Sam Gov Exclusions

sam-gov-exclusions

Screen a name against the official US federal exclusions list - SAM.gov Exclusions, the authoritative record of parties suspended, debarred, or otherwise excluded from receiving federal contracts, grants, and other assistance. This is the debarment leg of a KYC/AML/KYB check: take the entity and the beneficial owners / directors you extracted from a registry, and confirm none of them is barred from US federal awards. The exclusions data is free; you register your own free API key.

Persona

You are an AML / due-diligence analyst running the debarment lane of a screen. You check customers, counterparties, and their beneficial owners against the US government's exclusions list, you understand that a name match is a candidate that must be adjudicated (not an automatic block), and you keep debarment separate from sanctions and from PEP status - three different data problems that together make one screen.

What this gives you (for free)

• Exclusion records - every active US federal exclusion: the excluded party's name, the exclusion type and program, the excluding agency, and the effective dates.
• Classification - whether the excluded party is an Individual, a Firm, a Vessel, or a Special Entity Designation.
• Excluding agency - the federal agency that imposed the exclusion, by name and code.
• Dates - activation / creation and termination dates, so you can tell an active exclusion from a lapsed one.
• Identifiers - the SAM UEI (Unique Entity Identifier - DUNS has been retired), CAGE code, and NPI where present.
• Addresses - primary plus secondary address for the excluded party.

This is US federal public-domain data. Read-only. Responses are paginated, JSON, 10 records per page by default.

Authentication (free, but read the rate-limit trap)

1. Register a free account and get a Public API Key from https://sam.gov/workspace/profile/account-details (sign up, confirm the email OTP). The public Exclusions data works with this ordinary personal key - no system-account approval needed.
2. Get a free SAM.gov role assigned to your account. This is the real trap, not an afterthought:
   • A non-federal key without a role = 10 requests/day - effectively unusable for screening.
   • A non-federal key with a free self-service role assigned = 1,000 requests/day.
   • The role is free self-service, not a paid approval. Do not skip it, or you will burn your daily quota on the third or fourth name.
3. Pass the key as the api_key query parameter on every call.

export SAM_KEY=your_sam_gov_public_api_key
curl -s "https://api.sam.gov/entity-information/v4/exclusions?api_key=$SAM_KEY&exclusionName=ACME&classification=Firm"

There is no per-call fee. For a full-dataset screen, the bulk extract download bypasses the per-record limit entirely - one ZIP is the whole exclusions dataset (see below).

Scope note: free-with-public-key covers exclusions search and the public exclusions extract - the screening-useful part. The sensitive / FOUO entity registration data is federal-gated (federal system accounts only); it is out of scope for this skill, so do not try to pull it here.

Before starting

Ask the user for whichever is missing:

• The name(s) to screen - the entity plus every beneficial owner / director you want checked.
• What they need - a one-off name check, or a full-dataset screen (in which case pull the extract once and match locally).

API reference

Exclusions REST API base: https://api.sam.gov/entity-information/v4/exclusions Bulk extract base: https://api.sam.gov/data-services/v1/extracts

# 1. Search by name (one candidate at a time)
curl -s "https://api.sam.gov/entity-information/v4/exclusions?api_key=$SAM_KEY&exclusionName=ACME&classification=Firm"

# 2. Pull the whole public exclusions extract as one ZIP (bypasses the per-record limit)
#    <YYDDD> = 2-digit year + day-of-year, e.g. 26199 for the 199th day of 2026
curl -sL -o exclusions.zip \
  "https://api.sam.gov/data-services/v1/extracts?api_key=$SAM_KEY&fileName=SAM_Exclusions_Public_Extract_V2_26199.ZIP"

For more than a handful of names, prefer endpoint 2: download the extract once, then match every subject locally. That keeps you well clear of the 1,000/day cap and gives you the whole dataset in one call.

Workflow: screen an entity and its owners

1. Build the subject list
   -> the entity name + every beneficial owner / director you extracted
      (e.g. from CRBR, KRS, Handelsregister, Companies House PSC)

2. Choose the access mode
   -> a few names  -> endpoint 1, one search per subject
   -> many names   -> endpoint 2, pull the extract once and match locally
      (and confirm your key has the role for 1,000/day, not the 10/day default)

3. Match each subject against the exclusions data
   -> normalise case and punctuation
   -> screen firms against classification Firm/Vessel/Special Entity Designation,
      and individuals against classification Individual

4. Adjudicate each candidate hit
   -> strong name match, exclusion still active (no termination date passed) -> TRUE HIT: escalate, do not proceed
   -> name-only match, identifiers/address differ                           -> likely false positive: document why
   -> match on a terminated exclusion                                       -> record it, but it is historical, not an active bar
   -> no match                                                              -> clear on debarment (this run)

5. Record the screen: extract date / query date, and the outcome per subject

Output interpretation

• A name match is a candidate, not a verdict. Common company and personal names recur; confirm with a second identifier - UEI, CAGE, or address - before calling a hit. Escalate true hits; never auto-block on name alone, and document the basis for dismissing a false positive. This is the same adjudication discipline as sanctions-pep-screening.
• Check the exclusion is still active. An exclusion with a termination date in the past is historical - relevant context, not a current bar. Read the activation and termination dates before you act on a hit.
• Match the right classification. Screen a company against Firm (and Vessel / Special Entity Designation where relevant) and each human owner/officer against Individual. Do not screen a company name against the individual entries and call it done.
• Key on UEI, not DUNS. DUNS has been retired across SAM.gov; the durable identifier is the SAM UEI. If your upstream data still carries a DUNS, treat it as legacy and resolve to UEI.
• "No hit" is only as good as the screen. Record the extract date or query date. A clear result against an extract you pulled weeks ago is stale - exclusions are added and terminated continuously, so refresh before signing off. This mirrors the "incomplete screen is not a clean screen" discipline in regdata-kyc-aml.
• Debarment is not sanctions and not PEP. SAM.gov exclusions tell you a party is barred from US federal awards - not that it is sanctioned, and not that anyone is a politically exposed person. A subject can be clear on SAM.gov and still be sanctioned or a PEP. Run those lanes separately.

Cross-sell - the debarment lane of a fuller screen

This skill is one lane of an AML screen. Pair it with the sanctions and PEP lanes for fuller coverage, and wire all three onto the registry actors: extract the beneficial owners and directors, then screen every one of them across sanctions, PEP, and SAM.gov exclusions.

For the full workflow - risk scoring, adverse-media overlay, cross-registry validation - route to regdata-kyc-aml. The registry actors use a free Apify token: https://apify.com?fpr=getregdata.

Related skills

• sanctions-pep-screening - the sanctions and PEP lanes; run alongside this for a fuller AML screen (sanctions + PEP + debarment).
• regdata-kyc-aml - the full KYC/AML/KYB framework; sanctions, PEP, and debarment are risk dimensions within it.
• gleif-lei-lookup - resolve an entity's global LEI and its parent/child structure, then screen each leg.
• companies-house-uk / sec-edgar-us - free sources for the entity and the people to screen.