An OpenSanctions alternative built on the official lists, licensed for commercial use
OpenSanctions is a well-run project and its matching API is good. The catch for a product team is the licence: the data is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial, so commercial use needs a separate paid licence, and the hosted API is billed per query. The Sanctions Screening API takes the same official publications the project builds on, OFAC, the UN Security Council, the EU and the UK Sanctions List, loads them into its own database every day, adds a PEP register from Wikidata, and sells screening on a flat token plan with no non-commercial clause.
| What | OpenSanctions | Sanctions Screening API |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 2,000 free credits on business-email sign-up (as published). | 500 tokens a month, no card; one screen costs 1 token. |
| Entry paid price | Smallest credit bundle: 500 credits for €50, i.e. €0.10 per query, valid one year (as published). | Starter $6.99 for 25,000 tokens, Pro $24.99 for 150,000. |
| Licence | Data under CC BY-NC 4.0; commercial use requires a paid licence through sales (as published). | Official publications of the US Treasury OFAC, the UN Security Council, the European Union and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (the UK Sanctions List), plus a PEP register derived from Wikidata public-office data. All sources are free and commercially usable. |
| Authentication | API key in an Authorization: ApiKey header; POST to a match endpoint (as published). | One API key, sent as the X-Api-Key header. The same key works for every API in the catalog. |
| Freshness | Not stated on the pages read. | Every list replaced wholesale daily from its official source. Each response carries the list versions it was screened against. |
Facts about OpenSanctions were read from its own pages on October 29, 2026. If something has changed since, tell us and we will update the page. Sources: OpenSanctions API page, OpenSanctions licensing.
Reasons to pick Sanctions Screening API
- Commercial use is included: the sources are official government publications and a CC0 Wikidata extract, with no non-commercial clause to negotiate.
- Predictable cost: a screen is one token on a flat monthly plan, so a batch of 25 names in one POST costs the same as one GET.
- Every response carries the exact list versions it was screened against, which is what an auditor asks for.
- Fuzzy matching handles transliterations (Usama/Osama), diacritics, word order and aliases, and returns a score and the matched alias for each hit.
When OpenSanctions is still the better choice
- You need the broader OpenSanctions universe beyond sanctions and PEPs, such as crime-related datasets or regulatory watchlists, and have the licence budget.
- You run entity matching on-premise from their bulk data and want their exact matcher.
Try it with your key
The first endpoint of the API as a curl command. Create a free key and paste it in. (Browse Entities, 1 token).
curl "https://api-sanctions.dataandapis.com/v1/entities?country=Iraq&limit=20&list=sanction&page=1&program=Iraq&q=hussein&source=UN&type=individual" \
-H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"Plans
Free 500 tokens a month · Starter $6.99 for 25,000 · Pro $24.99 for 150,000 · Ultra $99.99 for 1,000,000. Every plan covers every API.
Questions people ask
- Which lists are covered?
- US OFAC SDN and Consolidated, UN Security Council Consolidated, EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions, UK Sanctions List (FCDO), plus politically exposed persons derived from Wikidata public-office data.
- How current is the data?
- Each list is replaced wholesale every day from its official source, and delistings disappear the same day. The response includes the version and date of every list used.
- Can I screen more than one name per call?
- Yes. POST up to 25 names to the screen endpoint and get a result block per name.
One key, 128 APIs, free to start
500 tokens a month without a card. Most calls cost one token.
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