Public Records · Compare
NextRequest, GovQA, and JustFOIA are project management tools for records requests. Common Sense is AI that finds the documents, reviews them, and prepares the redactions — for every department in your agency.
See it run on your recordsRequest tracking software
NextRequest, GovQA, and JustFOIA give your staff a better place to do the same manual work:
When the clock runs, your staff still search every system, read every page, and place every redaction. The software watches the statutory deadline while they do it.
Common Sense
Everything a tracker does, plus AI that performs the fulfillment work itself:
Your staff review finished work and approve every release. The deadline takes care of itself.
| Common Sense | NextRequest | GovQA | JustFOIA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managing requests — table stakes | ||||
| Public request portal with status tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Statutory deadline tracking and reminders | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Routing and task assignment across departments | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Invoicing, payments, and audit trails | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Doing the work | ||||
| AI clarifies vague requests with the requester before staff see them | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI searches email, document management, and legacy systems for responsive records | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI reviews every document for responsiveness and exemptions, with legal citations | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI prepares redactions under your state's law for staff approval | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Routine requests fulfilled automatically, end to end | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Decentralized workflows across departments | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Adaptive legal rule sets tuned to your state and jurisdiction | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Smart redactions that get smarter over time | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Every major file type included — video, audio, PDF, email, and more | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Comparison based on each vendor's public product marketing as of August 2026. If we've gotten something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it: support@commonsensetech.ai.
Most agencies end up with records requests scattered across tools: police records in one system, clerk requests in another, and everything else in inboxes and spreadsheets. Common Sense handles every request type in one house — body-cam and incident reports, fire records, permits, personnel files, contracts, and "any and all" requests alike.
And it works the way your agency actually does: decentralized. Each department keeps its own intake, its own reviewers, and its own approval chain, instead of being forced through one central queue. Leadership gets one system of record across all of it.
Los Altos Hills brought us 8,483 documents in one request. We saved them 99 hours and $7,900 of staff time, leaving only 30 documents requiring close human review.
A request tracker would have watched the statutory deadline while staff read all 8,483 documents themselves.
See it run on your records →We migrate your requests
Open and historical requests come over from NextRequest, GovQA, or JustFOIA so nothing is lost mid-deadline and your compliance history stays intact.
Consolidate your portal spend
One platform replaces the tracker plus the add-ons quoted around it — risk modules, redaction seats, separate video licenses. Everything your current system does is included.
Pricing built for agency budgets
No per-seat redaction licenses and no module-by-module quotes. Most agencies see ROI within weeks from staff time savings alone.
Yes. Common Sense includes everything those systems do — public portal, request tracking, statutory deadline management, routing, payments, audit trails — and then does the fulfillment work on top: finding responsive records, reviewing them for exemptions, and preparing redactions for staff approval.
Yes. We migrate your open and historical requests from your current system so nothing is lost mid-deadline, and most agencies consolidate onto Common Sense to reduce portal spend since we handle everything their existing tracker does.
No. Each department keeps its own intake, reviewers, and approval chain. Police records staff process their requests their way, the clerk processes theirs, and leadership sees everything in one system of record.
Your staff, always. AI prepares the work — discovery, responsiveness review, exemption analysis, redactions — but nothing is released without human approval, and every action is logged.