Sex offender screening API for dating apps
Your members meet in person. Screen them against every US sex-offender registry at signup and on a recurring basis with a low-latency, scored API — purpose-built for dating platforms.
25 free searches, no card. $0.15 a call, no platform fee, no seats, no minimum. No code needed: search from your dashboard, or integrate the full API when you’re ready.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Mei", "lastName": "Chen", "dob": "1990-01-17", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Screening challenges for trust & safety teams at dating platforms
- Members meet in person, so safety screening is core to the product
- Signup screening must not add friction that hurts conversion
- A member cleared at signup can register later and needs re-checks
What sex offender screening gives trust & safety teams at dating platforms
Screen members at signup without hurting conversion
Continuously re-verify an active member base
Produce a per-member check history on demand
Dating & Social Apps sex offender check API: request and response. One POST per person, or the same search from the dashboard with no code.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Mei", "lastName": "Chen", "dob": "1990-01-17", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Send what you have. Name and date of birth; age or birth year when that is all you hold. Date of birth drives matchState: dob_match, year_match, age_match or no_dob_age_year.
Read the counts. sourcesComplete against sourcesQueried says whether all 58 registries answered, so a partial search is never read as a clear one.
Branch on the score. matchConfidence and matchBasis on every record, with the registry cited.
| Person | Checked for | Result | Answered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mei Chen | member verification | No match | 58 / 58 |
| Jordan Sample | member verification | Match · dob_match | 58 / 58 |
| J. Sample | member verification | Review · year_match | 58 / 58 |
Read the API docs › · Search from the dashboard › · Screen a CSV without code ›
Sex offender screening built for dating & social apps. One key, one schema, one stored record of every check.
Signup-time screening
Low-latency sync calls fit inside a member onboarding flow without slowing conversion.
Continuous re-verification
Weekly or Daily freshness tiers keep an active member base re-checked as their status changes.
Auditable results
Provenance and lastCheckedAt on every record give trust & safety a defensible trail for incident reviews.
When trust & safety teams at dating platforms run a sex offender check. Each moment, and the call that fits it.
At sign-up or verification
Platforms run a registry check when a member verifies identity, before they can message anyone.
Before off-platform contact
Some products check when two members move to meeting in person or exchanging contact details — the moment the risk changes.
On a report
When another member reports someone, trust-and-safety teams check the reported account against the registries as part of the review.
Continuously, for verified members
A monitor on verified members catches a registration that happens after sign-up.
Before a paid tier or verified badge
A verification badge is a natural point to run the check, since identity is confirmed there anyway.
Before matching across age-sensitive features
Features involving minors or families warrant a check before they are enabled.
Dating & Social Apps screening workflow. Step by step, from the first call to the stored record.
Collect a verified name and date of birth. From your identity-verification step; self-reported names alone produce weak matches.
Search in one call from your backend. The response returns scored candidates with the reason each one matched.
Route by match strength. Act automatically only on strong date-of-birth matches; send weaker ones to human review with the registry link.
Record the decision. Keep the response and the reviewer’s decision for appeals.
Monitor verified members. Alerts arrive by webhook when a monitored member’s registry status changes.
Dating & Social Apps screening: what the law requires and what it doesn’t
The one federal rule in this space is narrow: international marriage brokers must search the National Sex Offender Public Website before releasing a client’s contact information (8 U.S.C. § 1375a). Most dating and social platforms screen as a trust-and-safety choice rather than a legal duty, which means the design of the check is up to you — and so is the risk of getting it wrong.
The costly cases in this market have been about accuracy, not failure to screen. A screening vendor for a major home-sharing platform was sued over a "violence" label applied to a non-violent, downgraded offense (Taylor v. Inflection, D. Minn.), and regulators have penalized name-only matching against registries. Showing the match basis, acting only on strong matches and keeping a person in the loop is the safer design.
Where the check sits in the product changes both cost and risk. Screening at sign-up costs a search for every account, including the many that never match; screening at verification, before first message or before an in-person feature costs less and targets the moment that matters. Whatever you choose, match only on verified identity data, route strong matches to a reviewer, and give the member a way to dispute — the same controls that keep false matches out of your enforcement queue.
Sex offender screening for dating & social apps, by the numbers. The same answer whichever registry holds the record.
Registry and criminal records for dating & social apps, on one key. Most trust & safety teams at dating platforms need more than one check, and running two vendors means two integrations, two contracts and two invoices.
Sex offender registry
58 US registries, continuously updated, with photographs, aliases, addresses and the official record citation on every match. 1.5M records in one schema.
Sex offender API ›Criminal records
1,408 county jail rosters, 53 state corrections systems, courts, warrants and federal custody, almost 50 million records in the same scored, source-cited schema. Same key, same price.
Criminal search API ›FCRA background checks
When a result decides a hire or a tenancy, the check runs as an FCRA order through FCRA Partner Access: consent, the check, disputes and adverse-action steps. Pricing is quoted per partner.
FCRA Partner Access ›Coverage today: 1,914 criminal jurisdictions catalogued, 1,564 live, 51 states + DC + federal. See what each state publishes, or the live list at /v1/criminal/sources.
What dating & social apps screening costs per check. $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No platform fee, no seats, no minimum.
| Checks / month | Cost | Per check |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $75.00 | $0.1500 |
| 5,000 | $630.00 | $0.1260 |
| 50,000 | $5,580.00 | $0.1116 |
A batch is billed per row, so bulk screening costs the same per person as a single lookup. No setup fee, no per-seat licence, no monthly minimum on search and no annual contract, so the price scales down with you as well as up. A fraction of what legacy screening platforms charge.
The background check API · screen a CSV without code. More for developers: the free background check API tier, background check API pricing, the employment screening API and tenant screening API, and the background check API in Python and background check API in Node.js tutorials.
Dating & Social Apps screening FAQ
For anything else, talk to sales or read the API docs.
Can we re-screen the member base on a schedule?
Yes. Use the Weekly or Daily freshness tier and re-run searches on your cadence; each record returns when it was last verified.
How do you reduce false matches on common names?
Every record carries a confidence score and match basis, and people are de-duplicated across sources so common names don’t explode your review queue.
Are dating apps required to check the sex offender registry?
Generally no; it is a trust-and-safety choice. The narrow federal duty applies to international marriage brokers, who must search the national public registry before releasing contact details.
How do we avoid banning the wrong person?
Use a verified date of birth, act automatically only on full date-of-birth matches, and send name-only matches to human review with the official record link.
Can members see their own result?
Your platform decides what to show. Many products show a verified badge rather than registry details, and handle a match through a private review.
When in the funnel should a dating app screen?
Most platforms screen at identity verification or before in-person features, rather than at sign-up. That concentrates spend on members who are about to meet someone.
Do we need an FCRA workflow for member screening?
Not for a trust-and-safety decision about platform access in general. If a result ever informs employment, housing, credit or insurance, it must run as an FCRA-regulated consumer report.
Can we show a safety badge to other members?
Many platforms show a verified badge; be careful about implying a guarantee, and keep the badge tied to identity verification rather than a screening verdict.
Related
Screen trust & safety teams at dating platforms with one API
Your members meet in person. Screen them against every US sex-offender registry at signup and on a recurring basis with a low-latency, scored API — purpose-built for dating platforms.