Top 10 Best People Search Engines for Finding a Person 2025 [Free & Paid]

With the proper tools, you can easily locate anyone online. These search engines can help you uncover information about anyone beyond their names. You’ll find them handy for making smart decisions about anyone. Employees, for instance, use these tools to vet candidates. Landlords screen tenants using search engines, and families trace adoptions. This guide will introduce you to the best search engines for finding people in no time. 

What is a people search engine?

People search engines are specialized platforms that can be used to find information about any person’s name, email, or other data you might have. It works by scanning and cross-referencing matching information across social media profiles, public records, government records (including courts, licenses, phone directories, property records, and proprietary databases) to help you find detailed personal information. 

Unlike generic search engines, specialized people search engines will trim irrelevant pages to help with your background checks, social media footprints, and criminal histories. When used correctly, the engine can compile matching data points to help you find their contact details, relatives, addresses, and other important background information, creating a complete picture of their identity.

5 Best Free People Search Engines

Looking at all the fantastic benefits of these search engines, let’s talk about the most effective of these tools, their benefits, and drawbacks. 

WhitePages

What We Like

• Easy to use for name/phone lookups, especially for landline numbers. 
• Lookup phone numbers to identify potential spam numbers.
• Millions of searchable data points from reliable sources. 
• Accessible both online and mobile app

What We Don’t Like

• Only the basic searches are free.
• Can’t access phone number information without paying for the service.
• Mainly focuses on people search in the USA

WhitePages is one of the best free people search engines for U.S. users. Here, you’ll find a comprehensive list of names, home addresses, and phone numbers, along with other valuable information. On this platform, you can search for someone by their city, state, zip, phone, and even address. 

Best For

WhitePages is best for overall, free contact lookups, especially when searching for information about landline numbers or verifying basic details about someone you’ve just met. 

Zabasearch

What We Like 

• Basic search can find the person’s name, address, and age range. 
• You can filter your search by their first, middle, or last name, city, and state to narrow down results, especially when dealing with common names. 
• Strong reverse phone lookup to identify unknown callers.

What We Don’t Like

• Redirects to Intelius for deeper insights on the person. 
• Data can be outdated or incomplete because of unverified public directories. 
• Only effective for searching U.S residents. 

Zabasearch is also one of the best free people search engines. With this platform, you can access phone directories and court records. Zabasearch especially allows you to search person using their name and address. Your results will include their full name, phone number, relatives, and social media profiles. 

Best For

Zabasearch is best for finding contact details of people in the U.S. It’s most suitable for initial research when carrying out background checks. 

FastPeopleSearch

What We Like

• Unlimited basic searches without creating your own account.
• Great for identifying unknown callers or verifying home addresses. 
• FastPeopleSearch gets its data from voter registrations, court documents, property deeds, and social media.
• Allow searching people near you

What We Don’t Like 

• You’ll deal with a lot of outdated or misattributed data 
• FastPeopleSearch has aggressive paywalls with details like criminal records and phone numbers hidden behind the premium reports.
• No international support

FastPeopleSearch is also a data broker website where anyone can find information. As one of the best free person search engines, this platform lets you search by name, phone number, and address. You can also do all that without creating your own account. It’s also a great platform for verifying addresses with satellite map links. 

Best For 

FastPeopleSearch is best for finding details about landline numbers or historical addresses. 

TruePeopleSearch

What We Like 

• Simply reverse phone lookup service to verify unknown callers.
• Can access basic information without creating an account or paying for a subscription.
• You’ll find historical addresses and verify landline numbers within seconds. 

What We Don’t Like 

• Does not provide information from social media or criminal and financial records.
• Only works best for people in the United States. 
• Sometimes, free results are buried under deceptive links and redirects pushing you to pay for paid services. 

TruePeopleSearch allows you to find people by their name, phone number, email and address. It’s a great free people search engine that provides as much information as possible on its free tier. For instance, you can look forward to details about their current address, relatives, possible associates, and phone numbers. 

Best For 

TruePeopleSearch is a free people search engine for U.S lookups. 

LinkedIn people search

What We Like 

• Global coverage and highly accurate for professionals.
• Can filter by current company, connections, industry, school, and a multitude of keywords with just the free profile.
• Updated by users themselves

What We Don’t Like

• You won’t find much else than professional details.
• Limited info if user has a private profile
• Free users can only access 1,000 results per search, which is calculated as the number of people’s data that come up. Hence, depending on your search, this might mean 10 queries.

LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to reach millions of professionals worldwide.  You can also use it as your free people search engine to see where someone works, who they work with, their former titles, and other recommendations they might have.  You can access filters, like schools, cities, and countries. However, depending on how regularly you use LinkedIn, you may only be able to search a few details. 

Best For

LinkedIn’s people search is great for recruiting or finding talent for your business. It’s not the best tool for personal background checks.

5 Best search engines to find people

Beyond using free tools, there are other best search engines for finding people. However, these tools demand paying a small fee to access their detailed reports about anyone. Here we will talk about their benefits, drawbacks, and when to use them. 

Pipl

What We Like 

• Leverages AI-powered cross-referencing to link fragmented data into unified profiles, thereby increasing accuracy.
• Provides information about anyone worldwide. 
• Used by top banks and insurers for fraud prevention and risk assessment. 

What We Don’t Like 

• Built for use by businesses for batch processing deep web checks on anyone. 
• There’s no free basic tier, only a super expensive bill for background checks.
• There’s still a potential for outdated addresses or duplicate profiles.

For deep-dive investigations that go beyond the surface, you can use PiPl to find people online. This platform provides diverse means to start with any piece of information until you can separate real identities from fake ones. It’s a platform designed for deep background checks and able to aggregate 28+ billion unique identifiers (emails, phones, social handles) from global public records, social media, and deep web sources. 

Best For 

Banks and online retailers use it best to verify high-risk transactions. It’s not suitable for personal lookups. 

Intelius

What We Like 

• Lookup any name, phone number, or address in the U.S 
• Access detailed reports on any house you want, and especially connect to criminal records for its residents. 

What We Don’t Like 

• Can be expensive
• It can be difficult to cancel.
• Intelius is pretty slow to use, with the questions it asks becoming pretty annoying. 

Intelius is another premium people search engine for your phone lookups and background checks. Here you can start your search with their phone, name, or address and discover a vast wealth of information across public records, social media scans, and more. Intelius is especially designed to ask you more questions during the search to narrow down results about that person. Hence, this reduces the limitations of achieving poor, outdated, or misrepresented results. 

Best For

Intelius is best for accessing detailed reports about people in the United States. 

LocatePhone

What We Like

• Useful solution to find people by location, email, phone number, or link. 
• Works worldwide with decent chances of finding as much information as possible on anyone.
• LocatePhone is pretty easy to use and lightning fast.

What We Don’t Like 

• There’s no free tier.

With a solid blend of affordability and depth, LocatePhone helps uncover detailed information worldwide. It can act as a people search engine that scans through billions of records and gives you the complete picture of their online presence. In seconds, you’ll see their full name, address, public social media accounts, other phone numbers, relatives, and connections. You can also leverage its location tracker to confirm where they are, especially when they claim to be somewhere else. 

Best For 

LocatePhone is ideal for personal and business lookups to find background data on people.

PeopleFinder

What We Like 

• Relatively inexpensive reports since you can choose how you access them.
• Find people by name, phone, or email. 
• Works best for finding information about people in the U.S.

What We Don’t Like 

• Aggressive upsells to pay for the full report. 

PeopleFinder is also a fantastic people search engine for accessing details about their full name, current addresses, phone numbers, relatives, age, neighbors, property records, liens, marriage records, and more. You’ll especially love how you can pay a few dollars for the information you want, or pay more to access the entire background report. 

Best For 

People Finders is suitable for personal lookups centered around the United States.

Searchbug

What We Like

• No subscriptions. You only pay to access reports about specific persons.
• It’s useful for businesses that need an API that integrates data processing within their systems. 
• You can search emails and phone numbers for free. 

What We Don’t Like 

• Data can be incorrect or outdated most of the time. 
• You won’t access detailed information about your target.

Searchbug is a people search engine that helps businesses verify their customers in batches. It’s designed to find information such as their name, property address, phone, email, and more. Searchbug also has a dedicated people finder feature for personal lookups, especially when you want insights on their social profiles, addresses, and more. 

Best For 

Searchbug is best for finding people’s contact information from their names. 

How We test the best people search engine

Although there are plenty of people search engines out there, filtering through the noise to find the ones worth your time can be challenging. Here are some key points and features we considered when creating our list, and how you should consider them as well for your quest for the best search engine to find people.

• Ease of use: You need a platform that’s super fast and responsive on mobile to enjoy a flawless search experience. Platforms with cluttered layouts or complex navigation are red flags. 
• Information accuracy: We prioritized platforms with constantly updated information. You should also cross-verify results across multiple sources to ensure accuracy.
• Search features: You need platforms that offer advanced filters such as name, phone, email, location, and more. This makes it easier to conserve your time and resources and find your target quickly. 
• Coverage: This depends on whether you want to search U.S data or international searches. For our guide, we focused more on search engines that work in the U.S.

FAQ

What is the free alternative to TruePeopleSearch?

There are many free alternatives to TruePeopleSearch, including WhitePages, Searchbug, FastPeopleSearch, and PeopleFinder. If you also want a low-cost alternative that can even find their real-time location, try LocatePhone.

How to get off Free People Search?

If you want to get off people search websites, search for your name on Google, and make a list of sites that pop up. Next, find your information on these sites and use the opt-out page. You may have to submit removal requests, which often demand verifying your email or ID. Note, you’ll have to do this monthly as these sites often republish data.

What is the most accurate free people search?

There’s no free people search that’s the most accurate. Our list of free tools, like WhitePages and PeopleFinder, offers decent chances. Still, you are better off using a low-cost premium service like LocatePhone that would cross-reference social media and public directories, provide real-time updates, and access government databases.

Conclusion

Now you have an arsenal of people search engines to find anyone. Remember, the best results often stem from using reputable tools and having as much information as possible. Be ready to confirm information across two or three websites to improve accuracy. Regardless, you don’t have to overthink how to begin your search. Who knows, you just might find that person’s digital footprint in one go.