The Sex Offender API. Built for enterprise screening.
Registry search, a full criminal search API, FCRA background checks, monitoring and a map API on one key. For health systems, skilled nursing, schools, visitor management and background check companies, at a fraction of what legacy screening platforms charge.
$0.15 per call · 25 free searches, no card · Read the API docs ›
| Referral | Check | Result | Registries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marta Reyes · 74 | Registry | No match | 58/58 |
| Daniel Okafor · 58 | Registry + criminal | Match · DOB | 58/58 |
| New hire · CNA | FCRA order | Disclosure sent | — |
Everything on one key: sex offender API, criminal search API, background check API, monitoring and a map. One schema, one audit trail, one invoice, $0.15 a call.
Sex offender API. A national sex offender registry API, one endpoint.
Every US registry searched in each call and de-duplicated into one person, with the registry that holds the record cited on every row. Name plus date of birth or age, with an age tolerance you set; matches scored and labelled so you choose your own threshold. Regular mode answers in under half a second; Live mode verifies at the registry right now and returns a report.
Sex offender API ›| Record | Match | Birth info | Registry | Conf. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jordan A. Sample | exact | dob_match · 1980-04-12 | NJ | 0.98 |
| Jordan Sample | exact | year_match · 1980 | MA | 0.71 |
| Jordan L. Sample | exact | age_match · 46 | PA | 0.70 |
| J. Sample | initial | no_dob_age_year | TX | 0.60 |
The full criminal search API. Criminal records API on the same key.
The same key, the same query shape and the same answer shape as the registry search, pointed at criminal records. One call searches every layer at once and returns one de-duplicated list of people, each record scored, labelled and cited to the jurisdiction that holds it.
- County jail rosters and bookings. Who is in custody today, booking date, charges as filed, bond, release date where published. 1,375 jails catalogued, 992 answering live.
- State corrections. Current and former inmates across 53 state systems: facility, custody status, sentence, projected release, parole where the state publishes it.
- Courts and dispositions. Case number, charges, disposition and sentence from 24 statewide court sources, with county court coverage growing.
- Warrants. Active warrants from 28 statewide and county warrant sources, flagged on the person.
- Federal custody. Bureau of Prisons inmates, looked up live, with register number and facility.
| Record | Type | Jurisdiction | Status | Charges | Conf. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel K. Okafor | DOC inmate | NJ · state | In custody · Northern State | 2 · aggravated assault | 0.97 |
| Daniel Okafor | Court case | Essex County, NJ | Disposed · 2019 | 1 · simple assault | 0.91 |
| Daniel Okafor | Jail booking | Hudson County, NJ | Released · 2018-06-02 | 1 · DUI | 0.88 |
| Dan Okafor | Warrant | Philadelphia, PA | Active | 1 · failure to appear | 0.64 |
| Daniel Okafor | Federal custody | US · BOP | No record | — | — |
What a record carries
Coverage today
Search by name, narrow by birth date
First name, last name, date of birth or age, optional state or county. The same nickname, alias and spelling rules as the registry search, so one integration covers both.
Per-state criminal records pages
Every state has a public page that names which layers it publishes, so a buyer knows before the first call what a Texas or Ohio answer can contain.
Bulk and batch
Send a list, get a file back. Thousands of names per batch with the same scoring and citations, billed per call.
Registry and criminal in one call
Ask for both on a referral and get one person with both answers, one audit entry, one line on the invoice.
FCRA background check API
Full FCRA background checks run as orders on the same account: consent and disclosure, the check, dispute handling and adverse-action steps, so a regulated hiring or tenant decision never lives in a second system.
FCRA background check API ›Sex offender monitoring API. Don't just check once — get alerted.
Watch a person for $3 a month or a location for $10. A new registration, a status change or a registrant moving into range arrives by email or webhook.
Sex offender monitoring API ›Sex offender map API. Put the registry on your own map.
Clusters at low zoom, pins, then names, then the full record, on MapLibre, Leaflet or Google Maps, metered per view with the same citations underneath.
Sex offender map API ›Sex offender search dashboard
The same checks with no code: search, review, export a report, add teammates, keep every search on file for the surveyor or the lawyer. Business and personal accounts.
Sex offender search dashboard ›The offender API: one call across 58 US registries. Every US registry answers; you read one list.
Sex offender background check API for the teams that admit, hire and host. Three decisions a day where a name is not enough.
Every referral checked before the bed is offered
The check runs in the background on each referral: name and date of birth or age, every US registry, one answer. Admissions sees no match, possible match or match, with the photo and the registering state to confirm. Criminal records on the same key when policy asks for it. BAA on enterprise plans.
| Resident | Age | Result | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marta Reyes | 74 | No match | — |
| James Brown | 69 | Possible · 2 | K. Patel |
| Daniel Okafor | 58 | Match · DOB | K. Patel |
A registry check on day one, a full FCRA check when the offer is made
Screen every applicant against the registry and criminal records at the top of the funnel for $0.15, then run the compliant FCRA order only for the people you intend to hire. Background check companies resell all three layers on their own margin.
| Order | Role | Stage | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| #4821 | CNA · nights | Complete | 2d |
| #4822 | LPN | Disclosure sent | 1d |
| #4823 | Driver | Dispute open | 5h |
Cleared at the window in under a second
One API call per check-in, inside your visitor management product or ours. Name and date of birth from the ID, every US registry, a scored answer with the photo, and a record of the check for the district. Monitoring keeps watching the campus radius after the visitor leaves.
| Visitor | Checked | Result | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| R. Alvarez | 08:02 | Cleared | 0.4 s |
| T. Nguyen | 08:11 | Cleared | 0.3 s |
| P. Walsh | 08:19 | Hold · review | 0.5 s |
By industry. The same search, built into the moments your team screens people.
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.
Add a sex offender check across every US registry to your tenant-screening flow with one API call — scored, source-tagged results your leasing teams can act on immediately.
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.
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.
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.
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.
See every industry on the solutions page. Hiring and tenant decisions run as FCRA workflows through FCRA Partner Access.
Why teams call it the best offender API. The check has run before anyone opens the packet.
“Every referral used to mean someone opening a state registry site, retyping the name and hoping they spelled it right. Now the check has run before anyone opens the packet, with the photo and the registry right there. Surveyors see a record for every admission.”
The same checks the legacy screening platforms run. Without the platform.
Affordable. $0.15 a call with volume tiers. No platform fee, no seat licences, no annual minimum. Model it in a spreadsheet before you sign anything.
Sex offender API pricing ›Customizable. Strict, balanced or broad matching. Your age tolerance, your auto-accept threshold, your webhooks. It fits your workflow, not the other way round.
Matching methodology ›Explainable. Every match scored and labelled, every record cited to its registry or jurisdiction. Regular and Live modes, and a verification report when a decision needs paper.
Regular and Live modes ›| Legacy screening platform | OffenderSearch | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Platform fee, seats, annual minimum | $0.15 per call. No fee, no seats, no minimum. |
| Matching | A verdict you cannot inspect | Strict, balanced or broad. Age tolerance. Every match scored and labelled. |
| Evidence | A PDF | A citation on every record, stored searches, a verification report on demand. |
| Workflow | Theirs | Yours: API, webhooks, batch, MCP, dashboard, or inside your intake software. |
| FCRA | Bundled, whether you need it or not | Full FCRA background checks when you need them, registry checks when you don't. |
Offender search API for developers. One POST, a scored list, a citation per record.
OpenAPI, batch, webhooks, an MCP server and a drop-in compatibility endpoint for teams migrating from another vendor. Registry and criminal share one query shape. First call in five minutes.
Every sex offender API record arrives in one schema, with the reason it matched. The same fields whichever of the 58 US registries holds it.
What a single result looks like. One normalized record, the match spelled out.
Inside the data: what registrants are registered for. 900,327 registrants whose entry names the offense.
- Sexual offense against a child46%
- Rape or sexual assault35%
- Child sexual abuse material9%
- Failure to register5%
- Soliciting or enticing a minor4%
- Unwanted sexual contact4%
- Statutory (age-of-consent) offense4%
- Non-sexual offense2%
97% men, 3% women; 96% of entries include a registry photo. A person can fall in more than one category. Figures as of 2026-10-08. Sex offense types explained ›
Sex offender registry API vs. state websites. A state site answers one person in one state; the API answers a team across all 58 registries.
| OffenderSearch API | A typical state registry site | |
|---|---|---|
| Registries per search | 58 US registries in one search | One state at a time |
| Match on date of birth | Yes, every match says why it matched | Name only on most sites |
| Same fields for every state | One normalized record shape | Each state is different |
| Criminal records on the same search | County, state and federal | No |
| Alerts when something changes | Person and location monitoring | Varies by state |
| Bulk lists | CSV or JSON batch, one result per person | No |
| Which sources answered | Reported on every search | Not shown |
Regular, and Live verification. Chosen per request, not a plan and not a setting on your key.
The continuously updated answer
One round trip at the base rate of $0.15 a call. Current enough for admissions, visitor and ongoing safety screening, and every record carries its own lastCheckedAt.
Verified at the registry, right now
Send a "live" block naming the jurisdictions to re-verify before a decision. +$0.02 per completed live source, capped at $2.00 a search.
What to look for in a sex offender API. Five things you can test before you sign.
Current data. lastCheckedAt on every record, so freshness is read off the answer.
Coverage you can name. 58 US registries, listed, and sourceStatus on each response.
Scored matches. matchConfidence, matchBasis and matchState, de-duplicated into one person.
A citation on every record. Registry name and record URL, plus a verification report for the file.
Pricing you can model. $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No seats, no minimum.
Depending on what you came for. Offender lookup, offender search, the registered offender database, a background check API: it is all the same key.
Offender lookup
Look one person up by name and date of birth across every US registry and 1,164 criminal jurisdictions, from the dashboard, no code.
Offender lookup ›Offender search near me
Registrants near an address, with photos and the registering state, by state, county and city.
Sex offenders near me ›The registered offender database
1.5M records in one schema, continuously updated, with the registry that holds each record cited.
Registered offender database ›Background check API
Registry and criminal checks at $0.15, full FCRA background checks as orders when a regulated decision needs one.
Background check API ›Sex offender registry search by state. Each state page lists its registry, its counties and its cities.
From first call to ongoing screening. Four steps from an API key to a monitor.
Get a key. 25 free searches, no card. Or search from the dashboard with no code.
Search a person. Name plus date of birth or age. Every US registry, de-duplicated, scored, cited.
Re-check when it matters. Live mode verifies at the registry right now and returns a report.
Keep watching. Monitor the people and places you are responsible for.
Frequently asked questions about the sex offender API.
Can this replace our current screening vendor? For registry, criminal and FCRA checks, yes. The same checks, your workflow, a fraction of the price.
What does a call cost? $0.15 per search with volume tiers. Records, reports and monitors priced separately. No platform fee or minimum.
Do you sign a BAA? Yes, for healthcare and skilled nursing customers on an enterprise agreement.
Can I run a national sex offender search in one call? That is the default. An unscoped query covers all 58 US registries and the response lists which ones answered; pass a jurisdictions array to narrow it.
Is this a consumer report? Not on the standard API. Hiring and tenant decisions run as FCRA orders through FCRA Partner Access.
More questions about the offender search API
What are most registered sex offenders registered for?
On our index, the most common offense group is sexual offense against a child (46% of registrants whose registry names the offense), then rape or sexual assault (35%) and child sexual abuse material (9%). Every state page shows its own mix; /sex-offense-types explains each category.
What does a sex offender record show?
Name and aliases, date of birth or birth year, a registry photo where the state publishes one, the registered address, the offense and any tier or risk level the registry assigns, and a link to the official record — plus why the record matched your search.
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.
Ready for enterprise screening programs. A BAA, an audit trail and a citation on every record.
- BAA available for healthcare and skilled nursing on an enterprise agreement.
- Every search stored with the results returned: what was searched, when, by whom.
- Per-source provenance and the official record link on every result.
- Workspaces with teammates and revocable keys; volume terms on request.
Sex offender API pricing: $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No platform fee, no seats, no minimum.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Search, sex offender or criminal | $0.15 · $0.11 past 2,000/mo |
| Live verification | +$0.02 per source, $2.00 cap |
| Verification report | +$0.02 per document |
| Monitoring | $3 person · $10 location /mo |
| Map API | $2.00 per 1,000 map requests |
The OffenderSearch APIs. One account, one key, one bill.
Sex offender registry
Sex offender search APISex offender databaseRegistered offender databaseBulk sex offender searchSex offender registry APIOffender search APICriminal records
Criminal records APICriminal background check APICriminal search APICourt records APIArrest records APIInmate search APIBackground check APIEmployment background check APIEmployment screening APIBulk criminal record searchStatewide criminal searchFederal criminal recordsBuild with it
API documentationSex offender map APIBackground check API pricingBackground check API integrationFree background check APIPay-as-you-go background check APIBackground check API in PythonBackground check API in Node.jsNSOPW APIMCP server for offender searchIntegrationsAI integrationOffenderSearch vs offenders.ioWhat every call includes. Six things to check in any offender API, and what ours returns for each.
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.
Fields on every record, in one schema
name.full · aliases[] · dob · birthYear · age · sex · race · height · weight · eyeColor · hairColor · marks · addresses[] · offense.statute · offense.tier · offense.riskLevel · registrationDate · flags.absconder · flags.predator · matchConfidence · matchBasis[] · matchState · sources[] · sources[].registryName · sources[].recordUrl · lastCheckedAt
Monitoring & alerts. Set a recurring watch and get an email when the data changes.
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, checked continuously: get told when a registered offender moves nearby. Manage it in the dashboard, 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; those run through FCRA Partner Access. See monitoring & alerts · Monitoring API.
The map API, zoom by zoom. Your map, our data: clusters when zoomed out, pins closer in, names close up, and the full record when one is opened.
Clusters
A count for each area, with a breakdown by housing status. A click on a cluster opens it.
Pins, then names
One pin per registered address. From zoom 15 each pin carries a first initial and last name.
The full record
The same record the search returns: photographs, addresses, offenses and the registry that holds it.
$2.00 per 1,000 map requests and $0.015 per record opened, with a $300 monthly minimum applied toward usage. Test mode is free. See the sex offender map API · Map API docs.
The registry search in code. Plain REST and JSON, an API key in a header, no SDK to install.
- Sync search. POST /v1/search answers in one round trip, with elapsedMs on every response so you can measure it in your own flow.
- Async and batch. POST /v1/searches for deep sweeps you poll by id, and POST /v1/batch for a CSV or JSON list, one result per row.
- Webhooks. An async search can notify a URL when it finishes (one call; poll for the source of truth). Monitoring alerts are delivered by signed webhook or email.
- Safe retries. Send an Idempotency-Key and a dropped-connection retry returns the original job instead of a second search.
- Drop-in migration. /v1/compat/sexoffender keeps the legacy parameters and envelope, so switching is a base-URL and key change.
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
}'Inside the criminal data. County court cases, statewide prison systems, county jail bookings, warrant systems and federal records come back as one record type. A booking is not a conviction, and the record says which it is.
- State prison (department of corrections) records50%
- Court cases49%
- County jail bookings1%
- Theft, larceny and stolen property14%
- Drug possession13%
- Assault, battery and threats10%
- Burglary and breaking & entering9%
- Fraud, forgery and identity theft8%
- Drug sale, distribution or manufacture8%
Based on a random sample of 66,154 criminal records on our index. Categories are our grouping of the charge text each court, jail or agency publishes. See criminal charge types.
Halloween 2026: check your trick-or-treat route. See registered sex offenders along the streets you’ll walk, before you go.
Ship offender screening this week
25 free searches, no card. A sales engineer if you want one.