Here's what it is, what it isn't, and what it costs.
Verification is free. Always. No account required. Receivers pay only when they want to verify at scale, with audit trails, in their own systems. Families never pay for the record.
Six categories of toll-payer. Each one verifies student-owned records the family already wrote, sealed, and sent.
Common App readers, registrars handling transfer credit, Juilliard / RISD / Berklee admissions.
Funder: Admissions operations budget.
Verifies: Transcripts, course rows, work samples, teacher / counselor cosignatures.
Davidson Fellows, Jack Kent Cooke, QuestBridge, Coca-Cola Scholars, Rhodes / Marshall / Truman.
Funder: Foundation or scholarship platform.
Verifies: Transcripts plus work-sample receipts and witnessed essays.
Pre-employment background checks, IBEW / UA / carpenter unions, DOL Registered Apprenticeship sponsors, early-career talent.
Funder: The employer, sometimes with WIOA Title I match.
Verifies: Job-kind receipts, supervisor cosignatures, course rows for required credentials.
K-12 transfer registrars at the receiving school. Donor-paid SKU available for high-mobility families.
Funder: The receiving school — or, when budget is short, McKinney-Vento liaisons, Title-I coordinators, refugee resettlement agencies, or aligned philanthropies.
Verifies: Prior-school course rows, attendance proxies via timeline entries, IEP / 504 history.
State licensing boards (CPA, bar, nursing, real-estate), OPM / DCSA security-clearance investigators, DoD prime-contractor security teams.
Funder: The licensing board or the federal government.
Verifies: School history back to age 10, residency timeline, supervisor / mentor relationships — a recurring annuity verb on a 5- and 10-year cycle.
Life and disability underwriters replacing LexisNexis Education Verification, F-1 / J-1 / H-1B / student-visa caseworkers, refugee-resettlement agencies (IRC / HIAS / USCRI).
Funder: The carrier (insurance) or the petitioner / federal program (visa).
Verifies: Education and residency continuity. The largest annuity receiver category — re-verified at every major life event.
And: background-check platforms (LexisNexis, Sterling, Checkr, HireRight), honors and recognition orgs (National Merit, NHS, Presidential Scholars), standardized-testing accommodations verifiers (College Board, ACT, LSAC, MCAT, GMAC), public-benefits eligibility liaisons.
tr_ for a transcript, ws_ for a work sample, wn_ for a weekly note, wl_ for a curated wall.
You see the claim, the SHA-256 hash, and any cosignatures from teachers, coaches, mentors, or supervisors.
No login. No subscription. No upsell. The verify page tells you what was sealed and whether the bytes still match.
Three things cost money. Only three. Everything else is free, forever.
When an agent or platform calls /api/verify-receipt in volume — pay-as-you-go or unlimited monthly.
When you need a FERPA-aware verification log persisted in your own system, on your own retention contract.
SSO (SAML / OIDC), SIS / EHR / ATS export, dedicated support, custom data-retention policies.
Free for single-link verification. Pay only when you scale.
Open a verify link, read a transcript, cosign a work sample as a teacher or coach. No account. No upsell.
For receivers verifying at scale — admissions ops, background-check platforms, agents acting on behalf of toll-payers.
For colleges, agencies, carriers, clearance investigators, and platforms that need verification inside their systems.
Some families can't ask their next school, their scholarship office, or their visa caseworker to absorb the cost of verification.
McKinney-Vento liaisons, Title-I coordinators, refugee resettlement agencies (IRC, HIAS, USCRI), and aligned philanthropies (Schultz Family Foundation, Annie E. Casey) can fund verification on the family's behalf.
The family never sees the bill. The receiving institution never sees the bill. The funder pays the toll so the records move.
The family already did the work. They wrote the record. They sealed it. They cosigned it with their teachers, coaches, and mentors. They chased the forms, the paperwork, the intake fields, and the deadlines for years before you ever saw them. Then they sent it to you.
You're the one who needs to act on it — admit, hire, clear, underwrite, enroll. The value-bearing verb pays the toll. Families never pay for the record.