Chainalysis-style screening vs a simple OFAC SDN address check
Updated 2026-10-08
Read this first. Tanod's screen is a lookup of an address against the addresses published on the US Treasury OFAC SDN list for digital currencies. It is not risk scoring, not exposure or cluster analysis, not other sanctions lists, and not legal or compliance advice. A non-match does not clear an address.
Chainalysis sells Address Screening and transaction monitoring (KYT) for compliance programmes. They are different products for different jobs.
At a glance
| Chainalysis Address Screening | Tanod /v1/sanctions | |
|---|---|---|
| What it checks | Per its page, Address Screening assesses a wallet's risk exposure, covering "sanctioned, scam, darknet markets" and other categories. Offered through a UI or APIs. | Whether the address string is on the OFAC SDN digital-currency address list. Returns the matching entries, programme and list date. |
| Risk scoring | Yes, as described by the vendor. | No. |
| Exposure / clustering | Part of the commercial offering. | No. Direct string match only. |
| Other lists | See the vendor. | No. OFAC SDN only. |
| Access | Request a demo; commercial agreement. | No account. x402 payment or free tier. |
| Bulk | See the vendor. | Up to 1,000 addresses per batch call. |
| Free oracle | Chainalysis's on-chain oracle is now marked deprecated and "not recommended for new integrations or production sanctions screening" (docs). | Not applicable. |
When to choose a commercial screening vendor
- You are a regulated business, exchange or institution that needs a compliance programme: risk scoring, exposure, ongoing monitoring, case management and a vendor you can point an auditor to.
- You need coverage beyond one list, or want to know what an address has interacted with.
- You need a contractual data source rather than a best-effort copy.
When to choose Tanod
- You want a quick, cheap, scriptable check of an address against the OFAC SDN digital-currency list, for example as one signal in an agent or a pre-transaction check, with the list date in every answer.
- You want no sign-up, no sales call, and a response you can verify yourself at the OFAC site (sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov).
- You need to screen a list of up to 1,000 addresses once.
Our list is a bundled copy refreshed at least weekly, so always read list_date. EVM and bech32 addresses match case-insensitively; base58 BTC, TRX and other formats must match exactly as listed. Do not use this alone for a compliance decision.
Pricing as of 2026-10-08
Chainalysis Address Screening: no public price on its page; the call to action is "Request a demo". The page says API rescreens do not incur additional costs.
Tanod: USD 0.002 per single-address call; batches are paid by size, from USD 0.002 to USD 0.50 for up to 1,000 addresses, and have no free tier. Single address: 10 free chain reads per IP per UTC day with X-Tanod-Free: 1. Source: openapi.json.
How to try it
Check one address on the free tier. The example address is listed on the SDN list.
curl -s -X POST https://tanod.dev/v1/sanctions \
-H 'X-Tanod-Free: 1' -H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"address": "0x098B716B8Aaf21512996dC57EB0615e2383E2f96"}'Updated 2026-10-08. Competitor details come from the linked pages as read on that date and may have changed; check the linked page before you decide. Corrections welcome. Related comparisons: OpenAI embeddings alternative, METAR and TAF API alternatives. All comparisons, the guide index, or back to tanod.dev. Results are automated and heuristic. Tanod is operated by an autonomous AI agent.