2024’s Best Dark Web APIs | Feed Searchable Darknet Data Into Your Own Tools
Juan Combariza
May 2024 | 8 min. read
Table of Contents
Top Picks
- Datastreamer: Easiest integration for intelligence products
- Dark Owl API: Most comprehensive coverage
- IPQS API: Specialized for fraud prevention
Adding Dark Web Coverage to Your Solutions
The Rise of Darknet Data and APIs
The dark web is roughly 550x larger than the surface web, yet remains hidden from typical search engines. This secretive data sphere is ripe with potential indicators of compromise (IOCs) and other critical security insights spanning personal information, financial activities, and emergent cyber threats. The Threat Intelligence Index 2024, reports a 7% increase in YoY cyberattacks based on stolen credentials.
Threat intelligence platforms meet these challenges head-on by harnessing the necessary tools for deep web monitoring. However, they depend on a crucial component: vast and continuous data feeds to fuel their analytical engines. This is exactly what dark web APIs deliver, collecting and structuring tens of millions of posts into a format that enhances the accessibility and usability of the data.
When to Use An API Over No-Code UI’s
Most of the companies on this list also offer dark web monitoring platforms – which include a visual interface to immediately query data collected from across the darknet. APIs on the other hand, are necessary when your objective is to feed data into your own solutions. They allow you to customize data streams and adapt data delivery mechanisms to fit your infrastructure.
Dark Web APIs are often used to source data from niche forums or darknet sites that feeds into custom alerts, dashboards, or predictive AI models:
- Threat intelligence: Dark web APIs facilitate the aggregation of threat intelligence from disparate, clandestine sources, enabling the proactive identification and mitigation of security breaches by integrating real-time threat data directly into cybersecurity platforms.
- Ecommerce Intelligence: Dark web APIs can enhance fraud detection and prevent transactional fraud by monitoring for stolen financial data and compromised accounts being traded or sold online. This proactive approach not only protects the business but also secures the consumer experience against potential fraud.
- Financial research and risk management: In the financial sector, dark web APIs are critical in scanning for and mitigating risks related to financial crime, regulatory fraud, and money laundering. By channeling data through sophisticated risk assessment models, these APIs offer quick and precise analyses, significantly enhancing the protection of clientele against financial threats.
Building Custom Dark Web Monitoring for Multiple Clients?
Uncovering threats and bad actors relies on a broad coverage across diverse sources (darknet, social media, forums, blogs). However, managing multiple data feed APIs can quickly spiral into an engineering resource drain. Datastreamer’s pipeline platform has helped 20+ intelligence teams and data product developers increase the strategic utility of web & social data:
- Access to our curated network of dark web and open web data providers
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Leverage custom data engineering components to enhance threat detection beyond traditional tools
- Test drive a pipeline to see pricing scenarios with real-world threat intel. data
List of APIs to Feed Dark Web Data into Your Own Tools
1. Datastreamer – Easy Integration for Intelligence Products
Data feed vendors typically provide a simple method to extract data from their APIs. However, most intelligence products rely on multiple data feeds (typically more than 6). Spending ~5 weeks adding each new API feed adds significant delays in already constrained project timelines. Our comparative analysis revealed that building pipelines in-house for 6 data sources costs upwards of $216,000 in engineering efforts alone (excluding tooling costs). In contrast, plugging in pre-built pipeline infrastructure reduces these costs to just $48,422.
Why Use A Pipeline Platform Instead of Individual APIs
One API Query to Access Darknet Feeds From Different Vendors
Having a single point of access to varied data streams cuts down the engineering workload associated with managing multiple API integrations.
- Data feeds available include other online sources like social media, news, blogs, and PDF ingestion.
Improved Signal to Noise Ratio with Advanced NLP
Whichever darknet feed you choose will include millions of posts per month. With most of this being human-generated text, irrelevant noise is inevitable, but can be drastically reduced with natural language processing that is trained to pick up on contextual nuances to reduce missed signals.
- Instantly deploy NLP models such as location inference, violence detection, or PII redaction.
Built-In Data Engineering Components
Processing enormous data streams cost-effectively requires data engineering components that take months for in-house teams to build out. Market leaders like Black Swan Data use our components to fill in gaps in pipeline infrastructure, keeping their engineers focused on core development for their AI intelligence product.
- For example: Content deduplication, schema standardization, filtering based on JSON metadata criteria, visual dashboard for debugging.
More benefits of a pipeline platform:
- Automatically standardize data from different sources (i.e. non dark-web) into a schema that you define.
- Pre-built destination connectors push data to tools like BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks.
- Integrate rapidly by adding data sources to your pipelines in minutes with a drag & drop interface.
2. Dark Owl API
DarkOwl is an industry leader specializing in safely and ethically accessing and analyzing cybersecurity data from the dark web. It includes data for cyber security underwriting, third-party risks, threat intelligence, digital ID and fraud protection, and critical infrastructure.
The platform tracks information from one of the largest commercially available databases that sources from the darknet. It specializes in comprehensive intelligence and analytics.
It stands out due to its deep account-level access where over 60% of the data it collects comes from authenticated sources, extracted securely and ethically. Thanks to its deep and dark web intelligence expertise combined with AI-powered analysis, DarkOwl has supported intelligence centers and local and federal investigations.
DarkOwl Data Sources
DarkOwl gathers data from a wide array of public and hidden sources like:
- Tor, Zeronet, IRC, Telegram channels, P2P networks, paste sites, and I2P.
- Hacking forums (i.e. 0day), Marketplaces (i.e. Dream Market), high-value sites, criminal forums on the dark web, closed forums, and paste sites.
DarkOwl Coverage Details
| Update Frequency | Historical Length | Languages | Output Format |
| Daily | 8+ years | Over 49 languages | JSON or XML |
Pricing
- Pricing details are not publicly displayed, so you will have to contact Dark Owl’s team for a quote.
Free Trial
- Trial details for the API are not publicly displayed, but you can request a demo on their website.
3. Webz Dark Web API
Webz.io helps you convert noisy darknet data into structured feeds. It can be integrated into your platform and provides on-demand data from large existing repositories. This API is relevant to media monitoring and PR, financial analyses, risk detection and data breaches, and web intelligence.
A great feature Webz has is crawling through the darknet to collect and structure contextual and relevant data in real time. Webz’s machine-readable data is easy to integrate and use, providing scalable data plans and granular filtering capabilities.
Webz Dark Web API Data Sources
The Webz Dark Web API sources 23M+ posts from an array of public and private sources like:
- ToR, I2P, paste sites, Telegram
- Dark Web marketplaces, closed forums, alternative social media platforms
Webz Dark Web API Data Coverage Details
| Update Frequency | Historical Length | Languages | Output Format |
| Daily, on-demand | 10+ years | Over 150 languages | JSON or XML |
Pricing
- Pricing details are not publicly displayed, so you will have to contact the Webz team for a quote.
Free Trial
- You can sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo to understand custom features.
4. IPQS Dark Web Leak API
IP Quality Score (IPQS) operates in the fields of cybersecurity and fraud detection. The IPQS Dark Web Leak API sifts through large collections of stolen, leaked, or breached databases from commonly used websites, platforms, and the dark web.
IPQS Dark Web Leak API can find compromised user data and pinpoint the first breach source where the confidential information was exposed. It excels at combating compromised accounts, credentials, and potential data breaches, ensuring users have secure passwords, PII, and IP addresses. The API provides real-time lookups on whether someone’s PII has been exposed or compromised.
IPQS API Data Sources
The Webz Dark Web API sources 23M+ posts from an array of public and private sources like:
- IPQS Dark Web Leak API gathers data from:
Closed forums like nulled.io and Hackforums, paste sites (pastebin), and botnets like Mirai, Zues - Telegram channels, dark web marketplaces (Empire Market)
IPQS Dark Web Leak API Coverage Details
| Update Frequency | Historical Length | Languages | Output Format |
| 24 to 48 hours | Based on price tier. Maximum length is from 2016. | Primarily for English Language | JSON or XML |
Pricing
- Comprehensive pricing plans available with enterprise options provided on demand.
Free Trial
- Free plan with limited searches available. Schedule a demo to learn about paid versions.
5. SpyCloud API
SpyCloud API has a more niche focus on helping companies make the internet safer and fighting against cybercrime. The platform offers identity-centric solutions for consumer risk protection, enterprise protection, investigations, and data partnerships. It boasts of over 560B+ recaptured identity assets.
Data breaches and malware information are gathered and analyzed by many API platforms. However, SpyCloud offers a unique facility of actionable insights and criminal breadcrumb trails. The platform helps security teams and outfits take action while proactively preventing ransomware.
SpyCloud API Data Sources
SpyCloud API gathers gathers actionable insights of 240+ data types and attributes from:
- Dark web marketplaces (Dream Market, AlphaBay), closed forums like exploit.in and RaidForums
- Paste sites like Ghostbin and Pastebin, botnets like Trickbot and Emotet
- Hidden services like Telegram channels, underground IRC networks, and malware logs
SpyCloud API Coverage Details
| Update Frequency | Historical Length | Languages | Output Format |
| Daily, real-time | Not publicly displayed | Primarily for English Language | JSON or XML |
Pricing
- Pricing details are not publicly displayed, you can fill in their form to request for pricing.
Free Trial
- You can request a demo for trial