Answers to common questions about using OpenSanctions as a commercial service.
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Answers to common questions about using OpenSanctions as a commercial service.
For an overview of the available products, start with data licensing. If you are preparing to speak with us, these questions about your screening process will help you work out what you need.
OpenSanctions provides the database and matching technology used to build financial crime screening systems. We do not provide an end-user compliance application with alert review, case management, and approval workflows.
You can use our Screening API, integrate the bulk data into your own screening system, or run our on-premise API on your infrastructure. If you need help connecting OpenSanctions to a larger compliance workflow, talk to us about working with your engineering team or one of our integration partners.
Commercial customers are not paying for access to a file. They are paying for a service: we continuously monitor the underlying sources, publish frequent updates, operate reliable delivery infrastructure, and provide support when something goes wrong.
The commercial agreement turns those services into the contractual commitments that organizations building compliance systems need. It covers matters such as data delivery and update schedules, availability, maintenance, support, and warranties. This gives your compliance and vendor-management teams an accountable supplier they can rely on, with clear responsibilities on both sides.
You can review the Screening API and data license terms before becoming a customer.
We license OpenSanctions as a complete collection. Combining and enriching information across watchlists is an important part of what makes the database useful: it connects sanctions targets to linked companies, relatives and close associates, and adds the identifiers and other details needed to distinguish a real match from a false positive.
Licensing the whole collection preserves that context and lets you expand your use without renegotiating its scope. Your integration can still select the entity types and risk topics relevant to its screening process, or use a custom export with the fields and structure your application needs.
We do not provide ready-made integrations for specific CRM or ERP products. We focus on maintaining the data and the matching services that an integration uses.
Your engineering team can connect a CRM or ERP system to the Screening API, or integrate our bulk data and on-premise API into an existing screening process. If you tell us which system you use, we can discuss the architecture with your engineers or help identify an integration partner.
The website is free to use in your browser, but we do not offer it as a commercial service. Its use is not governed by our commercial terms and does not come with warranties, availability commitments, or support. You cannot buy a subscription to add those guarantees.
If screening is part of your business or compliance process, use the Screening API or an in-house screening license. Those services are designed for operational use and come with the contractual commitments described above.
We use our published standard terms for Screening API subscriptions and in-house screening licenses. Keeping these agreements standardized makes procurement predictable and lets customers review the terms before beginning a purchase.
Reseller and OEM agreements may need terms specific to how the data is distributed in your product. Talk to our sales team if you plan to embed OpenSanctions in a product or service offered to your customers.
The Screening API is offered to businesses and other organizations, not to individual consumers. For customers in the European Union, a valid EU VAT number is how we verify this and apply the correct tax treatment, including the reverse-charge mechanism for businesses outside Germany. We therefore require one during sign-up. If your organization cannot obtain a VAT number, contact support.
Journalists, academic researchers, and public-interest organizations may qualify for free API access.