OFAC SDN Sanctions List Scraper — Name Screening + Bulk Export

What this Actor scrapes

This Actor fetches the US Treasury's public OFAC SDN export (SDN.CSV, plus its ALT.CSV alias and ADD.CSV address companion files) and turns Treasury's raw legacy CSV format into structured, typed records. It runs in two modes:

matched verdict per name: matched or not, which SDN entities it matched, the match type (primary name vs. alias), and a score. A name that clears with zero matches is a successful result, not an error — that's a clean screening outcome, exactly what a compliance workflow needs to log. program code (e.g. CUBA, SDGT) and entity type (individual vs. entity), with aliases and addresses joined in on request.

What we handle for you

• 🧊 Correct CSV parsing — Treasury's SDN export has no header row and uses a literal -0- string as its null sentinel; we map columns by position and convert -0- to a real null so you never see it in your data.
• 🔗 Alias + address cross-referencing — ALT.CSV and ADD.CSV rows are joined back to their parent SDN entity by ent_num, not left as three disconnected files you'd have to join yourself.
• 🎯 Tunable fuzzy matching — names are normalized (case, punctuation, diacritics) and scored with a string-similarity ratio, not brittle exact/substring matching. matchThreshold is yours to tighten or loosen per screening run.
• ✅ Zero matches is a success, not a failure — a screened name that clears the sanctions list finishes with a clean matched: false row and a SUCCEEDED run, so you can log every screening outcome without treating "no hit" as an error.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 5xx — up to 5 attempts, Retry-After honoured, before we fail loud.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you pay per name screened or record exported, not per page fetched. No results, no charge beyond the small warm-up fee.

Use cases

• KYC/AML onboarding checks — screen new customer or counterparty names before account opening.
• Vendor and partner due diligence — batch-screen a supplier or partner list ahead of a contract.
• Payroll and HR screening — check new-hire names against the SDN list as part of a compliance workflow.
• Compliance data warehousing — bulk-export the current SDN list filtered by program to keep an internal sanctions table fresh.
• Fintech transaction screening prototypes — a pay-per-use SDN check to validate a screening flow before committing to a monitored SaaS contract.

Input

Paste this into the Apify Console, or send it as the run input over the API. Proxy settings are on by default; you rarely need to touch them.

{
  "mode": "screen",
  "namesToScreen": [
    "Ayman Al-Zawahiri",
    "Jane Smith"
  ],
  "matchThreshold": 0.82,
  "includeAliases": true,
  "maxMatchesPerName": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Output

One row per result, schema-validated before it is written. Export JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from the run, or read it over the API.

modefetched_atqueried_namematchedmatch_countmatchesent_numsdn_namesdn_typeprogram

{
  "mode": "screen",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-09T07:24:46Z",
  "queried_name": "Ayman Al-Zawahiri",
  "matched": true,
  "match_count": 1,
  "matches": [
    {
      "ent_num": 2676,
      "matched_name": "AL ZAWAHIRI, Dr. Ayman",
      "match_type": "primary_name",
      "sdn_type": "individual",
      "program": "SDGT",
      "score": 0.91
    }
  ]
}

Pricing

You pay only for results that land. Cap any run with maxTotalChargeUsd. See pricing & billing for worked examples.

Limitations

• SDN list only, v1. The Consolidated (Non-SDN) sanctions list isn't included — its export filename wasn't confirmed live at build time.
• US OFAC only. No EU, UN, UK, or other national sanctions lists.
• Screening aid, not a compliance guarantee. Fuzzy matching can produce false positives or false negatives on ambiguous names. matchThreshold and per-match score are yours to tune and audit — this Actor doesn't replace a licensed compliance program.
• No historical snapshots. Every run screens against the SDN list as currently published by Treasury; there's no diffing between publication dates.
• No recurring monitoring in-Actor. For scheduled re-screening, layer Apify's own Scheduler on top of this Actor.