The best Social Catfish alternative depends on which check you need. For reverse image search, Google Lens, TinEye and Yandex Images are free and need no account. For username checks, WhatsMyName and Sherlock are free and open source. For one tool that covers usernames, emails and people search with a free preview, Revealer starts at $0, with paid plans from $12.99/mo, against Social Catfish's paid trial that renews at roughly $27 to $29 a month.
Disclosure up front: we build Revealer.US. Assume bias and check our work. Prices and features below are from each vendor's public pages as of September 2026.
The situation we wrote this for: you met someone on a dating app, something feels off, and you want to know whether the photos, name and contact details belong to one person before you send money or meet up. Social Catfish charges for that check. Its two most useful parts, reverse image and username search, are free elsewhere.
At a glance
| Tool | Inputs | What a free session shows | Cost to see a full result (as of Sep 2026) | Account needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social Catfish | Name, phone, email, username, address, image | A count of possible matches, not the profiles | Paid trial ($5.73 to $6.87 for 3 to 5 days per its FAQ), then about $27 to $29/mo | Yes |
| Google Lens | Image | Full results | Free | No |
| TinEye | Image | Full results | Free (the API is paid) | No |
| Yandex Images | Image | Full results | Free | No |
| WhatsMyName | Username | Full results, CSV export | Free | No |
| Sherlock | Username | Full results, command line | Free, open source | No |
| Spokeo | Name, phone, email, address, username | Search runs, report is behind membership | $19.95/mo, or $14.95/mo on a 3-month term; up to 100 searches/mo | Yes |
| BeenVerified | Name, phone, email, address, username, more | Search runs, report is behind membership | A paid 7-day trial (BeenVerified's own page describes $1 trials for new customers; the exact amount shows at checkout), then $36.89/mo or $71.94 per 3 months | Yes |
| Revealer | Username, email, phone, name | Redacted previews: 10 social, 10 breach and 50 people lookups per day, no card | Paid from $12.99/mo | Yes (free) |
Revealer.US is not a consumer reporting agency. Its results are not consumer reports and may not be used for employment, tenant, credit, insurance, or other FCRA-covered eligibility decisions.
What Social Catfish sells, and what it costs
Social Catfish offers six search types: name, phone, email, username, address and image. Its pitch is dating safety: "If you met someone on Tinder, Bumble, or Hinge, it's smart to confirm details before you meet in person."
The free tier is a preview. The homepage says: "You can start a search for free and preview potential matches. To access full reports and deeper results, a paid plan may be required." Its own guide to free features is blunter: "You might see '3 social media accounts found,' but can't view which platforms or usernames." Free accounts also carry daily search caps.
Pricing lives in the FAQ rather than on a pricing page, and the FAQ lists more than one set of numbers as of September 2026: $6.48 or $6.87 for the first 3 days and then $28.94 or $28.97 every 30 days in one passage; $5.73 for 5 days and then $27.48 a month (social) or $5.99 for 5 days and then $26.99 a month (image) in another. Either way a small paid trial converts to a monthly membership in the high twenties unless you cancel. There is no free trial.
Other details from its pages, as of September 2026:
- Sign-up is not available from Europe. Searches cover "any English speaking country."
- Refunds are handled case by case by phone, limited to one per membership plan.
- The opt-out form promises removal from the site within 15 days.
- The username search page claims "over 200 platforms"; the image and email pages describe "over 200 Billion Records."
On whether Social Catfish is legit: it is an established company with a published FAQ, a cancellation guide and an opt-out form on its own site. What it does not offer is a free full result. Whether the membership is worth $27 or more a month depends on whether you need more than reverse image and username checks, which are free elsewhere.
Free reverse image search: Google Lens, TinEye and Yandex
Reverse image search is the single most useful catfish check, and it costs nothing.
Google Lens. Go to google.com, click "Search by image," then upload a file, drag an image into the search box, or paste an image URL. Google's help page documents all three. Results show visually similar images and the sites where the image appears.
TinEye. The original reverse image engine. Its blog describes "a growing index of billions of images." The web search is free; TinEye sells a paid API that it markets for "image and profile verification."
Yandex Images. A separate search-by-image index with its own crawl and ranking, so it belongs in the pass as a third opinion. Free.
All three share one limitation: they find copies of a photo, not the person in it. Stolen photos that were never published anywhere get no hits. Treat no result as inconclusive, never as a clean bill.
Free username checks: WhatsMyName and Sherlock
Most people reuse handles, which makes a username the second-best check, and again free.
WhatsMyName is a community-maintained dataset created in 2015 by Micah Hoffman; its README lists 700+ sites. The browser version at whatsmyname.app needs no install, filters by category and exports to CSV.
Sherlock is the command-line equivalent. Its README says it hunts a username across 400+ social networks, installs with pipx install sherlock-project or runs in Docker, and is MIT licensed.
Both tools answer one question: does this handle exist on this site. They do not tell you whether it is the same person, sites change URL patterns often enough that false negatives pile up, and neither takes an email or phone or touches breach data. We compare them head to head in Sherlock vs Maigret vs WhatsMyName and keep a longer list on our OSINT tools page.
Paid people-search alternatives: Spokeo and BeenVerified
These two are US public-records aggregators first and dating-verification tools second. Neither does reverse image search.
Spokeo supports five inputs: name, phone, email, address and username. Its FAQ says a reverse email or username search "with a premium membership can yield" public profiles on social networks and on dating sites such as Match and OkCupid. Subscriptions include up to 100 searches a month. The FAQ does not print a price; the purchase page lists $19.95 for one month or $14.95 a month on a three-month term as of September 2026. The payment policy calls plans prepaid and non-refundable, while the FAQ invites you to ask Customer Care for a refund. Phone and name search are US-only. Opt-out runs through spokeo.com/optout in 24 to 48 hours per the page.
BeenVerified publishes its prices. As of September 2026 the pricing page lists a paid 7-day trial (BeenVerified's own page describes $1 trials for new customers; the exact amount shows at checkout) limited to 100 reports, then $36.89 a month or $71.94 every 3 months (shown as $23.98/mo), both capped at 100 reports a month and renewing until cancelled. It has a dedicated username search, cancels by web, email or phone, and its FAQ states that it "is not a consumer reporting agency."
For address history or relatives they are the right category; for "is this profile real" they are more than you need.
Where Revealer fits
Revealer is a search layer over public and third-party sources it does not own. Every search runs live, in real time, at the moment you run it, against public sources and endpoints Revealer does not own, and Revealer does not retain your search data. The checks that matter here are a username search across 800+ platforms, an email lookup, a data breach lookup by email, username, phone or domain showing where an identifier has appeared, and People Reveal for a name, phone or email.
The free plan costs $0 and needs no card: 10 social lookups, 10 breach lookups and 50 people lookups per day, all as redacted previews. Starter is $12.99/mo, Basic is $29.99/mo, and Pro at $79.99/mo adds full Device Exposures (50 a day), 500 social lookups a day, unlimited breach lookups, and API access with 3 whitelisted IPs (see /docs). Enterprise is contact sales with team seats.
The limits. No reverse image search, so use the free engines above for photos. Not a background check. No plan on any tier shows plaintext passwords or hashes; every credential is redacted. Removal is suppression, not deletion, since we hold no underlying records: a verified email within 24 hours, and usernames, phones and names after a manual review of about 4 weeks, via /opt-out.
How to verify a dating profile in 10 minutes
Run the checks in this order: image, username, email, phone. It goes from cheapest and least invasive to the checks that need paid data, and the early steps decide most cases.
| Step | Tool | Time | What a hit means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Image | Google Lens, TinEye, Yandex | 3 min | Same photo under another name or on a stock site is a stop signal |
| 2. Username | WhatsMyName, Revealer username search | 2 min | Consistent handle, bio and photo history across platforms supports the story |
| 3. Email | Revealer email lookup and data breach lookup | 2 min | Years of ordinary breach history reads as a real person; a fresh address reads as a persona |
| 4. Phone | People Reveal, Spokeo or BeenVerified | 2 min | A matching name and region supports the story; a VoIP number is a caution, not a verdict |
| 5. Decide | Your judgment | 1 min | Refuses a video call, asks for money, crypto or gift cards: stop and report |
Image. Save two or three profile photos and run each through all three engines. No match means nothing yet.
Email and phone. Email history is hard to fake in a hurry; an address that has registered ordinary services for years reads differently from one with no footprint. Scammers favor virtual numbers, but so do privacy-minded people, so weigh the phone result with the earlier steps.
Decide, then stop. If you conclude it is a scam, report the account to the platform and to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Keep what you found to yourself; verification is for your own decision, not for exposing anyone. For app-specific steps, see Tinder profile search.
What a full result costs
Social Catfish's bar uses the lowest monthly figure in its FAQ; Spokeo's is the one-month price on its purchase page.
How we compared
This is a criteria comparison built from each vendor's public pages, not a lab test. Our earlier benchmark posts ran real sessions; this one did not, so nothing above is a hit-rate claim. The criteria:
- What a search takes as input
- What a free session shows before payment
- Price to see a full result, and how it renews
- Refund and cancellation friction, as the vendor's own pages describe it
- Whether an API exists
- Coverage as the vendor states it
- The removal process for your own listing
Frequently asked questions
Is Social Catfish free?
You can start a search for free, but the free result is a count of possible matches rather than the matches themselves. Full reports need a paid trial ($5.73 to $6.87 for 3 to 5 days, per its FAQ as of September 2026) that renews monthly. There is no free trial.
Is Social Catfish legit?
It is an established company with a working product, a published cancellation guide and an opt-out form, all on its own site. Its model is a paid trial that converts to a monthly membership, plus a free preview that shows counts rather than matches. Run a free reverse image search first and pay only if you still need more.
What is the best free reverse image search for a dating profile?
Run all three: Google Lens, TinEye and Yandex Images. Each has a different index, and none needs an account. A match on a stock site or under a different name settles the question; no match settles nothing, because stolen private photos are not indexed anywhere.
Can I do a catfish check by username without paying?
Yes. WhatsMyName lists 700+ sites in the browser and Sherlock 400+ from the command line, both free. Revealer's username search covers 800+ platforms with a free redacted preview, 10 social lookups a day, no card.
Does Social Catfish work outside the US?
Its FAQ says you can search for anyone in any English-speaking country, but sign-up is not available if you live in Europe. Spokeo's phone and name search are US-only. Revealer's username and email lookups are not limited to US subjects.
How do I get my own information out of these sites?
Each has its own form: Social Catfish promises removal within 15 days, Spokeo says 24 to 48 hours, and BeenVerified links an opt-out from its footer. Revealer suppresses a verified email within 24 hours and reviews usernames, phones and names over about 4 weeks. None can remove data from the original sources, so listings can reappear.
Most catfish checks end at step one or two, and both are free. When you need the username, email and breach layers in one place, Revealer's free plan shows redacted previews with no card, and paid plans from $12.99/mo at pricing show the full result. Create a free account before you reply to the next message.