. A general chatbot composes plausible text; it does not read the judgment. That is how confident, well-formatted citations to cases that do not exist end up in filed briefs, and Indian courts have treated that as the advocate's problem, not the software's.
Choose a general chatbot if you want a drafting assistant and you will supply and verify every authority yourself. Choose Lawgger if you want the citation to be checkable in one click. Background on fabricated citations in Indian courts, and a side-by-side on the ChatGPT for lawyers in India page.
CaseMine and Jhana are Indian AI research products and both are worth a trial; they are search-first tools with AI layered on, without court boards, deadlines or practice management. The free government court apps are excellent for what they do — case status and cause lists, court by court — and Lawgger does not replace the official record, it aggregates it into one view. A broader survey sits on the best legal research tools in India.
One subscription. No per-search charges, no seat-by-seat negotiation, no annual "revised quote". ₹1,999 a month in plain sight — and it covers the research and the practice.
Lawgger answers only from the judgments on file, declines when the law will not support the claim, and every citation opens the page it came from. A general chatbot owes you none of that.
“Yes — in Rakesh Sharma v. State of Punjab, (2016) 9 SCC 428, the Supreme Court capped anticipatory bail at ninety days.”
Fluent. Confident. And the citation does not exist.*
No. A Constitution Bench held that anticipatory bail need not be time-bound — protection can continue till the end of trial.
Sushila Aggarwal v. State (NCT of Delhi), (2020) 5 SCC 1 · ¶ 91
Built only from the judgment on file, with the paragraph pin-cited. The pin-cite opens the page it came from.
*Illustrative fabricated citation — the point is that you would have to check. Lawgger checks first.
SCC Online's published AI Pro plan is ₹51,500 per user per year plus 18% GST, with higher tiers above that; discounted starter packages exist for junior advocates. Lawgger is ₹19,999 a year, all inclusive of research, court data, drafting and practice management. Verify current figures with the vendor before you decide.
Manupatra does not publish an annual price for individual advocates. Publicly visible options include a 24-hour pass and a pre-paid card, with everything else quoted on request. Lawgger's price is published on the site: ₹1,999 a month or ₹19,999 a year, with a 14-day trial and no card. Transparency is part of the comparison.
Indian Kanoon is free and genuinely useful for finding reported and unreported judgments. What it does not give you is a good-law verdict on each authority, a Table of Authorities from a pasted brief, cause lists, live court boards, limitation clocks or drafting. Lawgger adds those; many advocates use both.
SCC Online has decades of editorial headnotes, ratio tagging and parallel citations, and its reports are familiar to every court in the country. Manupatra has a long-established statutory and tribunal collection. If your practice turns on editorial headnotes specifically, that is a real reason to keep the subscription.
General chatbots compose text rather than read judgments, which is why they produce case names that sound right and do not exist. Indian courts have treated the citation of fabricated precedent as a serious matter for the advocate, not a software error. Lawgger answers only from judgments on file, with a pin-cite to the page.
For most single advocates, two line items: a case law subscription and a hearing diary or billing tool. Lawgger carries research with good-law checking, live boards for all 25 High Courts, cause lists, CNR tracking, 21 limitation clocks, 3,500+ drafting formats, matters, billing and GST invoices for ₹19,999 a year.
Fourteen days of the whole platform, no card. If the incumbent still earns its place afterwards, keep it — but you will know why.