Sanctions Check API

Single-address sanctions check across the major public feeds. Free, open, unauthenticated, rate-limited per IP. Aggregates OFAC SDN direct, UK OFSI direct, and OpenSanctions-aggregated national crypto-wallet sub-lists from Israel and Japan; EU consolidated direct feed pending operator credential.

Endpoint

GET https://chainquery.com/api/sanctions/check/<address>

No auth header. CORS-open. 30 requests / hour / IP (sliding window). Exceeding the limit returns 429 with Retry-After: 3600; persistent abuse is subject to manual ban. Need higher volume? Email [email protected] with the use case and we'll discuss.

Response shape

{
  "address": "...",
  "structurally_valid": true,
  "sanctioned": true,
  "agreement_count": 2,
  "sources": [
    {
      "slug": "ofac-sdn",
      "list": "OFAC SDN",
      "jurisdiction": "United States",
      "label": "Lazarus Group, DPRK state-sponsored",
      "source_ref": "OFAC SDN UID 12345",
      "added_at": "2026-05-11T04:15:00Z"
    },
    {
      "slug": "opensanctions",
      "list": "OpenSanctions consolidated",
      "jurisdiction": "Global (aggregated)",
      "label": "...",
      "source_ref": "https://...",
      "added_at": "2026-05-11T01:02:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "freshness": {
    "ofac-sdn": "2026-05-11T04:15:00Z",
    "opensanctions": "2026-05-11T01:02:00Z",
    "uk-ofsi": "2026-05-09T21:32:56+00:00"
  },
  "disclaimer": "Aggregated public sanctions feeds ..."
}

Example

$ curl -s https://chainquery.com/api/sanctions/check/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa | jq '{sanctioned, agreement_count}'
{
  "sanctioned": false,
  "agreement_count": 0
}

Contract guarantees

• HTTP 200 even for sanctioned: false; check the field, not the status.
• HTTP 400 for malformed addresses (with the same response shape, structurally_valid: false).
• HTTP 403 if your IP is on the manual ban list.
• HTTP 429 if you exceed 30/hour; honor Retry-After.
• Always read freshness.<source> before acting on a negative result. A "not sanctioned" answer is only as good as our last sync.
• sources can be empty even when sanctioned is false; this is the normal case.
• Schema bumps will be communicated; treat unknown fields as forward-compatible.

When this is the right tool

• Individual due diligence before accepting a payment.
• First-pass screening on a list of addresses in research or journalism.
• Hobbyist and small-project use where Chainalysis pricing is out of reach.
• Cross-checking a single primary-source feed against the aggregate.

When this is not the right tool

• Regulated entity compliance (KYT, transaction monitoring) — you need a contracted feed with audit logs and an SLA.
• Real-time same-day designation detection — our 24h refresh is the ceiling.
• Cluster / indirect-exposure analysis ("did this address recently receive from a sanctioned cluster?") — we only do direct address matches; commercial providers add cluster heuristics on top.