The Sex Offender API.
1.5 million records across all 58 US registries, continuously updated, behind one fast API call — the offender search API your product or team can call today. Every match scored, every record sourced.
No card. No sales call. Live national data on your first call.
No code needed? Search from your dashboard — type a name, get photos and official records.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \
-H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"query": {
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Doe",
"dob": "1980-04-12"
},
"jurisdictions": null
}'Now also: US criminal records
The same one-call model, extended past the registry. Criminal Search reaches more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions, with coverage in every US state — on the same account, the same key and the same scored, source-cited schema.
County
The courthouse layer, and the largest by a wide margin — where most US criminal cases are filed and resolved, across thousands of separate court systems.
State
Statewide prison systems, court records and registries. Search one state, or every covered state at once, in a single call.
Federal
The federal district courts — fraud, interstate and tax cases that never appear in any county or state search.
Coverage is expanding continuously — the reference lists which jurisdictions are answering right now.
What the offender search API returns
Not a wall of raw records — a ranked answer your team can act on and defend.
Same drop-in integration, materially better data
A contract designed for background screening — not an aggregator copy.
Per-source provenance
Every match carries source provenance — where it came from and when we last saw it — with a citation you can attach to the file. Prove where each record came from.
Scored matches
matchConfidence and matchBasis on every record cut manual adjudication of common-name false positives. Legacy search APIs return none.
Regular and Live modes
Every record carries lastCheckedAt. Regular is the continuously-updated answer at the base rate; add a live block to re-verify named jurisdictions in real time (+$0.02 per source). Chosen per call, never locked to your key.
Verification report
A branded, timestamped PDF/HTML report of your search results with a source citation on every record — a defensible audit artifact. It is your report of public-record data, clearly labeled as Offendersearch output; it does not reproduce, mirror, or impersonate any government website. Billed at +$0.02 per document, on every account.
Measurably fresher
The whole dataset is continuously updated, so records stay current rather than ageing for months. Every record carries its own lastCheckedAt timestamp.
Drop-in compatibility
/v1/compat/sexoffender mirrors the exact parameters and envelope of legacy sex-offender search APIs — switch by changing only the base URL and key.
A national sex offender registry API, one endpoint
Full legacy field parity, plus fields others don’t have
Normalized into one schema — with scoring and provenance layered on top.
Built for every screening-heavy industry
One API, framed for how your team screens. Explore all solutions.
Staffing & Recruiting
Screen candidates against every US sex-offender registry in one API call, with scored matches and per-source provenance you can attach to the file — fast enough to run inline during onboarding.
Property Management
Add a nationwide sex-offender registry check to your tenant-screening flow with one API call — scored, source-tagged results your leasing teams can act on immediately.
Gig & Marketplaces
Rideshare, delivery, home services, care marketplaces — screen driver-partners and providers against all 58 US registries at onboarding, then keep the whole active fleet re-screened on your cadence, by API or CSV.
Healthcare & Home Care
Screen clinicians, aides, and facility staff against every US registry with source-verified results — one consistent check for hospitals, clinics, and multi-site health systems.
Skilled Nursing Facilities
Screen every prospective admission before the bed is offered, and every hire before the first shift — across all 58 US registries, from a dashboard your admissions team can use today or an API your EHR can call.
Home Health
Your caregivers work alone in a client’s home. Screen every aide against all 58 US registries at hire and on a recurring cadence — from a dashboard your office staff can run, or the API inside your onboarding flow.
Regular, and Live verification.
Chosen per request — not a plan and not a setting on your key.
The continuously-updated answer
What you get when you say nothing. Regular reads the continuously-updated data we hold — close to live — and returns it in one round trip. It is current enough for the great majority of checks: pre-employment screening, tenant checks, ongoing monitoring. Billed at the base per-call rate.
Verified at the source, right now
Send a live block and the API re-verifies the named jurisdictions in real time, then merges the fresh results with the Regular answer. The mode to reach for when a decision needs a current, moment-of-decision verification of a specific person. Adds $0.02 per completed live source, to a $2.00 ceiling per search.
Every record carries its own lastCheckedAt timestamp, so you can see how current each result is rather than take our word for it. A live check of more than two sources runs asynchronously — submit and collect the results as they finish.
Don't just check once — get alerted
Set a recurring watch and we email you when the data changes. Watch a person by name and date of birth, or an address and radius — checked every morning against our continuously updated data.
Watch a person
One person by name and date of birth, across sex offender registry data or criminal records. An email lands when a matching record is added, changes, or is removed.
Watch an area
An address and a radius across sex offender registry data — get told when a registered offender moves nearby. Manage it in the dashboard Notifications section, or over the API with POST /v1/monitors.
Monitoring is not a consumer report and must not be used for FCRA-governed hiring, tenancy, or credit decisions. See monitoring & alerts · Monitoring API.
What to look for in a sex offender API
Five things that separate these products — and five reasons teams pick us. The full picture, endpoint by endpoint, is on the Sex Offender API page.
1. Data that is actually current
The whole dataset is continuously updated, and every record carries its own lastCheckedAt timestamp. You read freshness off the answer instead of taking a vendor’s word for it.
2. Coverage you can name
The 50 states, DC, the US territories, the tribal registries and NSOPW — 1.5 million records normalized into one schema. Every response tells you exactly which sources answered.
3. Matches that are already scored
A common surname returns dozens of people. Every record comes back with a confidence score and the reason it matched, and people are de-duplicated across sources — so your team gets an answer, not a review queue.
4. A citation on every record
Each result carries the registry it came from, the URL of the record, and when we last read it. Add the verification report and you have a timestamped, defensible document for the file.
5. Pricing you can model
$0.15 per call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No seats, no minimums, no annual commitment, no sales call.
Depending on what you came for
Offender lookup
Looking someone up? Start with the free public registries — then see what changes when you need to do it for thousands of people.
The registered offender database
What is in it: 58 jurisdictions, the full record schema, measured freshness, and per-source status on every response.
Background check API
For developers: full scope, endpoints and per-call pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best sex offender API?
On five properties, each of which you can test before signing. How many jurisdictions are covered, and whether the vendor will enumerate them. Whether the response reports which sources answered, so an incomplete search is never silently empty. Whether match strength is labelled — an exact date of birth, a birth year, or an age are different grades of evidence and should not be collapsed into one flag. Whether every record carries citable provenance. And whether pricing is predictable at volume. Run the same query against any two vendors and compare the responses side by side.
What makes Offendersearch different?
Every match carries a confidence score, the basis for the match, and per-source provenance with a source citation. Every search can be re-verified live at the source in the same request.
Which jurisdictions do you cover?
58 registries — the 50 states, DC, and US territories, normalized into one schema and one API call.
How fast is a search?
The synchronous endpoint answers from our current snapshot rather than dialling out to each registry, and every response reports its own elapsedMs so you can measure it on your own traffic. State-scoped queries return fastest. For bulk and high-volume work, the asynchronous endpoint lets you submit searches and collect the results as they finish.
Is a sex offender registry API different from a sex offender database API?
In practice the terms describe the same thing from two directions. A registry API is named for the source — the 58 official US registries. A database API is named for the shape you receive — one normalized, de-duplicated corpus you query as a single table. Ours is both: we hold the corpus, and every record still points back to the registry that published it, so you can query like a database and cite like a registry.
Is Offendersearch an offender search API?
Yes — that is exactly what it is. The offender search API takes a name, and optionally a date of birth, age or location, and returns scored, de-duplicated records from all 58 US sex offender registries in one call, each citing the registry that published it. One endpoint and one schema, whether you search a single person or batch thousands.
Can I use the API for a national sex offender search?
That is the default. An unscoped query fans out across all 58 jurisdictions in one call rather than making you loop state by state, and the response reports which sources answered so a partial result is never returned as an empty one. Scope it with a jurisdictions array when you only want particular states.
Do you support batch and bulk offender lookup?
Yes. A batch endpoint takes many searches in one request and bills per row, and an asynchronous endpoint lets you submit volume and collect results as they finish. Teams re-screening an existing population generally use batch; teams screening at the point of onboarding call the synchronous endpoint inline.
How does this compare with searching NSOPW directly?
NSOPW is a public search destination for one person at a time; it is not an API, it returns no structured records, and it cannot be integrated into a product. If you need an answer inside your own flow — scored, cited, in JSON, at volume — that is the gap this fills. See the NSOPW comparison for a feature-by-feature account.
Is this a consumer report?
No. Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and results are not a consumer report. Do not use them for FCRA-covered decisions without appropriate process.
Ready for enterprise screening programs
Offendersearch runs inside compliance-sensitive screening flows — staffing, property management, healthcare, and background-screening providers. Every search is stored with the results returned, every record carries its official registry citation, and access is governed per-workspace with teammates and revocable keys.
- Enterprise-grade security — BAA available for enterprise
- Complete audit trail: what was searched, when, and what was returned
- Per-source provenance and official-record links on every result
- Volume and enterprise terms — talk to us
Further reading
Independent comparisons of the tools in this category — including where other vendors are the better answer.
The best sex offender APIs in 2026, compared
Five ways to search US registries programmatically, measured on coverage you can enumerate, provenance, match quality and price.
The best criminal record search APIs in 2026
Jail bookings, prison custody, court cases and warrants are four different systems. Which API you want depends on which one your question needs.
The best background check APIs in 2026
Five brands, three companies: the consolidation nobody mentions, each vendor’s real published price, and the only per-call API on the list.
More in our comparisons and research.
Ship offender screening this week
Start with 25 free searches — no card, no sales call. Metered pricing after that, and a drop-in compatibility endpoint for teams migrating from other providers.