Tenant background checks, as one API call
Criminal records across more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions and 58 US sex offender registries — the two checks a rental product is asked for — behind a single integration and a single key.
Building screening into a product? See the background check API and background check API pricing.
No card, no sales call. $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month.
curl -sS https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/criminal/search \
-H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \
-G --data-urlencode "name=Alex Moreno" \
--data-urlencode "state=AZ"Deciding whether to rent to someone? Use an FCRA workflow.
FCRA workflows are built primarily for tenant screening and hiring decisions. If a result will help decide whether to rent to someone, the check has to run as an FCRA-regulated consumer report, with a permissible purpose, consent, accuracy controls and a dispute path for the person. Our standard search and API are not a consumer report. FCRA workflows run through FCRA Partner Access, for background check companies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement.
FCRA pricing is quoted per partner, so contact us for pricing.
Two checks, one integration
US criminal records are published by more than a thousand separate authorities. Absorbing that is our product; for a rental platform it is a year that never reaches a customer.
Both checks, one credential
Criminal records across more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions and 58 US sex offender registries on the same key and the same account. For a rental product these are two features and one integration.
Address-level answers
The registry side carries addresses, so a tenancy product can answer proximity questions its users actually ask — not just whether a name matched somewhere in the country.
Coverage your product can display
GET /v1/criminal/sources lists every jurisdiction, live or pending. You can show a landlord exactly what a screening covered instead of asking them to trust a badge.
Per-check pricing that resells
Tenant screening retails at $25–$45. At 5,000 checks a month the data costs about 12.6 cents each, so the margin lives in your product rather than in your vendor contract.
Priced to resell
Tenant screening retails at $25–$45. Here is what the data underneath it actually costs you.
| Screenings / month | Your cost | Per screening |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $75.00 | $0.1500 |
| 5,000 | $630.00 | $0.1260 |
| 50,000 | $5,580.00 | $0.1116 |
No setup fee, per-seat licence, search minimum or annual contract. Full pricing.
The county layer, in the biggest markets
Most US criminal matters begin in a county system, so that is where a tenancy check needs reach. These are the states contributing the most county jurisdictions to the roster.
| State | County jurisdictions | Statewide prison | Warrants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | 71 | Yes | — |
| Montana | 68 | Yes | — |
| Colorado | 66 | Yes | Yes |
| Pennsylvania | 65 | Yes | Yes |
| Texas | 65 | Yes | Yes |
| California | 59 | Yes | — |
| New York | 59 | Yes | — |
| Ohio | 51 | Yes | — |
1,375 county jurisdictions in total — see every state. Building rental software? The tenant screening API page is written for the engineering side.
You run the process; we make it defensible
On the standard API we are the records layer, and results are not a consumer report. Screening companies furnishing consumer reports use FCRA Partner Access. Either way, what you get is what makes that process hold up: every record typed by kind, attributed to a named jurisdiction and returned with a citation, plus a per-response count of what was searched.
- Show a landlord precisely which jurisdictions a screening reached
- Re-verify any record at its source from the citation, months later
- Treat arrests and convictions differently by design, using
kind - Trust & HIPAA answers enterprise security review; BAA available
Standing alerts, for awareness
Watch a person · $3/mo
A standing watch on a person by name and date of birth, across sex offender registry data or criminal records — an email when a matching record is added or changes, checked continuously against our data.
Watch an area · $10/mo
Watch an address and a radius across sex offender registry data. Manage monitors in the dashboard Notifications section, or over the API with POST /v1/monitors. How monitoring works.
What shows up on a criminal check, by the numbers
In a random sample of 66,154 US criminal records on our index, 50% are state prison (department of corrections) records and 49% are court cases.
41% of those records include charge detail. Among them, the most common charges are theft, larceny and stolen property (14%), drug possession (13%) and assault, battery and threats (10%).
Where a record states the level of the charge (9% of records), 60% are felonies and 34% misdemeanors.
93% of court cases on our index do not state an outcome. Among those that do, 43% ended in a conviction, guilty plea or adjudication, 14% were dismissed or found not guilty, and 43% are still open.
A jail booking records an arrest and the charges at booking. It is not a conviction.
- 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%
- Traffic offenses (not DUI)7%
- Other or unclear7%
- DUI / DWI6%
- Public order, trespass and property damage6%
- State prison (department of corrections) records50%
- Court cases49%
- County jail bookings1%
- Convicted, pleaded guilty or adjudicated3%
- Dismissed, not guilty or acquitted1%
- Open or pending3%
- No outcome stated (including cases marked closed without a disposition)93%
Based on a random sample of 66,154 records on our index (2026-10-08). Categories are our grouping of the charge text each court, jail or agency publishes; a record can include charges in several categories. Percentages are rounded. See criminal charge types and what shows up on a background check.
Tenant screening questions
What does a tenancy check reach?
Criminal records across more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions — county jail rosters, statewide prison systems, court records and warrants — plus the sex offender registry search across 58 US registries with photographs, aliases and addresses. One key covers both.
How fast can we ship it?
One endpoint, one key, one response shape. There is a free trial of 25 searches with no card and no sales call, so a developer can prove the integration before anyone signs anything. Teams already calling our registry search add criminal without a new credential or a migration.
What does it cost at volume?
Every call is $0.15, dropping to $0.11 for every call past 2,000 in a calendar month. At 5,000 screenings a month that is $630.00 — roughly 12.6 cents a screening — with no setup fee, per-seat licence, minimum or annual contract. Batches are billed per row.
Is Offendersearch a tenant screening company?
No — we are the records layer a tenant screening company calls. On the standard API, results are not a consumer report. Screening companies that furnish consumer reports use FCRA Partner Access: FCRA orders under a written FCRA agreement, with an exact date-of-birth rule, live re-verification and state restrictions applied — California, Nevada and New Jersey registry data is withheld from tenant screening. The applicant-facing process stays with the screening company.
How do we avoid over-reading an arrest record?
Every record is typed by kind — a jail booking is arrest-stage, a court record carries the disposition — and cited to the jurisdiction holding it. Your adjudication rules can treat them differently by design, which is what a challenged decision needs you to be able to demonstrate.
Can we screen an existing tenant base in bulk?
Yes — POST a batch and each row is billed as one call, with errored rows reported and not billed. Periodic re-screening of a portfolio is a common use of it, and it costs the same per person as a one-off lookup.