Finding the hit is the easy part.
Most screening tools can tell you a name matched a list. The hard part — the part an examiner asks about — is deciding whether it's really your person, what to do about it, and being able to show your work later. The others sell you the data and the alert. Signal is where the decision gets made and recorded.
Data vs. decision
The field is built around the data. Signal is built around the decision.
Find the match
World-Check, LexisNexis, Dow Jones, ComplyAdvantage, and sanctions.io are, underneath, data and detection engines. They're good — some of them great — at surfacing possible matches and raising alerts, and several add audit trails, reports, or case tools on top. What none of them centers, by default, is the reviewer-owned decision record: the source-scoped account of what you checked, what you decided, and why.
Make the call, and keep the record
Signal is the workspace for the part they leave out. You review the match with context and AI assistance, decide, and keep a Screening Decision Record — what you checked, what you decided, and why — that holds up when someone asks later.
Where each fits
An honest map of the field
Category descriptions, not scorecards — what each vendor offers varies by tier and changes over time.
World-Check · LexisNexis · Dow Jones
The deepest data, sold to large institutions through annual contracts and enterprise integration. They offer screening workflows, reports, APIs, and managed services too — but the price, the sales cycle, and the implementation are built for an institution, not a team of one to ten making one counterparty decision at a time.
ComplyAdvantage
Modern, AI-led screening and monitoring for high-volume onboarding and compliance operations — mostly fintechs. Its agentic workflows are built to resolve routine alerts at scale. Strong for automation; more than a small team needs, and still sold through a sales process, if you review counterparties one at a time.
sanctions.io
Self-serve screening, monitoring, and a clean API — more raw coverage than a small team usually needs. Its manual workflow centers on screening results and exports; monitoring and the Salesforce integration add statuses, comments, and audit history. What it doesn't center is a dedicated, reviewer-owned decision record.
Signal sits where all of them stop
The analyst's review, the decision, and the record that stands behind it. Built for a small team, priced per seat, month to month — not an enterprise contract, not a raw API.
Side by side
Which tool fits which job
| Review & decision workspaceSignal | Enterprise databasesWorld-Check, LexisNexis, Dow Jones | Screening platformsComplyAdvantage | Screening APIssanctions.io | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Small compliance teams | Large institutions | Fintech automation | Developers & SMBs |
| What you're buying | The review & the decision record | The data | Detection at scale | Screening data + API |
| See exactly what was checked | Yes, on every screen | Varies by product | Alert-focused | A results list |
| A record you can hand an examiner | Reviewer-owned, by default | Reports & audit trails | Case tools & audit trail | Exports & audit log |
| Who makes the call | Your analyst — AI assists | Your analyst or your engine | Agents resolve routine alerts | You, outside the tool |
| How you buy it | Per seat, month to month | Annual contract, sales quote | Sales-led / annual | Self-serve, usage-based |
| Data breadth | Focused, fully visible | Deepest | Broad | Broad |
Each column is a kind of tool with example vendors — Signal is its own kind, the review-and-decision workspace. Categories describe the shape of each tool, not any single product's current feature set. On raw data breadth, the enterprise databases win; we concede that plainly and compete on the decision.
How the AI works
AI helps you decide. It doesn't decide for you.
Agents that resolve alerts
Several tools now advertise agents that resolve most alerts on their own. For a high-volume team, that may be exactly the point.
The person decides
AI does the legwork — separating likely matches from noise and surfacing what you still need to check. You make the call, and your name is on it. The answer to "who decided" is always a person, recorded in the file.
What it takes to start
No annual contract. A price you can see.
The enterprise screening vendors are sales-led and sold by annual contract. Signal shows the price and starts month to month.
Pay per seat and cancel anytime. No annual commitment and no early-termination penalty.
$19 for the first seat, $15 for each seat after. No quote, no sales call, no negotiation.
Start a free trial and screen your first name in minutes. No procurement cycle and no onboarding project.
See where Signal fits for you
Start a free trial and run a real name from start to finish, or book a demo and we will do it with you. Either way you leave with a Screening Decision Record.