CyLaw vs DIKIGOROS AI at a glance
| Feature | CyLaw (cylaw.org) | DIKIGOROS AI (dikigoros.ai) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free trial with no card, then plans from €5 a month (Professional €20 a month) |
| Content | Official primary source: judgments, legislation, CPR | Built on the same CyLaw corpus, 95,000+ decisions, 1960–2026 |
| Legislation | Consolidated current text of each law | Consolidated text plus tracked changes for key laws, showing what each amendment changed |
| Search | Boolean keyword (SINO) | AI search plus exact keyword matching, English or Greek |
| Filters | Collection only | Court, district, area of law, outcome, date |
| Citation network | No | Yes, 900,000+ links, forward and backward |
| AI answers and summaries | No | Yes, with verifiable citations |
| English support | Interface only | Search, answers and translation in English |
| Civil procedure | Old CPR, NCPR 2023 and court forms as texts | Old CPR, NCPR 2023 and court forms, searchable with AI answers and linked to the case law |
| Export | Print page | Word and PDF reports with citations |
The right way to use both: start in DIKIGOROS AI to find and rank the authorities, then verify the text on CyLaw before you cite it. You can try DIKIGOROS AI free at dikigoros.ai, no card required.
Key facts about CyLaw
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Website | cylaw.org (search interface also at cylii.org) |
| Operated by | Κυπριακό Ινστιτούτο Νομικής Πληροφόρησης (ΚΙΝΟΠ / CyLII), a non-profit company set up by the Cyprus Bar Association (Παγκύπριος Δικηγορικός Σύλλογος) |
| Founded | January 2002, as a personal initiative of advocate Laris Vrahimis; transferred to the Bar Association / CyLII in 2011 |
| Cost | Free, funded by Cyprus advocates through the Bar Association |
| Language | Greek interface and content; a small English section exists |
| Case law coverage | Supreme Court judgments from 1960 (English-era Cyprus Law Reports back to 1893 via the "Judgments of the Supreme Court" series), Court of Appeal, Supreme Constitutional Court, Administrative Court, International Protection Administrative Court, District Courts, Family, Labour Dispute and Rent Control Courts, plus regulatory bodies |
| Legislation coverage | 4,070 principal laws in consolidated form; most recent principal law 124(I)/2026 (cylaw.org/nomoi, September 2026) |
| Search engine | SINO, the free-text engine built by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) |
What is CyLaw?
CyLaw is the Cyprus Source of Legal Information (Η Κυπριακή Πηγή Νομικής Πληροφόρησης): the official free-access database of Cypriot primary law. It publishes the authentic texts of court judgments as supplied by the courts, without editing, alongside consolidated and numbered legislation.
The service began in January 2002 as a personal project of advocate Laris Vrahimis. In 2011 it was donated to the Cyprus Bar Association, which created the Cyprus Legal Information Institute (ΚΙΝΟΠ, internationally CyLII) to run it. Its judgments are also indexed by N-Lex, the EU portal for national legislation and case law.
What does CyLaw contain?
CyLaw is really two things: a case-law library and a legislation library. Each is split into collections that you can search separately or together.
Case law collections on CyLaw
| Collection (Greek name on the site) | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Αποφάσεις Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου (1893–2023) | The old unified Supreme Court, including the English-language Cyprus Law Reports era |
| Αποφάσεις Νέου Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου | The New Supreme Court created by the 1 July 2023 judicial reform (about 1,260 judgments by mid-2026) |
| Αποφάσεις Νέου Ανωτάτου Συνταγματικού Δικαστηρίου | The New Supreme Constitutional Court (post-2023) |
| Ανώτατο Συνταγματικό Δικαστήριο (1960–1963) | The original Supreme Constitutional Court |
| Αποφάσεις Εφετείου / Διοικητικού Εφετείου | The Court of Appeal (civil, criminal and administrative divisions) |
| Αποφάσεις Διοικητικού Δικαστηρίου | The Administrative Court (from 2016) |
| Διοικητικό Δικαστήριο Διεθνούς Προστασίας | The International Protection Administrative Court (asylum appeals) |
| Αποφάσεις Πρωτόδικων Δικαστηρίων | District Courts (civil and criminal, by district), Family Courts, Labour Dispute Courts, Rent Control Courts, Juvenile Court |
| Regulatory and arbitral bodies | Tender Review Authority (Αναθεωρητική Αρχή Προσφορών), Commission for the Protection of Competition, arbitration awards |
| Judgments of the Supreme Court | The English-language series |
| Αποφάσεις ΔΕΕ (Cellar) and Άρειος Πάγος | Court of Justice of the EU decisions and selected decisions of the Greek Supreme Court |
Legislation collections on CyLaw
- Ενοποιημένη Νομοθεσία (consolidated legislation). Each principal law with all amendments merged into one current text. This is what practitioners use day to day.
- Αριθμημένη Νομοθεσία (numbered legislation). Each law as originally published in the Official Gazette, by number and year.
- Θεσμοί Πολιτικής Δικονομίας (the old Civil Procedure Rules) and Νέοι Κανονισμοί Πολιτικής Δικονομίας (the New Civil Procedure Rules 2023), together with the prescribed court forms (Έντυπα).
- Κανονιστικές Διοικητικές Πράξεις. Secondary legislation and regulatory administrative acts.
- The Constitution and the pre-1960 "Chapters" (ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΑ, cited as Cap. or ΚΕΦ.).
How do you search CyLaw?
CyLaw offers six search modes on its homepage. Pick the mode first, then choose which collection to search, then enter your terms.
- Όλες τις λέξεις (all of the words). Every word must appear. Good for a first pass.
- Οποιαδήποτε από τις λέξεις (any of the words). Widest net; use it for synonyms.
- Την πιο κάτω φράση (exact phrase). Best when you know the wording of a legal test, for example "προσωρινό διάταγμα".
- Σύνθετη έρευνα (Boolean). Full operator syntax, explained below.
- Αναφορά (citation). Enter a report citation such as (2005) 1 Α.Α.Δ. 123 or (1982) 1 C.L.R. 358 to jump straight to a judgment.
- Αναφορά ECLI. Enter a European Case Law Identifier such as ECLI:CY:AD:2016:D218.
Boolean operators that work on CyLaw
CyLaw runs on SINO, so it accepts the same connectors as AustLII. The Greek interface also accepts Greek keywords (και, ή, όχι, κοντά).
| Operator | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
and / και | Both terms in the document | αμέλεια and αποζημιώσεις |
or / ή | Either term | σύμβαση or συμφωνία |
not / όχι | Exclude a term | αμέλεια not τροχαίο |
near / κοντά | Terms within 50 words of each other | Ιωάννου near Γεωργίου |
w/n | Terms within n words | διάταγμα w/10 Mareva |
pre/n | First term precedes second within n words | άρθρο pre/3 113 |
"..." | Exact phrase | "δεδικασμένο" |
* | Wildcard (any string) | ενοικ* finds ενοίκιο, ενοικίαση, ενοικιαστής |
title(...) | Search the judgment title only | title(Τράπεζα Κύπρου) |
Three practical rules save time:
- Search in Greek. Judgments since the late 1980s are written in Greek, so English terms return only the older English-language reports.
- Mind the accents and inflections. SINO matches exact character strings. Use the wildcard
*to cover grammatical endings, and try both accented and unaccented spellings for older scanned material. - Combine
nearwith party names to find a specific case when you only remember who the parties were.
Advanced search
The Προχωρημένη Έρευνα (Advanced Search) page lets you hold Ctrl (or Cmd) to select several collections at once, and to show 10 to 200 results per page. Results are ranked by relevance within the collection; there is no date, court-level or outcome filter, so narrowing by collection is the main way to reduce noise.
How do you find a specific law on CyLaw (Cap. 113, Cap. 154, 118(I)/2002)?
The fastest route is the legislation index at cylaw.org/nomoi (Πίνακες Κυπριακής Νομοθεσίας). Type the title or the number of the law into the "Ανεύρεση Νομοθεσίας" box, or browse alphabetically or by year.
The most searched laws have stable consolidated-text URLs:
| Law | Greek title | Direct link on CyLaw |
|---|---|---|
| Companies Law, Cap. 113 | Ο περί Εταιρειών Νόμος (ΚΕΦ.113) | cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/0_113/full.html |
| Criminal Code, Cap. 154 | Ο περί Ποινικού Κώδικα Νόμος (ΚΕΦ.154) | cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/0_154/full.html |
| Contract Law, Cap. 149 | Ο περί Συμβάσεων Νόμος (ΚΕΦ.149) | cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/0_149/full.html |
| Income Tax Law 118(I)/2002 | Ο περί Φορολογίας του Εισοδήματος Νόμος του 2002 | cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/2002_1_118/full.html |
The pattern is consistent: pre-independence Chapters use 0_<chapter number>, and post-1960 laws use <year>_<part>_<number>, where the part is 1 for Part I laws (the "(I)" in 118(I)/2002). To read the full text of any law, open its contents page and press "Πλήρες Κείμενο" (full text).
Cyprus laws are cited by their number and year, for example Ν. 118(I)/2002 in Greek or L. 118(I)/2002 in English. Laws inherited from the colonial period are cited by Chapter number: Cap. 113 or ΚΕΦ. 113.
Is CyLaw available in English?
Only partly. The interface has an English version (the advanced search page and help pages), but the content is overwhelmingly Greek, because Greek has been the language of the Cyprus courts and of the Official Gazette for decades.
What you can find in English:
- Older Supreme Court judgments. The Cyprus Law Reports (C.L.R.) were published in English until the late 1980s. CyLaw's "Judgments of the Supreme Court" collection covers this era, and cylii.org serves them at their original report citation, for example Pitria Shipping v. Georghiou (1982) 1 C.L.R. 358.
- Official English translations of selected laws. The Office of the Law Commissioner (olc.gov.cy) publishes English translations and consolidations, including the Constitution (consolidated to 2025), the Companies Law Cap. 113 and recent employment laws. The Registrar of Companies (companies.gov.cy) hosts the Law Commissioner's English consolidation of Cap. 113, which incorporates amendments up to July 2014.
- EU-level material. CJEU judgments on CyLaw come from the EU Cellar and are available in English.
Two caveats matter. First, only the Greek text published in the Official Gazette is authentic; every English translation says so on its cover. Second, for any judgment after the late 1980s, and for all District Court, Administrative Court and Court of Appeal decisions, there is no official English text at all. Practitioners who work in English either read the Greek or use a translation layer.
How are Cyprus judgments cited?
Cyprus uses two systems side by side.
Report citations. Supreme Court judgments are cited by year, part and page: (1982) 1 C.L.R. 358 for the English-era reports, or (2005) 1 Α.Α.Δ. 123 for the Greek-era Αποφάσεις Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου. The part number tells you the jurisdiction: Part 1 civil, Part 2 criminal, Part 3 revisional (administrative), Part 4 first-instance jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. CyLaw's citation search accepts this format directly.
ECLI identifiers. Cyprus has adopted the European Case Law Identifier. The format is ECLI:CY:<court code>:<year>:<ordinal>, for example ECLI:CY:AD:2016:D218 (AD for Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο, the Supreme Court), ECLI:CY:DOD:2023:1 for the Second-Instance Family Court or ECLI:CY:DDDP:2022:1010 for the International Protection Administrative Court. Any ECLI can be resolved at e-justice.europa.eu/ecli/ followed by the identifier. In the DIKIGOROS AI index of CyLaw, about 46,600 decisions, roughly half of the corpus, carry an ECLI (September 2026).
Which courts produce the judgments on CyLaw?
Since the judicial reform that took effect on 1 July 2023, Cyprus has three tiers:
- Supreme Constitutional Court (Ανώτατο Συνταγματικό Δικαστήριο), nine judges, constitutional and administrative questions at third instance.
- Supreme Court (Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο), seven judges, civil and criminal questions at third instance.
- Court of Appeal (Εφετείο), sixteen judges in civil, criminal and administrative divisions, hearing appeals from every first-instance court.
- First-instance courts: District Courts, Assize Courts, the Administrative Court, the International Protection Administrative Court, Family Courts, Labour Dispute Courts, Rent Control Courts, the Military Court, plus the new Commercial Court and Admiralty Court created by the same reform.
This is why CyLaw keeps separate collections for the "old" Supreme Court (1893–2023) and the "new" Supreme Court.
Civil procedure changed at the same time. The New Civil Procedure Rules (Νέοι Κανονισμοί Πολιτικής Δικονομίας), adopted by the Supreme Court in May 2021, apply to cases filed from 1 September 2023; older cases continue under the old Θεσμοί Πολιτικής Δικονομίας. Both sets, and the prescribed court forms, are on CyLaw.
How much case law is there? Original data from the DIKIGOROS AI index
DIKIGOROS AI maintains a structured index of the CyLaw corpus. As at September 2026 it shows:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Court decisions indexed | 95,623 |
| Courts and tribunals covered | 12 |
| Year range | 1960 to 2026 |
| Decisions published per year, 2023–2025 | about 5,000 a year (5,022 / 5,070 / 5,089) |
| Largest collections | District Courts (about 38,000) and Supreme Court (about 33,000) |
| Citation links between decisions | more than 900,000 |
| References from decisions to legislation | more than 143,000 |
| Decisions carrying an ECLI | about 46,600 |
Two things stand out. Cyprus courts now publish roughly 5,000 decisions a year, so a keyword search that returns hundreds of hits is normal. And more than 900,000 citation links means the case law is dense: the fastest way to test whether a judgment is still good law is to see who has cited it since, which CyLaw itself cannot show.
What are CyLaw's limitations?
CyLaw is an excellent primary source, and everything below is a limitation of the search layer, not of the content.
- Keyword matching only. SINO finds the exact strings you type. A search for "unfair dismissal" will not find "παράνομος τερματισμός απασχόλησης".
- No citation network. You cannot see which later cases cite a judgment, or which earlier cases it relied on, without reading the text.
- No filters for court level, district, outcome, judge or date range. Narrowing means choosing collections and adding terms.
- Greek only. There is no translation layer for post-1980s judgments.
- No summaries or extraction. Each result is the full judgment; you decide relevance by reading it.
- Collections must be selected manually, and it is easy to search one court while the leading authority sits in another.
- No change history for legislation. The consolidated text shows the law as it stands today; to see what a particular amendment changed you have to compare the numbered laws yourself.
How DIKIGOROS AI builds on CyLaw
DIKIGOROS AI is a research platform built on the CyLaw corpus, designed for Cyprus practitioners who need to go from a legal question to the right authorities quickly, in English or Greek.
- AI search. Describe the problem in your own words, in English or Greek, and it finds judgments about the same issue even when they use different words. Exact keyword and phrase matching still works when you need it.
- AI answers with citations. Ask a question in plain English or Greek and get a synthesised answer that cites the specific decisions, which you can open and verify.
- Citation explorer. Every decision shows what it cites and who has cited it since, across more than 900,000 links.
- Filters. Court hierarchy, district, area of law, outcome and date range.
- Authority scoring. Each decision is ranked by court level, citation count and judicial composition, so the leading authority surfaces first.
- Bilingual. Search, translate and read English and Greek content in one place.
- Tracked changes in key legislation. For the main laws, every amendment is shown as a tracked change against the previous text, so you can see exactly what changed, when, and which version applied on a given date.
- Procedure built in. The old Civil Procedure Rules, the NCPR 2023 and the prescribed court forms are searchable alongside the case law, so a procedural question is answered with the rule, the form and the decisions that apply it.
- Extraction and export. Key holdings, parties and outcomes extracted on demand; export to Word or PDF with formatted citations.
CyLaw stays the source of truth: every DIKIGOROS AI result links back to the original judgment, and the corpus is refreshed as new decisions are published.
Frequently asked questions about CyLaw
What is CyLaw?
CyLaw is the free online database of Cyprus court judgments and legislation, run by the Cyprus Legal Information Institute (CyLII) for the Cyprus Bar Association. It was founded in January 2002 and is available at cylaw.org.
Is CyLaw free to use?
Yes. CyLaw is a non-profit service funded by Cyprus advocates through the Cyprus Bar Association. No account or subscription is needed to read judgments or legislation.
Who runs CyLaw?
The Cyprus Legal Information Institute (Κυπριακό Ινστιτούτο Νομικής Πληροφόρησης, ΚΙΝΟΠ / CyLII), a non-profit company set up and funded by the Cyprus Bar Association.
Is CyLaw available in English?
The interface and help pages have English versions, but the judgments and laws are in Greek. English text exists only for pre-late-1980s Supreme Court judgments (the Cyprus Law Reports) and for the official English translations published by the Office of the Law Commissioner.
What is the difference between cylaw.org and cylii.org?
They are the same service. cylaw.org is the original site and legislation library; cylii.org is the newer search interface of the Cyprus Legal Information Institute, with a collection tree that lets you tick individual courts and districts. Judgment URLs on cylii.org use the pattern cylii.org/document?id=/cy/cases/...
How do I find the Companies Law Cap. 113 on CyLaw?
Open cylaw.org/nomoi, type "Εταιρειών" or "113" in the search box, or go directly to cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/0_113/full.html for the consolidated Greek text. An official English consolidation (to July 2014) is on companies.gov.cy.
What is "Cylaw 154"?
It is a common search for the Criminal Code of Cyprus, Cap. 154 (Ο περί Ποινικού Κώδικα Νόμος, ΚΕΦ.154). The consolidated text is at cylaw.org/nomoi/enop/non-ind/0_154/full.html.
Does CyLaw include District Court judgments?
Yes. The first-instance collections cover the District Courts of Nicosia/Kyrenia, Limassol, Larnaca, Famagusta and Paphos in both civil and criminal jurisdiction, as well as the Family, Labour Dispute and Rent Control Courts. In the DIKIGOROS AI index, District Court decisions are the largest single group at about 38,000.
How do I search CyLaw by ECLI?
Choose "την ακόλουθη αναφορά (ECLI)" on the homepage and enter the full identifier, for example ECLI:CY:AD:2016:D218. You can also resolve any ECLI at e-justice.europa.eu/ecli/ followed by the identifier.
How do I cite a Cyprus Supreme Court judgment?
Use the report citation, (year) part Α.Α.Δ. page for Greek-era judgments or (year) part C.L.R. page for English-era ones, or the ECLI. For a full style guide, see the University of Nicosia's CYSCOLA standard.
Can I get AI answers from CyLaw?
Not from CyLaw itself. CyLaw is a keyword search over the primary texts. DIKIGOROS AI adds AI-powered search, summaries and citation analysis on top of the same corpus, with each answer linked back to the judgment on CyLaw.
Sources
- CyLaw, "Αναφορικά με το Cylaw" (About CyLaw), cylaw.org/about.html
- CyLII, "Σχετικά μ'εμάς", cylii.org/about
- CyLaw English search help, cylaw.org/help-en.html, and Advanced Search, cylaw.org/advanced-en.html
- CyLaw, Πίνακες Κυπριακής Νομοθεσίας, cylaw.org/nomoi (4,070 principal laws, latest 124(I)/2026, accessed September 2026)
- N-Lex (EU), "About the national database: Cyprus", n-lex.europa.eu/n-lex/info/info-cy/index
- European e-Justice Portal, "National ordinary courts: Cyprus" and "European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)"
- Ministry of Justice and Public Order, "Courts' Reform: Strengthening the Justice System", gov.cy/mjpo
- Office of the Law Commissioner, "Translations/Consolidations: English", olc.gov.cy
- Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property, "The Companies Law", companies.gov.cy
- University of Nicosia, CYSCOLA citation standard, unic.ac.cy/school-of-law/plu/cyscola
- DIKIGOROS AI index of the CyLaw corpus, internal statistics, September 2026
Last reviewed 3 September 2026. This article is general information about legal research tools, not legal advice. Only the Greek text of Cyprus laws published in the Official Gazette is authentic.