How do I choose a crypto compliance screening tool, and are free ones enough?
Choose by who you are, not by the marketing. Individuals and small teams: free tools cover most situations — official lists plus an aggregated free checker like OceanAlt — so start free and pay only when something stays unclear. Licensed institutions: you need full transaction monitoring and regulatory reporting, where subscription platforms like Chainalysis, TRM Labs and Elliptic are the standard, typically from tens of thousands of dollars a year. Three hard questions for any tool: can its verdicts be verified, how does it phrase "no data", and who do you call on a false positive.
Five kinds of tools and who each suits
Official list search (free, authoritative): OFAC's sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov, plus the EU and UK OFSI lists. This is the final word on whether an address is sanctioned, but it covers only the list itself: no issuer freezes, no fund-flow context, and each list must be searched separately.
Aggregated free checkers (OceanAlt is one): one pass across sanctions lists, USDT/USDC issuer freezes, mixer and scam databases, plus on-chain signals like address age and one-hop funding source, covering 8 EVM chains plus Tron, Solana and Bitcoin. Our approach: every verdict carries clickable evidence sources, and a miss is reported as "no match in the data held", never as "safe". Free, no signup, with a keyless API and MCP access.
Institutional subscription platforms (Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic, Merkle Science, Crystal): full transaction monitoring, case management, regulator-ready reporting and deeper fund graphs. If you are licensed, file with regulators, or screen hundreds of thousands of transfers a day, this is the right tier — at tens of thousands of dollars a year and a procurement cycle.
Light paid checks for individuals (AMLBot and similar): per-lookup reports for the occasional "official-looking" document. Methodology disclosure varies widely — before paying, check whether the vendor names its data sources at all.
Built-in warnings in wallets and browser extensions: the most convenient, but coverage and criteria are rarely disclosed. Treat them as an extra nudge, not as grounds for a decision.
The three hard questions
① Can the verdict be verified? A black-box score cannot be explained to a regulator, a customer or yourself. Demand that every conclusion names the list or on-chain fact behind it, ideally with a link to the original source.
② How is "no data" phrased? A tool that reports insufficient data as "safe" leaves you alone with the liability when things go wrong. The honest phrasing is "no match in the data held", with the data coverage date stated.
③ Who do you call on a false positive? A wrongly flagged address hurts a real person. Check for a public appeal channel and published outcomes. Our own appeal page publishes the overturn rate — and shows null, not zero, while nobody has appealed yet.
A money-saving order of operations
Free aggregated check first → if anything looks off or the amount is large, verify against the official list itself → still uneasy and operating at institutional scale, then trial a subscription platform. Most people get their answer at step one.
Where to start: free address check · API docs · watch an address
Boundary of everything above: a screening "clear" only means no match in the data held, never a safety guarantee; this page is not legal or compliance advice.