How to get started with our sanctions.io API

Sign up for sanctions.io

To integrate our API into your own application you first need a sanctions.io subscription and your own individual API key. To get started right away you can sign up right here and start your free 7-day trial.

You can find our API documentation right here.
If you are using SAP you can try out our free ABAP client (that is the software is available for free, a (trial) subscription to our API is required):
https://github.com/REMEDYNE/sanctions.io

API Overview and Examples

Search parameters for Sanctions Lists search

Searching for Name

Checks Name against the “name” and “alt_names” fields in our sanctions.io database.

API call syntax: https://api.sanctions.io/search/?api_key={your key}&name={query}
Please note that the address of our production API is “https://api.sanctions.io”. The examples below are based on our sandbox environment and hence point to the address “https://sandbox.sanctions.io”.

Examples:
Searching for Last Name:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=guzman

Searching for First and Last Name:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=joaquin+guzman

Fuzzy search for Name

Fuzzy name matching enables users to query a name and get usable results without knowing the exact spelling of an entry. It works by expanding queries to include results that are *fuzzily* similar to the given term, where similarity is defined by trigram distance.

Note: The fuzzy_name parameter only works in tandem with name. Set `fuzzy_name=true` to utilize fuzzy name matching when searching against the `name` and `alt_names` fields. The default setting for `fuzzy_name` is false, which means the endpoint will only return exact matches.

If using fuzzy search it is also required to define the ‘fuzziness level’ with the parameter ‘fuzziness’ and a number between 1 and 100 (100 = high fuzziness):

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=igor+bobel&fuzzy_name=true&fuzziness=85

Search for Address

Searches against fields in the “addresses” array.

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=joaquin&address=valentines

Search for Countries

Searches only entities whose `country`, `nationalities`, or `citizenships` fields match the country code based on ISO alpha-2 country codes. The country fields are found in the `addresses` arrays. This method allows you to search for multiple countries (plural) separated by commas but will only return one country (singular) per entity.
https://api.sanctions.io/search/?api_key={your key}&countries={country code}

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=joaquin&countries=GB

Search for Date of Birth

For date_of_birth we support the standard notation of YYYY-MM-DD, but you can also use just MM-DD, or even just DD or MM. You can also use multiple dates of birth by delimiting them with a comma. This field is not using fuzzy search.

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=joaquin&dates_of_birth=1957

Search for Source

It is also possible to filter search results by source.
The following request only returns results from the SDN list:

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=hassan&sources=SDN

Search parameters for PEP Lists search

Search for name

Checks Name against the “name” field in our sanctions.io PEP database.

API call syntax: https://api.sanctions.io/pep-search/?api_key={your key}&name={query}

Example:
https://sandbox.sanctions.io/pep-search/?api_key=ded11a1cbd164242b6bb28c51f1dad5f&name=trump

The search can also be combined with a fuzziness parameter – for more information see our API documentation.