Nonprofit data — how we compare
Candid sells lookups.
We sell the file.
Candid — the organization behind GuideStar — lists its Essentials API from $4,800 a year and its Premier API from $9,900 a year, for per-organization lookups. We build from the same public IRS sources Candid names on its own data-sources page and sell the whole thing as a CSV, from $9. Against Candid’s published Essentials v4 API schema we match 41 of the 66 fields it returns — 84% of the fields that are reproducible from public records at all.
Candid Premier API
$9,900/yr
742 fields, per-organization lookups. 472 of those fields are IRS Form 990 line items.
Candid Essentials API
$4,800/yr
66 fields returned, per-organization lookups, subscription.
LocationLists
$9 – $1299
One-off bulk CSV. 73 columns, up to 1,964,958 organizations, yours to keep.
Field by field
Taken from Candid’s own published OpenAPI definitions at developer.candid.org, not from marketing copy. “Premier only” means the field is absent from the $4,800 Essentials tier and appears in the $9,900 one.
| Field | LocationLists | Candid |
|---|---|---|
| Identity & registration | ||
| EIN, legal name, also-known-as | ||
| Street, city, state, ZIP | ||
| NTEE cause code + description | ||
| 501(c) subsection, foundation type | ||
| IRS ruling year, group exemption | ||
| Parent / subordinate / independent structure | ||
| Second address line | ||
| Contact | ||
| Website | ||
| Telephone | ||
| Named officer + title | Premier only | |
| Officer compensation | Premier only | |
| Email address | ||
| Money | ||
| Revenue, assets, expenses | ||
| Net assets, employees, volunteers | ||
| Every Form 990 line item (400+ fields) | buildable | Premier only |
| Grants awarded — recipient, amount, purpose | Premier only | |
| Compliance | ||
| IRS Publication 78 deductibility | ||
| Auto-revocation status | ||
| Verified filing activity | ||
| California AG / FTB status | ||
| OFAC sanctions screening | ||
| Single Audit (Federal Audit Clearinghouse) | ||
| Geography | ||
| Latitude / longitude | ||
| County FIPS, metro area (MSA) | ||
| Congressional district | ||
| Candid's own profile layer | ||
| Seal of Transparency / profile level | ||
| DEI & demographic data | Premier only | |
| Board member rosters | Premier only | |
| Awards, photos, videos, logos | ||
| Candid subject & population taxonomy (PCS) | ||
“Buildable” means we hold the source files and can extract it as a paid enrichment — the 400+ Form 990 line items are in XML archives already on our servers.
What we do not have
116 of the 742 fields in Candid’s Premier API exist because organizations logged in and typed them into Candid’s own forms. No public record contains them, and no amount of parsing produces them:
- Seals of Transparency and profile levels
- DEI and demographic data
- Board member rosters
- Awards, photos, videos and logos
- Candid's Philanthropy Classification System
- Charting Impact survey answers
If you need those, buy Candid. A funder running due diligence on grantees should have them. Someone loading 1.4 million organizations into a warehouse does not need any of them.
Where the data comes from
Eight official sources, reconciled on EIN. Candid draws on the same public files — they list them at candid.org/about/our-data/data-sources.
IRS Business Master File
1,964,958 registered organizations
Form 990 / 990-EZ / 990-PF e-file XML
1,863,515 filings parsed
Form 990-N e-postcards
1,544,230 small-organization filings
IRS auto-revocation list
1,226,788 revocations, re-approvals checked
IRS Publication 78
1,409,480 matched for deductibility
Federal Audit Clearinghouse
Single Audit records since 2022
California AG + Franchise Tax Board
state solicitation and revocation status
US Census geocoder
latitude, longitude, county, metro area
Registered is not the same as operating
The raw IRS file contains 1,964,958 organizations. Many of them have not filed anything in years. Every record we ship carries an activity_status measured from both IRS filing channels — the full 990 e-file index and the 990-N postcard file, which most datasets miss entirely:
1,423,535
filing
filed within the last two tax years
96,382
lapsed
last filed three or more years ago
435,906
no filing on record
registered, never filed
9,135
revoked
auto-revoked, no later determination
Judged on the full-990 index alone, only 35% of organizations would look active. Adding the 990-N channel more than doubles it. Getting that wrong mislabels 1.2 million live organizations as dormant.
Need a field we do not ship?
Deep Form 990 financials, websites and logos for organizations that never reported one, subject and population classification beyond the IRS code, congressional district — all buildable, most from files we already hold. Choose Custom enrichment at checkout, tell us what you need, and we will scope it with you.
Custom enrichment from $500. Quoted within two business days.
Questions
Is LocationLists a Candid or GuideStar alternative?
For bulk data, yes. For per-organization lookups inside an application, no — Candid sells an API and we sell files. We draw on the same public IRS sources Candid lists on its own data-sources page, and against Candid's published Essentials v4 API schema we match 41 of the 66 fields it returns.
How much does Candid's Essentials API cost?
Candid lists the Essentials API from $4,800 per year and the Premier API from $9,900 per year, both as subscriptions. Our nonprofit datasets are one-off downloads, priced per file.
What does Candid have that LocationLists does not?
The data organizations submit to Candid directly: Seals of Transparency, DEI and demographic data, board member rosters, awards, photos and Candid's own subject taxonomy. That is 116 of the 742 fields in the Premier API and it cannot be reproduced from public records. If you need it, buy Candid.
Where does the nonprofit data come from?
The IRS Business Master File, the Form 990/990-EZ/990-PF e-file XML archive, 990-N e-postcards, the IRS auto-revocation list, IRS Publication 78, the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, California state registries and the US Census geocoder. All public, all official.
Can an AI agent buy just the rows it needs?
Yes. Every dataset is exposed through our MCP server with per-record pricing, so an agent can query and pay for a slice rather than the whole download.