Comparison
Don't just poll the oracle — get pushed the moment an address is sanctioned
Chainalysis's free Sanctions Oracle and screening API are genuinely useful for an on-demand “is this address sanctioned?” check. But they're pull-only, and the free oracle is provided with no timeliness guarantee. If you need to know the instantan address you watch is added to the SDN list, you need a monitoring layer on top — that's what OFAC Alert is.
What the oracle is great at
- It's free — an on-chain oracle plus a free screening API.
- It gives a simple, binary is-sanctioned answer for a single address, on demand.
- It's a sensible building block for an inline check at transaction time.
We use the same free, public OFAC data — we don't resell it, and we're a complement to on-demand screening, not a replacement for it.
Where teams outgrow a pull-only check
- You have to poll.Nothing tells you when a watched address is newly added — you'd have to query on a schedule, diff the results, and build the delivery yourself.
- No change events.A binary yes/no carries no timeline — no “this flipped at 14:02 UTC,” no added/removed history to act on or show an examiner.
- Timeliness is best-effort. The free oracle is explicitly provided as-is, with no guarantee of how quickly a new listing appears.
OFAC Alert: the push + freshness layer on top
- Push, not poll — subscribe to addresses or programs and get a signed change alert via webhook, email, or Telegram within minutes.
- Transparent freshness — we publish when we last synced the SDN list and target 99.9% delivery; see trust & reliability.
- A real event stream + API — every add/remove/modify with a timestamp and diff, pollable or pushed; see the API reference.
Keep the oracle for inline checks if you like it — many teams run both: the oracle for the point-of-transaction yes/no, OFAC Alert for the continuous “tell me when it changes.” Also comparing tools at the $99 tier? See the ChainScreen alternative.
Stop polling. Get pushed.
Watch your first address free, no card. From $99/mo when you need more.
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