--- title: "Entity resolution is not screening" summary: "We are not a screening tool and must not be used as one. This page is scope, not competition." canonical_url: https://entitybind.com/compare/sanctions-screening-tools last_updated: 2026-10-12 copy: full --- # Entity resolution is not screening > We are not a screening tool and must not be used as one. This page is scope, not competition. Canonical page: https://entitybind.com/compare/sanctions-screening-tools Last updated: 2026-10-12 ## Entity Bind vs Screening tools We are not a screening tool and must not be used as one. This page is scope, not competition. This page is about scope, not competition. That category does work we do not do and could not do, and nothing here substitutes for it. Entity Bind sits underneath it: we decide which company a row actually is, so the work on top runs against a resolved company instead of a spelling. Your company master has to survive somebody else’s audit, and every merge in it needs a reason a person outside your team can read. This page compares on that axis: what each side is for, where the alternative is stronger, and what we would do in your place. Screening tools: List coverage, person matching, alert workflow and a methodology a supervisor accepts. All of it out of scope here. Entity Bind: Not a screening tool, and not usable as one. We resolve the identity underneath the screen, so the list runs against a company rather than a spelling. - Our recommendation: Different job - Rows to Screening tools: 7 of 12 - Rows to Entity Bind: 4 of 12 - Rows genuinely even: 1 Settle it on your own data: A sample with the matches your current process already produced. We accept, withhold or contradict each one, with a citation you can open. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) Self-service. Create your workspace online and verify your email to start matching company records. Free starts with 300 credits and no card. Paid monthly plans are available in workspace Billing; VAT is added where applicable. Usage is tracked without automatic overage charges. [Trust and security](https://entitybind.com/trust) 7 of the 12 rows in the table below go to Screening tools and 4 go to Entity Bind. The rows on their side are the reason to keep what you already run; the rows on ours are what we would add beside it. By [James Rooney](https://entitybind.com/about), founder of Entity Bind · Last revised 12 October 2026 ## The short answer If you have a screening obligation, this is not the tool for it. Entity Bind is not a sanctions, watchlist, politically-exposed-person or adverse-media screening tool, it must not be used as one, and it is not a substitute for any regulated check you are obliged to perform. There is no risk field anywhere in the data model and there must not be one — not as a gap in the roadmap, but because a screening result is an assertion about a matcher rather than a fact about a company, and writing one into a record as though it were a fact would manufacture a defamatory claim with a citation attached. Screening vendors do work we do not do and could not do: list ingestion across hundreds of sources with as-of dates, alias and transliteration handling tuned for people, alert workflow with disposition records, and a methodology a supervisor will accept. What we sell sits underneath that layer — which company this row actually is, with an evidence trail — so that list matching runs against a resolved counterparty rather than against a spelling. The answer for your own rows needs your own rows: a few hundred of them, with the matches you already have beside them. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## What Entity Bind adds beside Screening tools Run both, and this is the half we do. Each of these is a job the other side of this page is not built for. - Your screening false positives are an identity problem: the same counterparty arrives spelt six ways and each spelling alerts separately. - You need to know which company a row refers to before anything is screened against it. - You want the identity decision that precedes the screen to carry its own evidence trail. - You want a crosswalk — an LEI, a register-qualified company number — so list matching can join on a key rather than on a name. - You need a documented refusal on the rows where the identity genuinely cannot be established. A stewardship queue and a supplier file before a payment run want different halves of that list. Create your Free workspace to inspect your own rows, or contact us for a guided review of the checks your workflow needs. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## The case for Screening tools Read these before the table. On some evaluations one of them settles the question on its own, and if it settles yours, keep what you have and put us beside it. - List coverage and list governance: hundreds of sources, ingested, versioned and dated, with the as-of discipline a supervisor asks about. Two list sources appear in our inventory as planned, and planned means there is no adapter. - Person-shaped matching. Aliases, transliteration, dates of birth, name order across scripts — a hard problem, and one we are out of scope for by design rather than by omission. - Politically-exposed-person and adverse-media coverage, neither of which exists here in any form. - Ongoing monitoring. Counterparties are rescreened as lists change, which is a cadence this product deliberately does not have: nothing here revalidates on a schedule. - Alert workflow: queues, escalation levels, disposition records and four-eyes review, which is the artefact an examiner actually reads. - A methodology, tuning evidence and model validation that regulators and auditors recognise. We have none of that standing and are not seeking it. ### Requirements that point to Screening tools - You have a screening obligation of any kind. This is not the tool, at any depth or configuration. - You need politically-exposed-person or adverse-media coverage. - You are screening people, or entities where the person behind them is the point. - You need ongoing monitoring as designations change. - You need a control your supervisor and your auditor will accept as one. If one of those is your requirement, say so when you write to us. We will tell you where the answer is Screening tools, and what running Entity Bind beside it would add: an independent verdict on each match, with the register page that supports it. Cheaper for both of us than finding out in month three. ## Entity Bind and Screening tools, dimension by dimension Every row carries a verdict. 7 go to Screening tools, 4 to Entity Bind and 1 is even. Both columns are filled in on every row, so a verdict can be read against what each side actually does about it. | Dimension | Screening tools | Entity Bind | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | The question the product answers | Does this party match a designated, restricted or high-risk one. | Which registered company this row refers to. Two different questions, and only one of them is ours. | Even | | Sanctions and watchlist coverage | Hundreds of lists, ingested, versioned and dated. | None wired. Two sanctions and export-control sources sit in the inventory as planned, and planned means there is no adapter and nothing to call. | Screening tools | | Politically-exposed persons and adverse media | Covered, and expected by regulators. | Not held and not planned. Nothing here reports on a person at all. | Screening tools | | Screening a person | The core of the discipline, with alias, transliteration and date-of-birth handling. | Out of scope by design. Results may not be used to identify, profile, locate or screen an individual, and personal fields the UK register volunteers are dropped at ingestion. | Screening tools | | Ongoing monitoring | Counterparties rescreened as designations change, on a schedule you set. | Nothing revalidates on a cadence. A last-checked date advances only when a resolution re-observes the value, and the entity reports the age of its stalest field rather than implying freshness it does not have. | Screening tools | | Alert workflow and disposition | Queues, escalation levels, four-eyes review and a disposition record per alert. | A review queue for abstentions with a typed cause and the column that would settle each row. That is a resolution backlog, not an alert-handling control. | Screening tools | | Regulatory standing | Methodologies, tuning evidence and model validation that supervisors recognise. | No SOC 2, no independent validation, no regulatory recognition of any kind, and none of it in progress. | Screening tools | | Risk flags on a record | A designation, a hit, a risk rating — the output the workflow is built around. | There is no risk boolean anywhere in the data model and there must not be one. Even the planned list sources would yield a storable fact only where the list record and the entity share a strong identifier; otherwise it stays a screening result, which is an assertion about the matcher. | Screening tools | | The identity underneath the screen | Matching runs against whatever string the source system holds. | A resolved counterparty with a register citation, so the list runs against a company rather than a spelling. False-positive rates of 90–99% are normal in production know-your-business screening, and a large share of that is identity noise rather than list noise. | Entity Bind | | Evidence behind the identity decision | The alert and its disposition. | A decision id that reopens the features, the thresholds, the cited register evidence with URLs, and the model and prompt version where one ran. | Entity Bind | | Behaviour when identity is genuinely unclear | An alert, escalated to an analyst. | A match below 0.90 confidence is unrepresentable. The record comes back as an abstention with a ranked shortlist instead. No counterparty is bound on thin evidence, and the abstention names the column that would settle it. | Entity Bind | | Keys for joining to a list | Name matching, with the false-positive burden that implies. | LEI, company number qualified by its issuing register, CIK, ticker, VAT, EUID and national numbers — so a match can be made on a key where both sides carry one. | Entity Bind | Our evidence basis: internal fixtures only · independent validation held: none Three limits sit behind every comparison in this section — what we hold, where we stand and how ready we are — and the [comparison hub](https://entitybind.com/compare#not-a-contest) states all three at full size. The figures in our own column were measured on internal fixtures; the [accuracy page](https://entitybind.com/accuracy) carries the method and the population behind each one. ### What we do not hold - No SOC 2. It has not been started. - No independent external validation of the accuracy figures. Every fixture is one we built. - No production customer holdout. The evidence is internal. A table cannot weigh those rows against your file, and neither can a fixture of ours — your own records are the only ones that settle it. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## Built for, and wrong for Neither of these depends on which alternative you are weighing. They are the two answers that decide whether the comparison above is worth your time at all. ### Built for Teams with a company master they have to defend — an MDM or stewardship queue, a CRM after a migration or a merger, a supplier file before a payment run, or counterparty onboarding that has to survive an audit. ### Wrong for Buying breadth as the product: we hold a fraction of an incumbent’s records and are not building a global company graph. Entity Bind resolves companies and organisations only. It does not resolve people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions exposure, emissions or geolocation, and its results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. ## Where the figures on this page come from Only the numbers that are not ours are listed here. Each one is the vendor’s own published claim. We have not audited anybody’s coverage figure, and as far as we know neither has anybody outside the company that published it. - [Our own source inventory and licence tiers](https://entitybind.com/coverage): The status of every sanctions and export-control source named here is published on our coverage page, including the ones that are planned rather than live. - [Acceptable use and scope limits](https://entitybind.com/terms): The prohibitions described on this page are contractual, not stylistic: screening, profiling and eligibility decisions about individuals are excluded uses. ## The method behind our half of this comparison 2 articles that set out how the decision is made and measured, rather than how it compares. - [KYB data requirements](https://entitybind.com/guides/kyb-data-requirements) (Guide): What a know-your-business onboarding flow actually needs, field by field, and which step is identity resolution. Explicitly not a screening, scoring or eligibility tool. - [Precision, recall and abstention](https://entitybind.com/guides/precision-recall-and-abstention) (Guide): Entity resolution is a three-way trade, not a two-way one. Why abstention is a design choice rather than a failure, what an abstention has to carry to be useful, and how to measure a system that declines. ## The other options you are weighing The other 11 comparisons, on the shelves the hub uses. Four are not vendor contests: two are the options that beat most vendors most of the time — the fuzzy match you already run, and building it yourself — and two are categories we refuse rather than compete in. ### Data providers and registers - [Entity Bind vs OpenCorporates](https://entitybind.com/compare/opencorporates) (2/9 rows to them): An excellent register mirror. A register mirror is not a decision. - [Entity Bind vs Companies House](https://entitybind.com/compare/companies-house-api) (3/12 rows to them): Free, authoritative, and the right answer for a lot of UK teams. It is one of our sources too. - [Entity Bind vs PermID](https://entitybind.com/compare/lseg-permid) (4/11 rows to them): Free permanent identifiers, and largely unrivalled in capital markets. We do not issue them. ### Resolution engines and platforms - [Entity Bind vs Senzing](https://entitybind.com/compare/senzing) (5/12 rows to them): A mature engine you run yourself, at no cost per decision. It resolves what you give it. - [Entity Bind vs Splink](https://entitybind.com/compare/splink) (5/12 rows to them): Free, open source, and it weighs the evidence properly: Fellegi–Sunter, done right. Our scoring stage is the same family. - [Entity Bind vs AWS Entity Resolution](https://entitybind.com/compare/aws-entity-resolution) (5/12 rows to them): Cheap, inside your own account, and it needs no new vendor. It also matches only what you loaded. - [Entity Bind vs Tamr](https://entitybind.com/compare/tamr) (5/12 rows to them): Machine-learning mastering at enterprise scale. It learns your labels — including the wrong ones. - [Entity Bind vs MDM platforms](https://entitybind.com/compare/informatica-and-reltio) (5/12 rows to them): They are the system of record. We are a decision layer beside one, and we write nothing. ### What you would otherwise do - [Entity Bind vs Fuzzy matching](https://entitybind.com/compare/fuzzy-matching) (3/10 rows to them): Free, already there, and perfectly good until a wrong merge costs money. - [Entity Bind vs Build it yourself](https://entitybind.com/compare/building-it-yourself) (3/11 rows to them): The right answer if entity resolution is your product. Several teams have done it well. ### Not what we are - [Entity Bind vs Enrichment vendors](https://entitybind.com/compare/zoominfo-and-clearbit) (5/12 rows to them): A different product, not a competitor. They sell contacts and firmographics; we resolve identity. ## Questions about Entity Bind and Screening tools ### Can we use Entity Bind for sanctions screening? No. It is not a sanctions, watchlist, politically-exposed-person or adverse-media screening tool, it is not a substitute for any regulated check you are obliged to perform, and using it as one would be a misuse of the product rather than a clever configuration of it. If you have a screening obligation, buy a screening tool. What this does is answer the question underneath yours: which registered company this row refers to, with evidence, or a documented refusal. ### Do you return a sanctions or risk flag? No, and the omission is deliberate rather than unfinished. There is no risk boolean anywhere in the schema and there must not be one. A screening hit is an assertion about a matcher, not a fact about a company: writing one into a record as though it were a fact would manufacture a defamatory claim and attach a citation to it, and the freshness and provenance model here would then carry it forward as a standing fact. The correct place for a screening result is the screening system's own case record. ### Your source inventory lists sanctions files. Why are they there? As planned identity sources, and planned in this inventory means there is no adapter and nothing is called. The reason they are listed at all is that a designation record is sometimes a citable identity fact — the EU financial sanctions files cite the legal instrument that created each designation, and 916 of their 1,772 enterprise records carry at least one structured identification. Even then the rule holds: a designation becomes a storable fact only where the list record and the entity share a strong identifier, and otherwise it is returned as a screening result and never written down as a property of the company. ### Will you monitor our counterparties for changes? No. Monitoring is what buyers in this category assume, and nothing here revalidates on a cadence. A fact's last-checked date advances only when a resolution re-observes the value, an entity reports the age of its stalest field rather than its freshest, and there is no scheduled refresh that would notice a company being designated, dissolved or renamed between your calls. If you need change monitoring, that is a screening or registry-monitoring product and it is not this one. ### How does resolving identity actually help our screening? By removing the part of the false-positive load that is not about the lists. False-positive rates of 90–99% are normal in production know-your-business screening, and much of that is one counterparty arriving as six spellings, a former name, a trading name and a subsidiary, each alerting separately against the same designation. Resolve the counterparty first, join on a register-qualified number or an LEI where both sides carry one, and the screening step gets one entity to check instead of six strings — with an evidence trail for the identity decision, which is the part an examiner will ask about later. ## Settle it against Screening tools on your own rows. Create your workspace, verify your email and run your first company file. The Free plan needs no card. Create API keys in your workspace when you need an integration. [Start free](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) · [Plans and prices](https://entitybind.com/pricing) 300 credits. No card. For a guided review of your file, explore [the Merge Safety Sprint](https://entitybind.com/audit-pack). --- The 0.90 confidence floor. It is an acceptance contract, not calibration evidence: it says what we refuse to return, not how often an accepted match is right. Read it with the coverage it costs. Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. This is the Markdown copy of https://entitybind.com/compare/sanctions-screening-tools, assembled from the same data the page renders and carrying every sentence, table row, figure and question the page's main content carries. The HTML page is canonical; it adds the layout, the navigation and the interactive parts (the ask panel, the forms), which a copy can name but not run. Every page on the site, with a line on each: https://entitybind.com/llms.txt.