Sanctions Screener: OFAC, UN, EU & UK Lists

Screen people and companies against the five main official sanctions lists in one run: the OFAC SDN List, the OFAC Consolidated (non-SDN) List, the UN Security Council Consolidated List, the EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List and the UK Sanctions List. Lists come straight from the government sources and are refreshed every 6 hours (or downloaded live in your run if you prefer), so results are never weeks out of date.

Fuzzy name matching handles spelling variants (Osama / Usama), word order ("PUTIN, Vladimir"), diacritics, legal suffixes (LLC, GmbH, PJSC) and every listed alias. Each name comes back as clear or potential_match, with the list, program, countries and date of birth needed for a quick manual review.

What can Sanctions Screener do?

• Screen a list of names, or a dataset from another Actor (CRM export, supplier list, scraped leads), against 5 official lists at once.
• Match aliases, transliterations and reordered names with a tunable 0-100 score.
• Flag country matches when you pass a country with the name ("John Doe | RU").
• Restrict matching to individuals or to entities.
• Report list record counts, publication dates and download times in the run summary, as an audit trail.
• Never charge for empty names, duplicate names or names screened while a list was down.

What data does it return?

Field	Example
name	Rosneft
status	potential_match
topScore	100
matchCount	3
matches[].list / listName	uk / UK Sanctions List (FCDO)
matches[].listedName / matchedName	OPEN JOINT-STOCK COMPANY ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY / ROSNEFT
matches[].programs	["UKRAINE-EO13662", "RUSSIA-EO14024"]
matches[].countries / countryMatch	["RU"] / true
matches[].datesOfBirth	["07 Oct 1952"]
listsChecked / listsNotChecked	all five / []

How much does it cost?

You pay per name screened (clear or potential_match). Invalid inputs, duplicates, outage rows and names over your cost limit are free. The price per 1,000 names goes down on higher Apify plans; see the Pricing tab. Set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run to cap the cost.

Input example

{
  "names": ["Vladimir Putin | RU", "Rosneft", "Acme Trading LLC"],
  "lists": ["ofac_sdn", "ofac_consolidated", "un", "eu", "uk"],
  "minScore": 85
}

Output example

{
  "name": "Vladimir Putin",
  "countryHint": "RU",
  "status": "potential_match",
  "topScore": 100,
  "matchCount": 3,
  "matches": [
    {"score": 100, "list": "uk", "listedName": "Vladimir Vladimirovich PUTIN", "type": "individual", "programs": ["Russia"], "countries": ["RU"], "countryMatch": true, "datesOfBirth": ["07/10/1952"]},
    {"score": 99, "list": "ofac_sdn", "listedName": "PUTIN, Vladimir Vladimirovich", "programs": ["RUSSIA-EO14024"], "datesOfBirth": ["07 Oct 1952"]}
  ],
  "listsChecked": ["ofac_sdn", "ofac_consolidated", "un", "eu", "uk"],
  "listsNotChecked": []
}

The OUTPUT record holds the run summary: counts by status, the record count and date of each list, zeroResultsReason and nextSteps.

Use cases

• Customer and supplier onboarding: screen new accounts before the first payment.
• Periodic re-screening: schedule a weekly run over your customer dataset.
• Lead and marketplace hygiene: screen scraped company lists before outreach.
• Payments and invoicing: check beneficiaries before sending money abroad.

Use with AI agents (MCP, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, n8n)

AI agents can run this Actor through the Apify MCP server:

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=swillz/sanctions-screener"}}}

Or run it locally with npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server --tools swillz/sanctions-screener and APIFY_TOKEN set.

Example prompts:

• "Is Acme Trading LLC on any sanctions list?"
• "Screen these 50 suppliers against OFAC, EU and UK sanctions and show me only potential matches."

Minimal input: {"names": ["Acme Trading LLC"]}. Every row has a status, and a run with no screened names explains why in zeroResultsReason.

Integrations and API

Call it from the Apify API, the JavaScript or Python client, Make, Zapier, n8n or a webhook. To chain it after another Actor, pass that run's datasetId (or use an Actor-to-Actor integration). The name field is auto-detected, or set nameField.

FAQ

Is this legal or compliance advice? No. This is a screening aid built on the official public lists. Review every potential_match by comparing dates of birth, countries and programs before you act, and follow your own compliance procedures.

How fresh are the lists? Each list is downloaded from OFAC, the UN, the European Commission or the UK FCDO at most maxListAgeHours ago (default 24; the copy is refreshed every 6 hours). Set alwaysDownloadFresh to download all lists live in your run. The summary shows each list's publication date, download time and source.

What if a government site is down? The run continues with the other lists. Affected rows get a _incomplete status, listsNotChecked names the missing list, and those rows are not charged.

Too many matches? Raise minScore to 92 or set entityType. To catch more spelling variants, lower it to 80.

Does it cover PEPs? No. It covers the five official sanctions lists only.

Related tools

More tools from the same developer, built to work together:

• Career Site Jobs Scraper: jobs from Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable and Recruitee boards, with salary fields, as a jobs API or CSV.
• Workday Jobs Scraper: every job from any myworkdayjobs.com career site, past the 2,000-result cap.
• Company Website Enrichment: turn a list of domains into company name, emails, phones, social links and tech stack.
• AI Extract: structured JSON from any web page with a plain-English prompt or a JSON schema. AI included.
• Google Sheets Import & Export: send any Apify dataset to a Google Sheet (append, replace or dedupe) or read a sheet as JSON.
• XML Sitemap URL Extractor & Sitemap to CSV: every URL from a website's sitemap, with lastmod, HTTP status and new-page monitoring.
• AI Brand Visibility Tracker: track whether ChatGPT mentions, ranks and cites your brand vs competitors (GEO).
• Email Provider Detector: bulk check whether domains use Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Proofpoint or Mimecast, plus SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
• Hiring Signals by Company Domain: from a list of company domains, find which ATS each uses and how many open roles, by department and location.
• EU VAT Number Validator (VIES): bulk check EU VAT numbers against official VIES, with company name and address.
• EORI Number Validator: bulk check EU and UK EORI numbers for customs, with trader name where published.
• LEI Lookup (GLEIF): find a company's Legal Entity Identifier, legal name, address, status and parent from official GLEIF data.

Popular workflows

• B2B customer onboarding (KYB): validate the VAT number with EU VAT Number Validator (VIES) and the EORI with EORI Number Validator, confirm the legal entity with LEI Lookup (GLEIF), and screen the name with this Actor.

Source code: https://github.com/williamjin02/apify-actors/tree/main/actors/sanctions-screener