BuyCrash: Fees by State & How to Find Your Crash Report

BuyCrash is the online storefront where police agencies sell copies of their crash reports. It is owned and operated by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and agencies sign contracts to distribute reports through it, so it is a legitimate service — not a scam — even though the URL and the idea of paying for a public record surprise most people who are sent there.

The service has changed hands, which explains the confusing mix of names you may see. It began as buycrash.com, built by Open Portal Solutions of Louisville, which ran statewide collision-report systems in states including Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee. The business later became part of Appriss, and LexisNexis Risk Solutions then acquired the crash-reports group and folded it into its insurance-data division, rebranding the product from “Police Reports” to “LexisNexis BuyCrash.” Today the platform lives at buycrash.lexisnexisrisk.com, and the old buycrash.com address points there.

One caution: because “buy crash report” is a valuable search phrase, a number of lookalike sites imitate the name. If the domain does not end in lexisnexisrisk.com or lexisnexis.com, you are not on the platform your police department actually uses — you are on a reseller or a marketing site that may charge more, deliver nothing, or collect your information.

For LexisNexis, your crash report is also data: the company’s own product literature advertises a database of 82 million accident reports, growing by more than 35,000 reports every day, which it packages into analytics for insurers and law enforcement. That context matters when you decide whether to buy through the middleman or go to the agency directly — and BuyCrash is only one of five LexisNexis systems that touch your accident (our LexisNexis police reports guide maps the rest, including the free C.L.U.E. file you’re entitled to see).

You need three things: the right agency, the right timing, and a couple of identifiers from the crash. Most failed searches get one of those wrong. Here is the exact sequence that works.

There is no single BuyCrash price: each agency sets its own fee, and part of what you pay is a platform convenience charge. Verified 2026 prices run from $6 in Gwinnett County, Georgia to $15 in Alabama. The clearest example of the online premium is Griffith, Indiana, where the identical report costs $10 at the police department counter and $12 through BuyCrash.

Every figure below was verified against the linked official source in July 2026 — agency and state sites, not other blogs. The last column is the part most pages skip: what the same document costs when you skip the middleman.

Sources: state and agency pages listed in the Sources section below. Fees change; agencies’ own sites control.

The crash report itself is a public record written by a government employee; what you are paying for on BuyCrash is hosting, instant delivery, and — depending on the contract — a share for the agency. Sometimes the agency’s share is zero: Gwinnett County, Georgia says plainly that its police department and the county receive no revenue from the online service.

The fee pipeline has also gone badly wrong. In 2020, LexisNexis paid Florida $9.8 million to resolve whistleblower allegations that it systematically underreported how many crash reports it sold under its state contract and kept the statutorily required $10-per-report fee owed to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles — an internal company presentation described repeat sales whose fees weren’t forwarded as “100% profit to us.” Florida terminated the contract in June 2019 and now runs its own crash portal.

A year earlier, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Tennessee, and the City of Baltimore reached a separate $5.8 million settlement over the same practice: from June 2012 through May 2019, LexisNexis paid law-enforcement agencies for only the first sale of a crash report and pocketed the agency fee on every resale of the same document.

None of this makes buying your report unsafe — the document you receive is the genuine report. But it explains why several states pulled out and built their own portals, and it is a fair thing to know before deciding whom to pay.

Nine times out of ten, a missing report means the officer hasn’t finished it yet. BuyCrash only lists a report 24–48 hours after the agency completes and approves it, and completion itself takes days to weeks: Lexington, Kentucky tells drivers reports may be available 5 days after filing, Georgia agencies typically post within 3–5 business days, Tennessee estimates about 7 business days, and Washington allows officers 2–4 weeks to finish an investigation.

If enough time has passed and the search still comes up empty, work through these:

• Wrong agency. City police, county sheriff, and state patrol each sell their own reports. If the state patrol worked your crash, searching the city PD finds nothing — and vice versa.
• The agency doesn’t use BuyCrash. Coverage is agency-by-agency outside the core states. Florida, Tennessee, and Washington crashes are on state portals, not BuyCrash, Ohio’s are on the state’s own free retrieval site, and many departments — especially in the Northeast — post reports through CARFAX’s CrashDocs instead (see our CrashDocs guide).
• A field doesn’t match. Name spellings, hyphenated last names, and off-by-one crash dates (a crash just after midnight) all break exact-match searches. Try the other driver’s last name or a different identifier.
• Confidentiality rules. Some states restrict who can retrieve a report at all — in Florida, crash reports are confidential for 60 days under Statute 316.066 except to involved parties, their attorneys, and insurers.
• It’s genuinely stuck. Fatality and DUI investigations take longer. Call the agency’s records unit and ask whether the report has been approved; that also confirms you have the right agency and case number.

For a purchase that went through but never downloaded, contact BuyCrash support at 1-866-215-2771 or support.buycrash@lexisnexisrisk.com.

No. BuyCrash is a convenience layer, never the only copy. The agency that wrote your report must release it under your state’s public-records law, and three cheaper routes exist almost everywhere.

• The agency’s records unit. Walk in or mail a request. Kentucky State Police mails collision reports for $5; Lexington PD charges $5 by mail versus $10 online; Tennessee THP district offices charge $4 versus $10 on the state site. The document is identical.
• Your insurer or attorney. Carriers pull crash reports routinely as authorized parties — if you have an open claim, the adjuster can usually attach the report at no cost to you, and your attorney can always obtain it.
• State portals and free systems. Ohio’s Department of Public Safety runs a statewide crash-retrieval site where many reports download free. States that left LexisNexis — Florida, Tennessee, Washington — sell directly through FLHSMV, PurchaseTNcrash.gov, and WSP’s WRECR.

The catch with the do-it-yourself path is knowing which agency to ask and what your state’s exact rules are — overlapping jurisdictions (city limits, county roads, interstates) mean crashes a mile apart can belong to three different agencies with three different processes. Our national accident-report guide covers the jurisdiction decoder and every state’s channels in one place.

Crash reports are not open to everyone, because they contain addresses, license numbers, and insurance details. Access is generally limited to involved drivers and passengers, vehicle owners, parents or guardians of involved minors, and the insurers and attorneys representing them — Lexington, Kentucky, for example, releases reports only to individuals involved in the collision.

Florida has the strictest published rule we verified: under Florida Statute 316.066, crash reports stay confidential for 60 days after filing. Involved parties, their counsel, and their insurers can get the report immediately, but they must sign a sworn statement that it won’t be used for commercial solicitation during the window — the statute exists to stop “accident chasers” from mining fresh reports for sales leads. After 60 days the report becomes a public record.

Practically, this means two things: have your ID and your role in the crash ready when you buy, and be suspicious of anyone who cold-contacts you claiming they “pulled your report” days after a crash — in restricted states, legitimate strangers couldn’t have.

For an injury claim, the crash report is the single most consequential document in the file. Adjusters read the contributing-factor codes, the diagram, the citation section, and the officer’s narrative before they decide what your claim is worth — and a wrong code or an ambiguous diagram routinely costs claimants real money. The report doesn’t decide fault by itself, but it anchors every negotiation that follows.

That is why the smart order of operations is: get the report, read every field, and have someone who interprets these documents professionally explain what its codes mean for your specific claim before you speak to the other driver’s insurer.

Every fee, statute, and date on this page was verified against the following official sources on July 27, 2026. Fees and processes change; the agency’s own site always controls.

• LexisNexis Risk Solutions — BuyCrash product page
• LexisNexis Support Center — Overview of LexisNexis BuyCrash Accident Reports (formerly Police Reports)
• Indiana State Police — Crash Reports
• Town of Griffith, Indiana — Purchase Crash Reports Online
• City of Lexington, Kentucky — Traffic Collision Reports
• Georgia Department of Public Safety — Charging Fees for Open Records Requests
• Gwinnett County, Georgia — Accident Reports Now Online
• Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security — Obtaining a Crash Report
• Tennessee Department of Safety — Purchase TN Crash Website Available for Crash Reports (2019)
• Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles — Traffic Crash Reports
• Florida Statutes § 316.066 (crash report confidentiality)
• Florida Attorney General — Millions Secured after Company Kept FLHSMV Fees for Profit
• New York Attorney General — $5.8 Million Multistate Settlement with LexisNexis (2019)
• Washington State Patrol — Collision Records (WRECR)
• Ohio Department of Public Safety — Statewide Crash Retrieval
• Alabama Law Enforcement Agency — Crash Report Request

This guide is informational and is not legal advice. FindAccidentReport.com is sponsored by personal-injury attorneys; see our editorial standards for how we research and fund our guides.