The closest WhatsMyName alternatives in 2026 are Sherlock and Maigret if you want a free, open-source enumerator you run yourself, Namechk for a thirty-second availability check in a browser, and a hosted service (OSINT Industries, Social Catfish, or Revealer) when you need the profile behind each hit and a way to tell which hits belong to the same person. WhatsMyName answers one question well: does this username exist on these sites. Every tool below either checks a different list, returns more than a yes or no, or both.
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.
What WhatsMyName is and how it works
WhatsMyName (WMN) is a community-maintained dataset, started in 2015 by Micah "WebBreacher" Hoffman, that describes how to check whether a username exists on a given website. The whole project is one JSON file, wmn-data.json. Each entry holds a URL template with an {account} placeholder, the status code and page string that mean "found", the code and string that mean "missing", a category, and known test accounts for validation. When we pulled the file on September 2, 2026 it held 716 site entries across 20 categories, 202 of them tagged social and 61 flagged for captcha or Cloudflare fronting.
The dataset does no checking on its own. Tools read it and fire the requests. The official front end is whatsmyname.app, a free browser tool built by OSINT Combine with Hoffman. You type one or more usernames, pick category filters, and a table fills with site, username, category, and link. There are Show Found, Show False Positives, and Show Not Found toggles, a CSV export, and an Open All Links button that warns your own machine will visit every URL. A captcha sits in front of the search. No account, no card, no price.
The same JSON powers Naminter, Blackbird, sn0int, SpiderFoot, and Maltego transforms, so WMN matters more as a standard than as an app. The license is Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0.
Where WhatsMyName stops
Four limits push people toward alternatives. None are bugs. They follow from what the dataset is.
- Exists or does not. A hit is a URL. No display name, bio, avatar, follower count, join date, or location. You open each link and read it yourself.
- No account linkage. Sixty hits for
jsmith84are sixty separate rows. Nothing says which belong to one person, or thatj.smith84elsewhere is the same account holder. - Manual runs. The web app is a browser session behind a captcha, with no schedule, monitoring, or API. Re-checking a handle next month means running it again by hand.
- Soft-404 false positives. Some sites return HTTP 200 and a generic page for any path. The "missing" string exists to catch this, but 34 of the 716 entries leave it empty, so the miss decision rests on the status code alone.
If your work ends at "this handle exists on these sites", WhatsMyName is enough. The tools below are for when it starts there.
At a glance
| Tool | Type | Input | What a hit contains | Links accounts | Price (as of Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsMyName | Web app + JSON dataset | Username | Profile URL | No | Free |
| Sherlock | Python CLI | Username | Profile URL | No | Free, MIT |
| Maigret | Python CLI + local web UI | Username | URL plus fields parsed from the page | Partial (recursive on found IDs) | Free, MIT |
| Namechk | Web app | Username | Taken or available | No | Free |
| Social Catfish | Hosted people search | Username, name, email, phone, image, address | Free preview count; full report paid | Yes, inside the report | $5.73 for a 3-day trial, then $27.48/mo |
| OSINT Industries | Hosted platform | Email, phone, username, name, crypto wallet | Linked accounts, avatar, name, location, timeline | Yes | From £19/mo (30 credits) |
| Revealer | Hosted, live search | Username, email, phone | Profile data, with breach cross-checks | Yes (AI Deep Search, from Basic) | Free (10/day, redacted); paid from $12.99/mo |
How we compared
This is a criteria comparison from public pages, not a lab test. For every tool we checked:
- What a search takes as input (username only, or email and phone too).
- What a free session shows before any payment.
- The price to see one full result, in the currency the vendor quotes.
- Refund and cancellation friction, as stated on public pages.
- Whether an API exists and which tier unlocks it.
- Coverage, using each project's own published number.
- How a person gets themselves removed from results.
What each tool returns
| Tool | Exists-only | Profile fields | Linked accounts | Export or API |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsMyName | Yes | None | None | CSV from the web app; JSON dataset; no API |
| Sherlock | Yes | None | None | TXT, CSV, XLSX, JSON; no API |
| Maigret | No | Fields parsed from profile pages and site APIs | Follows discovered usernames and IDs recursively | HTML, PDF, JSON, CSV, graph; no hosted API |
| Namechk | Yes (taken or available) | None | None | None stated |
| Social Catfish | Preview shows a count of matches | Full report behind membership | Grouped by person in the report | None listed on the pages we checked |
| OSINT Industries | No | Avatar, full name, location, activity timeline | Yes, from email, phone, or username | API on Intermediate (£49/mo) and above |
| Revealer | No | Profile data per platform, cross-checked against breach data | Yes, with cited sources and a confidence score (AI Deep Search) | API on Pro ($79.99/mo, 3 whitelisted IPs) |
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.
Sites checked, by each project's own number
OSINT Industries counts sources of every kind, not username-checkable sites, so its bar is not like for like. Namechk and Social Catfish publish no site count we could verify, so they are off the chart.
1. Sherlock: the same idea, run from your terminal
Sherlock is the script most people mean by "username search tool". Install it with pipx install sherlock-project, run sherlock handle, and it checks 400+ social networks by its own README, writing a text file with CSV, XLSX, and JSON options. It returns existence only, so it fixes none of WhatsMyName's four limits. What changes is that requests come from your machine, which removes the captcha and lets you batch handles in a shell loop. MIT-licensed and free, with a site list maintained separately from WMN's.
2. Maigret: the free enumerator that reads the page
Maigret is the free tool that returns more than a URL. Its README says it supports 3,000+ sites, checks the 500 highest-traffic ones by default, and "extracts all available information about the account owner from profile pages and site APIs, including links to other accounts", then runs a recursive search on the usernames and IDs it discovers. Reports come out as HTML, PDF, JSON, CSV, a graph, and more, and maigret --web 5000 opens a local web interface. MIT-licensed, free for commercial use. The costs are your time: install, run, proxy, and clean false positives out of a list four times WMN's size.
3. Namechk: a fast availability grid
Namechk answers a different question, is this handle taken here, as a red or green grid across social platforms and domain names. Free, no account. Its homepage served a Cloudflare challenge to our fetch, so we cannot quote a current site count from the source. Treat a green cell as a clue, not a finding. It returns nothing about the account that holds the name.
4. Social Catfish: reverse username lookup inside a people-search membership
Social Catfish offers a reverse username search "to find profiles that use the same handle across platforms" alongside name, phone, email, image, and address searches. Its homepage says you "can start a search for free and preview potential matches" and that "a paid plan may be required" for full reports. Its own pricing writeup lists the Social Search plan at $5.73 for a 3-day trial, then $27.48/mo for up to 100 searches a month (as of September 2026); a separate image-search plan is $6.87 for 3 days, then $28.97/mo. A free username preview shows a count of social accounts found, not which ones. No API is listed on the pages we checked. It fits one report on one person, not enumeration you re-run and export.
5. OSINT Industries: linked accounts, priced in credits
OSINT Industries takes an email, phone number, username, name, or crypto wallet and returns the accounts linked to it, with profile pictures, full name, location, and an interactive activity timeline, drawn from "1500+ sources worldwide" in real time. Pricing as of September 2026 is in pounds: Basic £19/mo for 30 credits, Intermediate £49/mo for 100, Advanced £99/mo for 300, Enterprise custom. No free tier; trials go to eligible enterprise parties on request. API access starts at Intermediate. Credits do not expire at month end and subscriptions cancel from the billing page.
6. Revealer: profile data and linkage across 800+ platforms
Revealer's username search checks 800+ platforms and returns what WMN cannot: the profile data behind each hit, with each match cross-checked against breach data, and Device Exposures, our stealer-log search, on the same account. 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. Every credential is redacted on every plan; no tier shows a plaintext password or hash. Free accounts get 10 social lookups a day as redacted previews, no card. Paid plans start at $12.99/mo (Starter). From Basic ($29.99/mo) you also get AI Deep Search, which takes one username, email, or phone number, follows reused handles and linked accounts, matches them against breach data, and returns one report with every source cited and a confidence score per match. Pro ($79.99/mo) adds full Device Exposures (50 a day), 500 social lookups a day, unlimited breach lookups, and API access with three whitelisted IPs. Enterprise is contact sales, with team seats.
Two limits to know before you sign up. Revealer is a search layer over public and third-party sources it does not own, so removal is suppression, not deletion: a verified email is suppressed within 24 hours, and username, phone, and name requests are reviewed by hand in about four weeks, through opt-out. And the free tier is a preview, so the first full result costs $12.99.
Which one replaces WhatsMyName for you
Match the tool to the job, not the site count.
- Find accounts by username, free, from a browser. Stay on whatsmyname.app.
- The same thing without a captcha, in batch. Sherlock or Maigret on a throwaway VPS; Maigret if you want parsed fields and a PDF.
- Know which hits are the same person. OSINT Industries or Revealer; Maigret gets partway with recursion.
- Breach context on the handle. Revealer; the cross-check runs in the same search.
- A single dossier on one named person. Social Catfish, report behind the membership.
Verify hits before they go in a report; every tool here produces soft-404 false positives. Check only handles you are authorized to investigate, and never use what you find to get into an account.
Frequently asked questions
Is WhatsMyName free?
Yes. The dataset is Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 on GitHub, and whatsmyname.app is a free front end with no account or card. Sherlock, Maigret, and Namechk are also free. Paid options here start at £19/mo (OSINT Industries), $5.73 for a 3-day trial (Social Catfish), and $12.99/mo (Revealer), all as of September 2026.
What does the WhatsMyName app return?
A list of sites where the username resolved to a profile, each with a link, a category, and a found or not-found status. It returns no display names, bios, or avatars, and does not say whether two hits belong to the same person. You export to CSV and do the reading yourself.
Which WhatsMyName alternative checks the most sites?
Maigret, at 3,000+ sites by its own README. WhatsMyName's JSON held 716 entries when we pulled it, Sherlock's README says 400+, and Revealer checks 800+ platforms. Raw count is a weak proxy for accuracy.
Can any of these tools link accounts to the same person?
Partly. Maigret follows discovered usernames and IDs into a recursive search. OSINT Industries and Revealer link accounts as a product feature; Revealer's AI Deep Search cites each source and scores each match. WhatsMyName, Sherlock, and Namechk link nothing.
Why does WhatsMyName show false positives?
Some websites answer every URL with HTTP 200 and a generic page, so a status code alone cannot separate a real profile from a missing one. Each WMN entry can carry a "missing" string to catch this, but 34 of 716 leave it empty, and sites change faster than volunteers update detections.
How do I get my username removed from these tools?
You cannot remove yourself from Sherlock, Maigret, or WhatsMyName; they check live sites and hold no data about you, so the fix is on each site. Social Catfish and OSINT Industries run their own opt-out processes. Revealer suppresses a verified email within 24 hours and reviews username, phone, and name requests by hand in about four weeks at opt-out.
If the "now what" after a WhatsMyName hit list is the problem, run the same handle through username search on a free account. Ten redacted lookups a day cost nothing, paid plans from $12.99/mo at pricing remove the redaction, and you can create an account without a card.