Elsie Otachi · April 16, 2024 · 7 min read When you want to trace long-lost friends, an estranged relative, people you’ve lost touch with, or checking out an acquaintance just to be sure they’re who they claim to be, a people search finder is one of the easiest ways of going about it.
Normal search engines can tell you if someone has a public profile or a website, but won’t give you more details such as their location, what they’re currently doing, or whether they live alone or with others.
People search finder services aren’t necessarily meant for you to base your decisions from, for example when hiring, renting out, or lending money, or trying to figure out if someone is deceased. For these purposes, you may want to conduct a background check or visit an obituary finder.
Unlike social media accounts, which often present a filtered version of a person, people search sites offer a clearer view with information from their contact details, to their work history, online usernames, business assets, interests, and even arrest records. They also provide a way to flag information if it’s inaccurate, which helps these services tighten their data matching and give the searcher the right information about a person.
If you’re wondering how to find people online, or to get a total picture of who they are, here are 10 search sites to start you off. Keep in mind that as you go on your search, the person you are searching for has ways to see if someone is searching for them too!
It’s also good to know that most of these sites will require you to give some of your basic info, like name and email, to access the information. Pretty much all of them will require you to pay some kind of one-time fee to actually see the report. Others will try to hook you into a subscription. These are all private businesses, so that’s their way of making a profit.
BeenVerified
This search site leverages dozens of data sources and millions of data points to dig up information on who you’re looking for. You can get their contact details like physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, background reports, and even any associated criminal records.
You can sign up for an account to use it for free, but if you want comprehensive unlimited reports, faster searches, and username searches, you’ll have to get the paid membership plan, which lets you search from more than 50 websites. Paid reports show you maps with the person’s current and past locations, when the data was last verified as accurate, asset details, loan records, and built-in social media feeds.
Pipl
This tenacious people search engine helps you find people by their name, phone number, email address or username. It can plumb the “deep web” and scour databases and indexes that your ordinary search engine wouldn’t, to unearth information and get you a huge number of results to check from.
You can find all manner of things like photos, profiles on social and business networking sites, publications, blog entries, and even donations on public record. It had a free search engine before June 2019 when it was retired, so you won’t get free results when you try to find people online like on other search sites.
Whitepages
Whitepages isn’t just a people search finder. It goes beyond that to give you more than just professional or social information. You can get detailed background data on people such as maiden name, age, phone numbers (landline and cellphone), addresses, and background checks like traffic records, criminal records, scam/fraud ratings, financial records, lien records, business details, professional licenses, and property details.
However, you only get information like phone number, address, locations, and family members for free, so if you’re looking for a full background report, you’ll have to pay for the premium monthly subscription.
Intelius
This people finder service offers the usual search details that other search sites do but visualizes it in its own way. When you use it to find people online, you’ll get details like email lookup, property records, social network search, criminal records, educational history, and reverse lookup all from its robust database.
The service isn’t free though, and the results are only catered for the US. But the results are great all the same.
Spokeo
Spokeo is another popular search site that helps you find people online by their name, email address, phone details or location. It draws details from public records, white pages listings, and over 60 social networks, dating site profiles, photos and online profiles and other sources including the “deep web”.
The service isn’t free and the results are US based so you won’t find people who don’t live in the US.
TruePeopleSearch
TruePeopleSearch is a free people search engine that lets you find people by their name, address or phone number. It offers detailed results such as details like landline or wireless phone numbers, current address, email addresses, age, relatives, previous locations, and more. It also shows an age filter so you can narrow down the results to find the person you’re looking for.
TruthFinder
TruthFinder does a thorough job at finding people online than most other people search finders. It goes beyond the usual contact details and social profiles to give you information such as traffic offenses, court records, misdemeanors, felonies, arrest records, weapons permits, bankruptcies, mugshots, sexual offenses and more.
However, you only get to see the person’s full name, age, location and possible relatives for free. More detailed results require a paid membership.
Instant Checkmate
Instant Checkmate is a powerful people search finder that’s more of a public records search service, but gives comprehensive reports covering details like address, phone information, marriage and assets, related court documents, criminal history, weapons permits, and bankruptcies.
It draws data from state and country or federal data sources all compiled in neat reports, but you only get them after buying a subscription.
Zabasearch
This is another free search site that digs up information from phone directories and court records, once you enter the name, location and date of birth of the person you’re trying to find.
You can determine their phone number, past and current address for free. If you need a full profile or deeper reports with information like bankruptcies, criminal records and more, you have to pay for it.
PeekYou
PeekYou is another free people search engine that gives you multiple ways to find people online based on their name and phone number, and usernames across various social network communities, web profiles, social media accounts and other public records.
It pulls data from over 60 other sites, blog platforms, news sources, homepages and more, to bring you details like their email addresses, and contact details. However, the results aren’t as comprehensive as similar search sites.
Find People Online
If you’ve been wondering how to find people online, these 10 search sites can be incredibly valuable tools. At the very least, they’ll get you the basic details such as phone numbers, email and physical addresses. You can get even more information but you’re not guaranteed 100 percent accuracy as they mostly rely on public records.
While they are useful, these sites shouldn’t be used to make official decisions in cases like employment, lending, scholarships, renting out, or other equivalent legal choices.
Do you have a favorite search site you use to trace people? Share them with us in a comment below.
