Sterling
Sterling (Sterling Check Corp) is a global background and identity screening provider offering criminal checks, employment and education verifications, drug and health screening, identity verification, and continuous (recurring) monitoring. The Sterling API is a documented RESTful, OAuth2-secured developer API that lets platforms, ATS/HRIS systems, and marketplaces initiate background checks, manage candidates and screening packages, retrieve results and reports (PDF/HTML), send candidate invites, and receive real-time status updates via webhook callbacks. Access is gated - developers request a Client ID and Client Secret per screening region (US, EMEA, Canada, or APAC) - and the docs are published via a Postman-hosted portal at apidocs.sterlingcheck.app with a developer portal at developer.sterlingcheck.app. Sterling was acquired by First Advantage Corporation for $2.2 billion, with the deal closing on October 31, 2024; Sterling now operates as "a First Advantage company."
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles Sterling the way a machine reads it — 23 machine-readable artifacts across 1 API, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Sterling scores 37.8/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 27/100 (agent aware). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance. Every facet and dimension name is a link: it opens that measurement's page on APIs.io, where the rating runs across the whole catalog — the exact checks that feed it, how every profiled provider distributes on it, and who is at the top of it.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
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How we profile Sterling
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Sterling. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 7
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Sterling Authentication API
OAuth2 token exchange using your Client ID and Client Secret.
Sterling Candidates API
Candidate (subject) records that screenings are run against.
Sterling Invites API
Candidate invitations to complete consent and data collection.
Sterling Packages API
Screening packages (groups of screening products) available to your account.
Sterling Reports API
Results of completed screenings, with per-item statuses (PDF or HTML).
Sterling Screenings API
Screening orders and their lifecycle, including recurring/continuous screening.
Sterling Webhooks API
Real-time screening status callbacks.
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Open Collections 9
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
API Collection
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Candidates API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Invites API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Packages API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Reports API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Screenings API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling Authentication Webhooks API
OPEN COLLECTIONSterling API
OPEN COLLECTIONScroll within the panel for all 9 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the things the Kin Score reads for access clarity — renamed from commercial clarity in rubric 0.12, because a free statutory interface has access terms and no commercial ones.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Sterling Check Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Sterling Check Finops
FINOPSSecurity Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Scopes 1
OAuth scopes are the vocabulary of least-privilege access. Profiling them shows exactly what an integration — or an agent acting on a user's behalf — is allowed to do.
OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Sterling — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 1
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 2
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 3
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/sterling-check · machine-readable index on apis.io
This is an independent, third-party profile of Sterling, published by API Evangelist. We do not operate, host, resell, or support these APIs, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated above. Everything here is built from publicly available information — the company's own site, developer portal, documentation, public repositories, and the specifications it publishes for public use. Nothing is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials.
The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated assessments of a company's public API artifacts, scored against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits.
Corrections, re-scores, and removal are free — no partnership or purchase required, and you do not need to justify the request. A removed company is recorded as unrated, never scored zero for having asked. Acknowledgement within one business day; removal within two.
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