Aleph (OCCRP)
Search 1 billion+ records across 180+ countries — corporate registries, leaked databases, sanctions lists, court records. The investigative journalist's follow-the-money search engine.
What should journalists know about Aleph (OCCRP)?
Aleph is the single most important open database for cross-border financial investigations. OCCRP built it to power their own reporting — Panama Papers, FinCEN Files, Troika Laundromat — then opened it to everyone. It indexes 1 billion+ records from 300+ datasets across 180+ countries: corporate registries, sanctions lists, court records, leaked databases, land registries, air and maritime registries. The entity cross-referencing is the killer feature — upload your own data, and Aleph will find matches against its entire corpus. In December 2025, OCCRP migrated to Aleph Pro, a ground-up rebuild with faster search, better data ingestion, automated risk scoring, and knowledge graph generation. The open-source original lives on as OpenAleph, maintained by the Data and Research Center (DARC). One major caveat: OCCRP lost 38% of its funding when USAID was gutted in early 2025, laid off a fifth of its staff, and cut 80% of sub-grants to partner newsrooms. The organization is surviving on European government funding and a pivot to earned revenue through Aleph Pro's commercial tiers. The platform is not going away, but the funding instability is real and worth understanding.
Cross-border corporate investigations. Tracing beneficial ownership through shell company networks. Cross-referencing your source data against leaked databases, sanctions lists, and corporate registries from 180+ countries. Finding connections between people, companies, and addresses that no single national database would reveal. Investigating money flows across jurisdictions.
US-only investigations with no international angle — use OpenSecrets, PACER, SEC EDGAR, or state-level databases. Not a general-purpose search engine. Not a real-time monitoring tool. Coverage is strongest in Eastern Europe and former Soviet states; some countries have thin or outdated records.
Security & Privacy
Data is scrambled while being sent to their servers
Data is scrambled when stored on their servers
Where servers are located — affects which governments can request your data
Privacy policy summary
OCCRP is a nonprofit journalism organization. Account data is minimal — email and name. Search queries are logged for system performance and may be visible to OCCRP staff. OCCRP does not sell data or serve advertising. Protected datasets (leaks, sensitive archives) require case-by-case access approval. The platform exists to support investigative journalism, not to monetize users.
How to protect yourself:
Register with a professional journalism email for faster access approval. Your search queries are logged on OCCRP servers — if investigating entities that might monitor their own exposure, your search pattern could reveal your interest. Consider what queries you run and when. Use Aleph's cross-referencing feature to batch-compare your data against the full corpus rather than running individual name searches. For sensitive investigations, consider running OpenAleph on your own infrastructure — it's fully open source and self-hostable. Be aware that leaked datasets are not always complete; always verify findings against primary sources.
Nonprofit-operated, open-source platform built specifically for investigative journalists. Strong institutional commitment to source protection — OCCRP has a decade-plus track record on major leak investigations. Search queries are logged and visible to OCCRP staff, which is a consideration for sensitive investigations. The Aleph Pro rebuild modernizes the security stack, but the funding instability introduces organizational risk: a nonprofit under financial pressure is inherently less predictable than a well-capitalized one. For maximum control, self-host OpenAleph. For most journalists, the free hosted version at aleph.occrp.org remains the best option.
Who Owns This
Known issues
OCCRP's funding crisis is the elephant in the room. The organization lost 38% of its budget when USAID funding was frozen in early 2025, laid off 40 staff (20%), cut salaries, and eliminated 80% of sub-grants to partner newsrooms. European governments and emergency donations have stabilized operations, but long-term sustainability depends on Aleph Pro commercial revenue that hasn't launched yet. On the platform side: coverage is uneven — Eastern Europe and former Soviet states are deep, but some regions have thin records. Leaked datasets are incomplete by nature. The original open-source Aleph codebase will no longer be maintained by OCCRP after December 2025 — it continues as OpenAleph under DARC. New account registrations and extended data access requests have been temporarily unavailable during the Aleph Pro migration. UX research found persistent issues with information architecture: users struggle to understand what data sources they're searching, how to interpret results, and how to verify provenance of records.
Pricing
Free for journalists, researchers, and the public at aleph.occrp.org. Nonprofit journalism organizations get full Aleph Pro access at no cost. Public interest groups (civic tech, civil society) get access at cost. Commercial tiers launching 2026.
This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-02, using our published methodology. Independent security review is pending. Security posture can change at any time. This is not a guarantee of safety.
Something wrong or outdated? Report it.