For developers

A background check API for criminal records and registries.

One REST call reaches more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions of criminal records — county jail rosters, statewide prison systems, court records and warrants — plus 58 US sex offender registries, and returns scored, de-duplicated, source-tagged records in one schema.

Get an API key Read the docs

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
  }'

What one call reaches

Both layers, one endpoint

A background check that only reaches one of these answers half the question. Both run on the same key, the same schema and the same call.

Layer	What it carries	In the roster
County jail rosters	Booking date, charges at booking, custody status	1,375
Statewide prison (DOC)	Custody status, facility, admission date	53
Court records	Case number, charge and disposition	24
Warrants	Offense, description, warrant status	28
Sex offender registries	Photographs, aliases, addresses, tier where published	58

Live coverage is published at /v1/criminal/sources — build against that rather than against a number on a page. Per-state detail: what each state publishes.

Pricing

What a background check API costs

$0.15 a call, $0.11 for every call past 2,000 in a calendar month. No setup fee, no per-seat licence, no minimum and no annual contract. Screening products retail a check at $15–$50; this is the data underneath.

Checks / month	Cost	Per check
1,000	$150.00	$0.1500
10,000	$1,180.00	$0.1180
100,000	$11,080.00	$0.1108

A batch is billed per row. Full pricing · employment screening · tenant screening · how the top 5 APIs compare.

Scope

Exactly what this API covers

“Background check API” covers a dozen different products. Here is which one this is, so you can tell in thirty seconds whether it solves your problem.

In scope

Sex-offender registry records from the 50 states, DC, the 5 US territories and NSOPW
Names, aliases, DOB, physical description, and published addresses
Offence, statute, tier or risk level, and registration dates
Absconder, predator and incarcerated flags where a registry publishes them
A match confidence score and the basis for every match
Per-source provenance with the record URL and a lastCheckedAt timestamp

Not in scope

County, state, or federal criminal court records
Arrests, charges, or dispositions that did not result in registration
Employment, education, or professional-licence verification
Credit reports, eviction records, or motor-vehicle records
Global watchlist, sanctions, or PEP screening
Facial recognition — faceId returns 422

In your stack

One layer, done properly

Where it fits

Most screening stacks assemble several sources: a criminal-records vendor, an identity check, sometimes a credit or MVR pull. This API is the sex-offender registry layer of that stack — the one component that has to be nationwide, because a registrant can move states and the local check will not see it.

Why teams replace their own integration

Fifty-seven registries publish fifty-seven formats, change layouts without notice, and fail silently. Maintaining that in-house is a permanent tax on an engineering team that would rather ship product. One endpoint replaces it, and every record still tells you which source it came from.

How you migrate

POST /v1/compat/sexoffender accepts the exact parameters and returns the exact envelope of legacy sex-offender search APIs, so an existing integration switches by changing a base URL and a key — no re-mapping, no re-testing your parser.

What you pay

$0.15 a call, metered, no seats

Every call is $0.15, dropping to $0.11 past 2,000 in a month. A Regular search is the base rate; Live re-verification adds $0.02 per completed source, capped at $2.00 a search. A verification PDF is $0.02 per document and only when you ask for one.

Full pricing What is in the database

FAQ

Questions developers actually ask

Is this a criminal background check API?

Yes. One call reaches more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions — county jail rosters, statewide prison systems, court records where a state publishes them, and warrants — alongside 58 US sex offender registries, on the same key. Read the record kind on each result: a jail booking is arrest-stage, while a court record carries the disposition that says how a case ended. Coverage is expanding continuously and /v1/criminal/sources publishes the live list.

Is there a free background check API?

You get 25 free searches when you sign up — real national data, no card, no sales call — and after that it is metered at $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. There is no permanent free tier and no floor either: no seat licences, no annual commitment, no minimum spend, so a proof of concept costs a few dollars rather than a procurement cycle. Free public search pages are websites rather than APIs — one jurisdiction at a time, no scoring, no de-duplication across state lines and no provenance you can put in a file — which is exactly the work a metered API is doing for the $0.15.

Can I run a sexual predator background check with it?

You can search the registries that publish predator designations, and where a registry publishes the flag we carry it, and tens of thousands of records currently carry one. What "predator" means is defined by each state, not by us, so the flag is only as consistent as the registry that issued it. Records also carry tier and risk level where published.

How fast is a call, and how is it priced?

The synchronous endpoint answers from our current snapshot rather than dialling out to every US registry, and every response reports its own elapsedMs so you can measure it against your own traffic. Pricing is $0.15 per call, dropping to $0.11 past 2,000 calls in a month; a Regular search is the base rate, live re-verification adds $0.02 per completed source (to a $2.00 ceiling), and each verification PDF adds $0.02.

Can I use it for employment or tenant decisions?

Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and its results are not a consumer report, so they must not be used for FCRA-covered decisions without appropriate process. Use is subject to our acceptable-use terms and applicable law, which you accept at onboarding.

Do you offer a sandbox or test key?

Sign up and create a key — it works immediately on the free trial, no payment method needed. Adding a card lifts the trial limits and nothing about the key changes. Keys are pure credentials with no entitlements attached — any key can run a Regular or Live search and call the report endpoint — so you can issue separate keys per environment and rotate or revoke any one of them independently.

Monitoring API

Not just a search — a standing watch

POST /v1/monitors creates a recurring watch on a person (name and date of birth) or a location (address and radius). Each morning it is evaluated against our continuously updated data and an alert is emailed when a matching record is added, changes, or is removed. Person monitors are $3/mo, location $10/mo.

Person and location watches, over sex offender registry data
Person watches over criminal records too — billed separately
List, update and cancel monitors over REST; add multiple recipients

The full reference — the Monitor object, alert events and cadence — is in the Monitoring API docs. Monitoring is not a consumer report and must not be used for FCRA-governed hiring, tenancy, or credit decisions.

curl -sS https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/monitors \
  -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "product": "sex-offender",
    "type": "person",
    "person": { "name": "Jordan Rivera", "dob": "1988-04-12" },
    "channels": { "email": ["alerts@example.com"] }
  }'

Comparisons & research

Ship the registry layer this week

Self-serve signup, metered pricing, and a drop-in compatibility endpoint if you are migrating from another provider.