---
title: "Using the bulk data"
summary: "The datasets published by OpenSanctions are made available in multiple formats, suitable for different purposes."
url: "https://www.opensanctions.org/docs/bulk/"
date_updated: "2026-08-28"
---

{% cardgrid %}
{% linkcard title="Data formats" %}
[Choose between FollowTheMoney JSON, CSV, plain-text, and Senzing exports](/docs/bulk/formats/)
{% /linkcard %}
{% linkcard title="Downloading the data" %}
[Update cycles, stable URLs, and the data delivery service](/docs/bulk/updates/)
{% /linkcard %}
{% /cardgrid %}

## Should I use bulk data?

We offer a hosted API to cover standard screening usecases. If the API is a good fit for your usecase, but your screening volume makes using our hosted offering impractical, check out if [running our on-premise service](/docs/on-premise/) is a better option. Both our hosted API and our on-premise service offer an entity matching service built on top of our bulk data.

Bulk data supports advanced usecases that don't fit this model very well, such as screening a large number of entities as part of a batch job or integrating our data into an existing entity matching solution.

## Understanding the data model

We use a data model focused on the notion of entities. Read [our documentation on entities](/docs/entities) and [how they are tagged](/docs/topics/) to get started. For a full overview of all schemas, properties and their values, consult the [data dictionary](/reference).

## Choosing a collection

We recommend using our [`default` collection](/datasets/default/), which aggregates information from a broad range of sources, and filtering the entities contained therein depending on your needs. Commonly, you will want to filter entities by [risk topics](/docs/topics/) or by [datasets](/docs/glossary/#dataset) that they appear in. For example, to find sanctioned entities, filter for `sanction` in the `topics` property of the entity. To filter for entities that appear in one of the US OFAC lists, filter for [`us_ofac_sdn`](/datasets/us_ofac_sdn/) or [`us_ofac_cons`](/datasets/us_ofac_cons/) in the `datasets` property.

Only in very specific circumstances do we recommend using the data files from one of our [datasets](/docs/glossary/#dataset) or [collections](/docs/glossary/#collection) directly. These will only contain information sourced from that specific dataset or collection of datasets, missing additional information gathered from other sources such as company registers, Wikidata and other [enrichment sources](/docs/enrichment/). This is also true if you [only want data on PEPs](/docs/coverage/pep/using/#dataset-selection) or sanctioned entities — in both cases, just use `default`. As always, our [support team](/support/) is happy to answer your questions. 

## Data formats and updates

We produce bulk data in a variety of  [data formats](/docs/bulk/formats/) to suit your existing tooling and the level of detail you need.

Our data is updated frequently. Consult our documentation on [data updates](/docs/bulk/updates) to find out how to keep up to data and how to handle entity deletions, merges and ID changes.

## Licensing

You can download bulk data extracts of the database directly from this website, without any login or API key. While the bulk data files are free to use for non-commercial users, commercial use of the data requires a [data license](/licensing/).