8 Best People Search Engines for Finding Anyone

Find people online with these search tools

Finding people online is easy if you have the right tools. You can track down someone's phone number, figure out their address, see their relatives, dig up their email address, read arrest records, and more when you use a people search engine.

Most of these resources are free to use, at least for the initial search. Depending on what you're trying to find about the person, you might be told that you have to pay for the information. However, there are free people search websites you can use—they just might not provide as much information as the people searchers listed below.

Why Use People Search Engines

Maybe you need to find a long-lost school friend or locate a relative that you haven't heard from in years. Another reason to use a people search tool is to simply verify information that you have on someone, like your neighbor, a new friend, or a potential employee.

Person searching for "Anita Walden" on Facebook
Evan Polenghi / Lifewire

People search engines like the ones listed below are super helpful tools that are built with a hyper-focus to find only people-related information.

If you find yourself on one of these websites, and you want to remove your information from the internet, there's usually a form you can fill out on the website to request they delist your personal details.

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TruePeopleSearch

TruePeopleSearch.com people finder
What We Like
  • Lots of free results.

  • Three ways to search for people.

  • Last name not required.

What We Don't Like
  • Sponsored links blend in with real information.

TruePeopleSearch.com lets you find people by name, phone number, or address. It's one of the best people search engines because the free results are much more detailed than what you'll find on some of these other sites.

Some examples of the free information you can see here include the person's current address, wireless and/or landline phone numbers, age, previous towns where he or she used to live, relatives, email addresses, associated names, and possible associates.

If there are lots of records, TruePeopleSearch will show an age filter that you can use to narrow down the results.

If you want to pay for more results, there's a link on every person's page that will take you to another site to buy the full report.

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TruthFinder

TruthFinder people search website
What We Like
  • Only requires the name (not location).

  • Shows very basic information for free.

  • Lets you pay to find loads of information.

What We Don't Like
  • Requires payment to see results.

  • Takes about 15 minutes to finish the whole search.

TruthFinder does an awesome job at finding people, and the search is more thorough than most people search engines.

The TruthFinder people finder website starts off by searching for all of the following on the person: traffic offenses, misdemeanors, court records, judgements, felonies, bankruptcies, relatives, phone numbers, online profiles, assets, arrest records, weapons permits, mugshots, sexual offenses, and address information.

TruthFinder then searches for the person's job information, email addresses, education history, death records, government watch list records, social media images, dating profiles, videos, registered domains, online interests, blog posts, and more.

However, the only information you can see for free is the person's full name. You'll need to pay to see other possible names they might go by, as well as their age, the location they currently live or have lived in the past, a list of possible relatives, the last four digits of at least one of their registered phone numbers, and the email provider (e.g. Gmail.com or Yahoo.com) of at least one of their email addresses.

Results are available instantly after you pay. You can order one month of unlimited reports or pay for two months of reports at once to save some money.

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Facebook

Facebook people search results
What We Like
  • Reveals personal details most people search tools don't include.

  • Unique filtering options.

What We Don't Like
  • Many Facebook users set their profiles to private.

  • A search can yield too many results to narrow down quickly.

  • Inaccurate results if user omitted information from their profile.

As one of the world's largest social networks with hundreds of millions of people accessing it daily, it makes sense to use the Facebook search tool as an incredibly useful way to find people online. You can search by name and include the person's city, school, and/or employee.

You can use the social media platform to search for people you went to high school and college with, as well as work colleagues, friends from elementary school, non-profit organizations, and friends of friends.

A Facebook search is also great for finding people in specific geographic locations living in your local area that you might not already know, as well as any kind of association, club, or group. 

While many people block searches of their Facebook profiles and only give information to those visible in their immediate circles of friends and family, others do not. When a profile is public, it allows anyone who finds it immediate access to a person's posts, photos, check-in statuses, and other personal details.

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BeenVerified

BeenVerified people finder search engine
What We Like
  • Four ways to search for people.

  • Gathers information from multiple sources.

  • Several ways to pay for reports.

  • Sometimes offers really cheap reports.

What We Don't Like
  • You must pay to see the results.

  • Results take several minutes to populate.

BeenVerified is another behemoth of a people search engine. Much like TruthFinder listed above, this site digs up a wealth of information on the person you're trying to find, leveraging millions of data points and dozens of data sources.

You can get background reports, contact information, phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, criminal records, and more with the BeenVerified people finder.

Another benefit that helps you find anyone with this tool is that you can search using whatever information you have on them: name, number, address, or email. If you pay, username searches are enabled, too, which can query over 50 websites to find the person online.

There's a one-month membership you can pay for to get unlimited reports and faster searches, or you can buy three months up front to save money. Paid reports include information like when the data was last verified as accurate, maps showing past and current locations, built-in social media feeds, asset details, and loan records.

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Zabasearch

ZabaSearch people finder website
What We Like
  • Near-instant results.

  • Provides some information for free.

What We Don't Like
  • Free report has few details.

  • Not as up to date as similar sites.

  • Lots of ads.

Zabasearch is a free people search engine that scours freely accessible public information and records, such as court records and phone directories. You can search by the person's phone number or their name.

The free results you can see with this people search engine is often the person's name, phone number, age, and address. Deeper reports can be had if you follow the links on the person's page to Intellius.

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn people search boxes
What We Like
  • Easy to use.

  • Direct results.

  • No user account needed to view results.

What We Don't Like
  • Results limited to professional details.

  • Depending on your settings, the subject of your search may see that you’ve looked at their profile.

Use LinkedIn to search for professional networks that other people are involved in. If you make an account yourself and add your business profile to it, you can pick up quite a few details about how others are connected to that business.

LinkedIn is a people search site in that you can see where someone works, who they work with, their former positions, current or former supervisors, any kind of recommendations they might have received, and much more. There are a few filtering options available, and even more, if you have a Sales Navigator or Recruiter account.

Depending on privacy settings, you might not be able to see everything that someone has provided in their LinkedIn profile. In addition, if you're a registered user, the fact that you looked at someone's profile typically will be made known to them. 

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PeekYou

PeekYou people search website
What We Like
  • Multiple ways to search for people.

  • Basic results are free.

  • Pulls data from other sites.

  • Useful search refining tools.

What We Don't Like
  • Fewer useful results than similar websites.

  • Full of advertisements.

PeekYou adds an interesting twist to the world of free people search engines; it allows you to search for usernames across a variety of social networking communities.

For instance, if you want to learn more about the person who uses the handle I-Love-Kittens; PeekYou will show you anything else that username might be doing on the web. There's an astonishing amount of information you can dig up on someone using only their username.

PeekYou also lets you search for people by name and phone number.

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PeopleFinders

PeopleFinders search engine
What We Like
  • Relatively inexpensive reports.

  • Explains what the report did and didn't find before you pay.

  • Basic results are revealed quickly.

What We Don't Like
  • Must pay for deeper information.

  • The only payment option is by credit/debit card (not PayPal, etc.)

  • Emailing the report costs more.

PeopleFinders is another people search engine that provides a few details for free, like the person's aliases, age, family members, and sometimes the first several digits of their phone number. You can pay a few dollars for the full search report (it's a trial of the full membership), or more if you want a full background report.

The search report you can get from PeopleFinders can include any of the following: full name, current address, phone number, prior residences, relatives, aliases, age, neighbors, property records, bankruptcies, judgements and liens, marriage and divorce records, criminal information, sex offender records, and more.

The PeopleFinders search tool lets you find people by their name, physical address, or phone number. An advanced tool is available that lets you search an age range as well.

If you buy the report, you can print it off for free, but to use the "email PDF" option requires another small payment.

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