What is OpenSanctions and what kind of data does it provide?

Updated

OpenSanctions is an open-source database that aggregates sanctions lists, watchlists, and politically exposed person (PEP) records from hundreds of sources into a single, standardized dataset. It is built for compliance teams, investigators, and journalists who need to screen individuals and companies against multiple official lists without querying each source separately. The data is organized into collections and datasets and is available in structured formats including JSON.

What data OpenSanctions covers

OpenSanctions consolidates three broad categories of risk data:

  • Sanctions lists — designations issued by governments and international bodies (e.g., OFAC, EU, UN), used to identify persons and entities subject to legal restrictions.
  • Watchlists — broader risk lists beyond formal sanctions, such as wanted persons, debarment lists, and regulatory enforcement actions.
  • Politically exposed persons (PEPs) — individuals holding prominent public roles, who carry elevated corruption or bribery risk under anti-money-laundering rules.

Because it aggregates hundreds of sources rather than maintaining one proprietary list, the value lies in normalization: names, aliases, dates of birth, and identifiers from different lists are reconciled so the same person or company can be matched consistently.

How the data is structured

The database is exposed as collections and datasets, available in JSON. This structure lets you:

  • Pull a specific dataset (for example, one country's sanctions list) rather than the entire corpus.
  • Track which underlying source each record came from, which matters for auditability.
  • Feed the data into screening tools programmatically.

The excerpt from the site emphasizes data provenance — knowing exactly what a screening check is comparing against and being able to prove it. This is framed as increasingly important as compliance workflows become automated or agent-driven.

Who it is for

User Typical use
Compliance teams Screening customers, vendors, and transactions against sanctions and PEP lists
Investigators Cross-referencing people and companies across multiple official lists
Journalists Researching ownership, sanctions exposure, and political connections

Screening tooling

Alongside the raw data, OpenSanctions provides yente-client, described as an SDK, CLI, and MCP server combined into one toolkit, with an open matching engine underneath. In practical terms, this means you can:

  • Run screening from code (SDK),
  • Run it from the command line (CLI),
  • Or connect it to an LLM agent workflow (MCP server),

while the matching engine handles name and entity comparison. The stated rationale is that if an agent runs your sanctions screening, you need to know exactly what it is checking and be able to demonstrate that.

What to check before relying on it

  • Coverage and freshness — since OpenSanctions aggregates external sources, confirm the specific lists you need are included and how often they update.
  • Licensing and access terms — the site describes the database as open-source, but the terms for the data and the tooling are not detailed in the material here; verify them directly before commercial use.
  • Match quality — an open matching engine reduces false positives but does not eliminate them; any screening result should be reviewed, not treated as a final determination.

If your goal is to understand what OpenSanctions offers, the short answer is: a normalized, multi-source dataset of sanctions, watchlists, and PEPs, delivered as JSON collections and datasets, plus tooling to run screening against it.