Restricted party screening for a small UK exporter: what it costs
Per-check screening with a dated record from £1.49, against yearly plans from about £1,400 (AEB) or a few thousand US dollars (Descartes), or the free government searches, which keep no record for you.
Prices as each company publishes them, checked on 13 October 2026. Ask AEB and Descartes for a quote for your volumes.
Certaby export screening
- Price
- £1.49 a check from credit, down to 59p a name in a list of 1,000 or more. No contract, no setup fee.
- Lists
- Six US export lists (the Entity List, the Military End User, Denied Persons and Unverified lists, the ITAR Debarred list and US Nonproliferation Sanctions) and the UK, UN, EU and US OFAC sanctions lists, refreshed every morning. A UK company checked by its number includes everyone recorded in its ownership at Companies House, with a verdict for each set of rules you follow.
- Record
- A dated record of each check, and one record for a whole shipment, kept 7 years.
- Suits
- A UK firm screening up to a few hundred names a month.
AEB Compliance Screening
- Price
- From £116.08 a month on the Basic plan (25,000 checks a year), plus a setup fee. The Business plan is from £415.16 a month for 2.5 million checks a year; the SAP plug-in costs more.
- Lists
- Sanctions, anti-terror and other restricted party lists worldwide, as AEB describes it.
- Record
- Screening records in AEB’s system.
- Suits
- Firms screening thousands of names, or screening inside SAP or another business system.
Source: AEB’s price list
Descartes Visual Compliance
- Price
- From “a few thousand dollars a year” for one user and small volumes; about US$20,000 a year for a customer screening 50,000 names. Quotes on request.
- Lists
- Lists from more than 180 countries, as Descartes describes it.
- Record
- Screening records in Descartes’ system.
- Suits
- Larger exporters that want worldwide list coverage built into their systems.
Source: Descartes’ pricing guide
Free government searches
- Price
- Free.
- Lists
- The US Consolidated Screening List search covers the US lists of the Departments of Commerce, State and the Treasury. GOV.UK’s search covers the UK Sanctions List only.
- Record
- None kept for you: save or print the results yourself.
- Suits
- An occasional one-off look.
When does a yearly plan cost less?
AEB’s Basic plan comes to £1,392.96 a year before its setup fee. At £1.49 a check that pays for 934 Certaby checks a year, about 78 a month. Below that, paying per check costs less, and a list of 1,000 names or more costs less again. Well above it, a yearly plan’s cost per check falls below ours.
Where the others are the better choice
- AEB and Descartes screen against lists from many more countries. If you must check a buyer country’s own lists, they cover them.
- They plug into business systems (AEB sells an SAP plug-in), so every order is screened as it is entered.
- At tens of thousands of checks a year, their cost per check is a few pence or less.
- For a single look with nothing to keep, the government searches cost nothing.
What every option leaves with you
Screening tells you whether a name is on a list. Whether your goods need a licence depends on what they are, where they go and their end use, and stays your decision. The rules UK exporters follow sets out each one and what we check.
Try it on a name you deal with
The free US Entity List check needs no account. A full check from credit gives you the dated record.