The OFAC Sanctions Lists: SDN, Consolidated and How to Screen Them

The SDN List

The SDN List (Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons) is the main list. It names individuals and companies tied to targeted countries by ownership, control or acting for or on behalf of targeted entities, plus terrorists, narcotics traffickers and others designated under program-specific authorities. The assets of SDNs are blocked and US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them. The list runs to more than 17,000 names as of 2026.

An SDN entry carries far more than a name. It lists known aliases, addresses, dates and places of birth, passport or ID numbers where available, plus a program tag showing which sanctions program the designation falls under. Those identifiers are what let a screening system tell a real match from a false one.

Blocking has a precise meaning. To block property is to freeze it. Title stays with the owner, the property is not seized and it must be reported to OFAC within ten business days.

The Consolidated Sanctions List

The Consolidated Sanctions List brings together all of OFAC’s non-SDN lists in one consolidated dataset. Those include the SSI List (Sectoral Sanctions Identifications, tied to sectors of the Russian economy), the NS-MBS List (Non-SDN Menu-Based Sanctions, for less than full blocking measures), the CAPTA List (foreign financial institutions subject to correspondent account restrictions) and the NS-CMIC List (Chinese military-industrial complex companies, an investment restriction).

The practical difference from the SDN List is the severity and the scope of the measure. An SDN designation means full blocking, a frozen asset and a general bar on dealings. A non-SDN listing carries a narrower, measure-specific restriction instead, such as a restriction on certain financing, a correspondent account limit or an investment ban. A name can sit on a consolidated list without being an SDN.

Lists beyond OFAC

The US maintains several sanctions and restricted-party lists across different agencies. For example, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) maintains the Entity List and Denied Persons List under US export-control rules. Effective screening needs to account for both sanctions and export-control restrictions.

The list is not the whole picture

Even full coverage of the lists leaves a gap. Under OFAC’s 50 Percent Rule, a company owned 50 percent or more, directly or indirectly, by one or more blocked persons is itself blocked, even if it never appears on any list. Matching names against the lists will not surface it, which is why ownership-structure checks sit alongside list screening. For the 50 Percent Rule and OFAC exposure in full, see OFAC Sanctions: An Overview.

How to check a name against the OFAC lists

OFAC runs a free Sanctions List Search tool that searches the SDN and Consolidated lists together. It uses a fuzzy-matching algorithm with an adjustable minimum name score, so a near-miss spelling or an alias still surfaces. That is fine for a one-off check on a single name.

OFAC also publishes both the SDN and Consolidated Non-SDN data for download in several machine-readable formats, including CSV and XML, as well as an advanced XML data model that carries the full set of identifiers. Screening systems ingest these directly.

For anything beyond an occasional lookup, manual checks do not scale. The lists change constantly. Names repeat. Aliases and transliterations multiply false positives. Automated screening is the practical answer. With dilisense you can search OFAC's SDN and consolidated lists, alongside EU, UN, UK and other sources, through a single API. The data updates hourly and every match is traceable to its origin. For how screening works in practice, see What is Sanctions Screening?.