Dun & Bradstreet: what the API does, what it costs, and where its limits are

What Dun & Bradstreet actually sells

Four products under one name. Which one you are buying changes the evaluation.

• D-U-N-S Number

  A global business identifier. Still asked for by name in commercial supplier onboarding and trade credit. US federal procurement replaced it with the government-issued UEI in April 2022.5

• Direct+

  The developer API: search, match, data retrieval. This is the part you integrate.1

• Hoovers

  A sales-prospecting app. Most public reviews and the low monthly price you see quoted describe this, not API access.4

• The Data Cloud

  The master database the other three read from.4

• Not primarily registry data

  D&B cites 30,000+ sources including courts and debt collection agencies. The API also exposes news, website visitors, IP assignees, contacts, liens, judgments, bankruptcies, UCC filings, trade payments and sanctions screening.4

How the match API works

Six mechanics from the Direct 2.0 docs shape what you can build.

• It does not clean your input

  Match "does NOT cleanse or standardize the address information supplied". Normalising is your job, or a second call to Cleanse Match.1

• Confidence runs 1 to 10

  Settable minimum. If nothing clears your threshold it falls back to candidates scored four to seven.1

• Match grade is explainable

  A string like "AZZZAZZZFFZ" breaks into eleven scored components. Real explainability, but of string similarity to a stored record, not of which sources back the answer.1

• "Marketable" means up to 24 months old

  A record qualifies if "updated within the last 24 months" with a complete name, valid address, valid SIC code, believed in business.1

• Sources are fused in the pipeline

  Those 30,000 sources are consolidated on D&B's refresh cycle. News and web sit behind separate endpoints. Match resolves against the curated record.4

• Small business is a separate mode

  SBRI matches US small businesses with no D-U-N-S assigned. US only. D-U-N-S lookup, executive-name matching and exclusion filters are unavailable there.1

What it costs

D&B does not publish commercial pricing, but it files rates to government buyers. These are US federal schedule rates effective June 2024, cross-checked against its UK filing.

• Resolving an entity: $0.24 per call

  The Identity Resolution capability, which bundles Cleanse and Match. Batch match, high-volume match and match-and-enrich are all priced the same.7

• Searching costs more than matching

  Company Search $2.95, Criteria Search $0.99, Type-Ahead $0.10. If you do not already know which entity you want, the cheap call is not the one you make.7

• Hierarchy is the expensive part

  Full Family Tree $19.70 per record. Ultimate Beneficial Ownership $11.82. Compliance Verification $29.55. The capability D&B is genuinely best at costs about 80 times a match call.7

• Monitoring is charged separately

  Every content block carries a monitoring rate on top of retrieval. Full Family Tree monitoring is $15.76 per record, Company Profile monitoring $1.18.7

• You license per use case, not per dataset

  The same records bought again for a second purpose are charged again. Five domains: Compliance, Supply Chain, Finance, Sales & Marketing, Master Data.2

• The two governments agree

  D&B files £0.16 per record for cleanse and match to the UK G-Cloud framework, about $0.22. Within 10% of the US federal rate, which suggests these are close to a floor rather than an outlier.2

• Bought as prepaid credits

  Credits are "consumed either per record or per list of up to 100 records", bought in bulk or per transaction.3

• Commercial pricing is a quote

  Government schedule rates are negotiated floors on a 12-month minimum. What a private buyer pays is set per contract and is not published anywhere.2

Where D&B is genuinely the right answer

Three areas where nothing else comes close.

• Corporate family trees

  Global parent, subsidiary and ultimate-owner linkage, and the benchmark for multinational hierarchy. Priced accordingly, at $19.70 per full family tree on the US federal schedule.7

• Credit and payment behaviour

  Trade payment data, credit scores, risk ratings. Decades deep. We offer no equivalent.4

• The identifier, where it is asked for

  Where a counterparty asks for a D-U-N-S by name, nothing else substitutes. That reach narrowed in April 2022 when US federal procurement moved to its own identifier, but commercial onboarding and trade credit still use it.5

Documented limits worth knowing

From D&B documentation and public reviews. Weigh against the strengths above.

• The freshness floor is 24 months

  A business that moved, rebranded or stopped trading inside that window can still return a confident match.1

• Input quality is your problem

  Messy strings need your own normalisation layer, or a second API call, before match quality is representative.1

• Now privately held

  Clearlake Capital completed a $7.7bn buyout on 26 August 2025 and D&B delisted from the NYSE. Worth watching for packaging and pricing changes.6

• The D-U-N-S mandate narrowed

  On 4 April 2022 SAM.gov replaced it with the Unique Entity Identifier, a 12-character ID the government issues itself, specifically so entities need not get one from a third party.5

• Identity matching is keyed on SIC

  NAICS superseded SIC for US federal statistics in 1997. D&B publishes other codes elsewhere, but the identity surface uses the older scheme.1

• Cost concentrates where the value is

  Matching is $0.24 but the linkage and ownership data are $11.82 to $19.70 per record, each with a separate monitoring charge. Budget on the blocks you attach, not the match.7

• You commit before you know your volume

  Twelve-month minimum, and multi-year deals allow up to 6% annual increases. Sizing is on you at signature, since usage is priced per record and per block.2

Side by side

Different architectures, so most rows are a difference in approach. Rows where D&B is stronger are marked.

D&B capabilities are drawn from its published Direct 2.0 documentation, product pages and UK G-Cloud pricing document. User-reported figures are attributed to the review platform that published them. Packaging varies by contract.

Which one to choose

Common questions

Does the D&B match API return a confidence score?

Yes. Results are ranked 1 to 10, with 10 the best match, and you can set a minimum threshold. Responses also carry a multi-component match grade showing how each element of your input matched.

How fresh is D&B data?

D&B defines a "marketable" record as one updated within the last 24 months with a complete name, valid address, valid SIC code, believed in business. That 24-month window is the documented floor. Individual records may be much fresher.

What does the D&B API cost?

Dun & Bradstreet does not publish commercial pricing, but it files rates to government buyers. Its US federal schedule effective June 2024 lists identity resolution at $0.24 per call and a full family tree at $19.70 per record, and its UK G-Cloud filing lists cleanse and match at £0.16 per record on a 12-month minimum with up to 6% annual increases. Both are negotiated public-sector floors. Commercial buyers negotiate their own rate, and the same records reused for a second purpose are licensed again.

Does D&B only have legal entity data, or web data too?

Both, and more. D&B cites over 30,000 sources spanning registers, courts and debt collection agencies, and its API exposes company news, website-visitor and IP data, contacts, legal filings, trade payments and sanctions screening. The difference is when those signals are combined: D&B consolidates them into its Data Cloud on its own refresh cycle, whereas SavvyIQ reads sources at call time and uses them as evidence for the identity decision itself.

Do I still need a D-U-N-S Number?

For US federal contracting, no. Since 4 April 2022 SAM.gov issues its own 12-character Unique Entity Identifier and the federal government no longer uses D-U-N-S. Many commercial supplier-onboarding and trade-credit processes still ask for one, so it depends who is asking.

Does D&B cover small businesses?

In the United States, yes. A separate SBRI match type covers US small businesses with no D-U-N-S assigned, though it does not support D-U-N-S lookup, executive-name matching or the standard exclusion filters.

How much does a D&B Direct+ call cost?

On the US federal schedule effective June 2024, Dun & Bradstreet Direct+ identity resolution was $0.24 per call, Company Search $2.95, a full corporate family tree $19.70 per record and an ultimate beneficial ownership list $11.82. Monitoring each block is charged separately. Commercial pricing is negotiated per contract and is not published.

How fresh is SavvyIQ data by comparison?

Records and sources we hold refresh quarterly. If an entity is not already in our graph, agents research it live at call time, so a business that incorporated last week is resolvable on the first call. The comparison worth drawing is against the 24-month window D&B uses to define a marketable record.

Is Dun & Bradstreet still a public company?

No. Clearlake Capital completed its acquisition on 26 August 2025 in a deal valued at $7.7 billion including debt. Dun & Bradstreet is privately held and delisted from the NYSE.