AML Watcher vs OpenSanctions

AML Watcher screens customers against PEP, adverse-media, sanctions, watchlist, anti-bribery and corruption, and international-leaks data. Its transaction-monitoring software includes 150+ expert-curated AML typologies and 10K+ customizable risk rules. AML Watcher says its database draws on over 100,000 sources, is updated every 15 minutes, and covers 235+ countries and states in 80+ screening languages. TruRisk, its explainable-AI feature, is advertised as reducing the false-alert queue by 80% while logging each judgment. Biometric AML compares a supplied image with a public AML face-data repository and claims 99% accuracy. Pre-built integrations are listed for JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, C#, Java, and cURL. The API supports cloud systems, with on-premises deployment available; the developer documentation exposes a report-search API and a get-access-token endpoint. The service states that its database and service are GDPR- and ISO 27001-compliant. There is no free plan, but a trial includes the first five searches free. The minimum tier covers 100 monitored entities, and unused credits do not roll over.

OpenSanctions provides a structured database of sanctions, politically exposed persons, and other public-interest information assembled from hundreds of sources. It deduplicates entities across sources and models links such as ownership, family ties, political roles, and sanctions designations. The hosted API supports entity matching, full-text search, and full-record retrieval. Its /match endpoint returns ranked candidates for screening details such as names, birth dates, nationality, or tax identifiers. Users can download the full dataset; commercial license customers can run the matching API on their own infrastructure, keeping customer personally identifiable information in their environment. OpenSanctions says data points are traceable to source material and its data pipeline is open source. API access is listed at €0.10 per query, with a 30-day trial; commercial screening and reseller licenses are quoted. The company says it holds ISO 27001:2022 certification and operates under a 99.8% uptime SLA. It supplies data and matching technology, not an end-user compliance application with alert review, case management, and approval workflows. Its data collection is licensed as a complete collection rather than selected parts.