Reverse lookup: how to search a phone number, email, photo or username

A reverse lookup starts from something you already have, such as a phone number, an email address, a photo or a username, and works back to who or what it belongs to. Each of those four needs its own tool. Most have a free option, and the paid ones we looked at cost from $0.95 for a single report to $36.89 a month.

We make CheckMate.bio, which handles the email part. It doesn't search the other three on their own, so for those we point to the tools we would use ourselves.

Which reverse lookup fits what you have

Reverse phone number lookup

Phone results go stale quickly. Carriers give disconnected numbers to new customers, so the name on file can belong to whoever had the number before. Caller ID can be faked as well: the FTC warns that scammers make fake names and numbers show up on it. A reverse phone lookup therefore tells you who a number was registered to at some point. Whether that person is the one calling you now is a separate question.

The people-search sites below cover US numbers:

• TruePeopleSearch and USPhoneBook are free and pay for themselves with ads. Neither asks you to sign up.
• Spokeo's phone search looks for the current owner's name, previous owners, the carrier, whether the line is a cell or a landline, and spam risk. After a search, its checkout has offered a $0.95 report with a 7-day trial that then bills $29.95 a month until you cancel.
• BeenVerified sells subscriptions only, with no one-time searches: $36.89 a month plus tax, or $23.98 a month on a 3-month plan. Phone lookups come with every plan.

Hiya, a caller ID app, has a free tier, and its Premium plan adds what Hiya calls premium phone number lookups for $3.99 a month. CheckMate.bio doesn't take phone numbers.

Reverse email lookup

An email address is the input CheckMate.bio is built for. You enter the address and we check more than 2,500 sites: about 300 against the address itself, the rest against the username in front of the @. The free search shows how many accounts turned up in each category, such as 'Social Media', 'Shopping' or 'Dating', and names a few of the sites. You get 3 free searches a week.

The full report costs $0.99, and bundles of 5 for $2.99 or 10 for $4.99 last 90 days. It names each site it found and links the profile where there is one. Where a site exposes them, it also adds 'Account created' and 'Last active' dates. Data breaches that include the address appear under 'Leak', with passwords masked.

Results vary a lot from one address to the next. In our tests, a personal inbox came back with 72 accounts: 14 matched by the address and 58 by its username, most of those with low scores under 'Possible matches'. Two work inboxes returned 4 and 12, all matched by the address. An address we made up returned nothing.

If breaches are all you need, Have I Been Pwned is free: enter an address and it lists the known breaches that include it. Our reverse email lookup guide walks through a full report, and people search by email covers finding a person from an address.

Reverse image search, including reverse Google search

When people say reverse Google search, they usually mean Google Lens. You give it a photo or a screenshot, or point your phone's camera, and Google shows similar images and the websites that use the picture. It works in the Google app and in Chrome on a computer. Bing Visual Search does the same job from a different index, so a photo with no matches on one can still turn up on the other.

TinEye answers a narrower question: where has this picture appeared, and do modified versions of it exist? It doesn't recognize faces, so it won't find other photos of the same person. It is free for non-commercial use, up to 100 searches a day and 300 a week.

Face search engines look for other photos of the same face. FaceCheck.ID sells 150 credits for $19, valid for 14 days, and a search costs 3 credits, so the pack covers 50 searches. PimEyes, another face search engine, says it does not identify individuals. Treat a face match as a lead: lookalikes are common, and a real person's photo can sit on a fake profile.

Text has a reverse search too. Put a sentence from a profile or a message inside quotation marks, and Google looks for that exact phrase. A copied script can turn up on other profiles, or on pages where people warn about it.

Reverse username lookup

A username is the weakest of the four inputs, because nothing stops two people from choosing the same one. WhatsMyName is a free browser tool at whatsmyname.app, built on a community list of 700+ sites. Sherlock checks 400+ sites from the command line. Maigret supports 5,900 sites and checks the 500 most visited by default, but it matches on the username alone, so many of its hits belong to other people, and you have to install and run it yourself.

CheckMate.bio runs a username check inside every email search, on the part before the @, and most of those finds land under 'Possible matches'. It can't start from a username on its own.

How to check a dating profile with a reverse lookup

People reported losing $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023 across 64,003 reports to the FTC, with a median loss of $2,000. In 2025, nearly 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam said it started on social media. The FTC's advice includes the lookups above, and this is the order we would run them in:

1. Run the profile photos through Google Lens and TinEye. The FTC's question is whether a picture is "associated with another name or with details that don't match up", and it calls those signs of a scam.
2. Search online for the person's type of job plus the word "scammer", as the FTC suggests. Paste a line from their bio into Google inside quotation marks while you're at it.
3. If they've given you an email address, run a reverse email lookup on it. In our tests, two personal inboxes came back with 45 and 72 accounts and a made-up address with none. Work addresses also came back low, so a short list proves little, but an address with nothing on it may be new or kept for one purpose.
4. If they've given you a phone number, a free reverse phone search shows whether the name on file matches the one they use. A mismatch is weak on its own, since numbers get reassigned.
5. Keep money out of it. The FTC's rule is never to send money or gifts to a sweetheart you haven't met in person, and a clean lookup doesn't change that.

For a fuller routine before a first date, see how to check someone before a date and the red flags to look for before you meet.

Reverse lookup questions

What is a reverse lookup?

A reverse lookup is a search that starts from a detail, such as a phone number, an email address, a photo or a username, and works back to the person or the accounts behind it. An ordinary search goes the other way: you look up someone by name and get their details. Each kind of detail needs its own tool, from people-search sites for US phone numbers to CheckMate.bio for email addresses, Google Lens or TinEye for photos and WhatsMyName for usernames.

Is there a free reverse lookup?

Yes, for each of the four inputs. TruePeopleSearch and USPhoneBook look up US phone numbers for free, Google Lens, Bing Visual Search and TinEye search photos, and WhatsMyName checks usernames. For an email address, CheckMate.bio's free search (3 a week) shows how many accounts turned up in each category, and Have I Been Pwned checks for breaches. The $0.99 report adds the names of the sites, profile links and dates.

How do I reverse search a photo of a person?

Upload it to Google Lens and TinEye first; they show where the same picture appears online. To find other photos of the same face, you need a face search engine such as FaceCheck.ID, where $19 buys 150 credits and a search costs 3. Expect lookalikes, and check any match before you rely on it.

What is a reverse Google search?

Usually it means Google's reverse image search, which is now Google Lens: in Chrome or the Google app, you search with a picture instead of words. People also use the phrase for pasting a sentence into Google inside quotation marks to find where it came from.

How do I reverse look up an email address?

Enter it at checkmate.bio. The free search shows how many accounts turned up and in which categories, and the $0.99 report names the sites and adds profile links and dates where a site exposes them. If you only care about data breaches, Have I Been Pwned is free.

What the results actually mean

CheckMate.bio groups findings into categories ('Social Media', 'Gaming', 'Dating', 'Finance', 'Business' and more) and attaches a confidence score to every match. A score of 80% or higher means the email is almost certainly linked to that service. A score between 50% and 80% is a likely match. Anything below 50% lands in the 'Possible matches' section and should be treated as a weak signal, not a verdict.

• Categories show the kind of accounts that exist: the shape of someone's online footprint.
• Per-service fields (usernames, display names, bio text, last active dates) help you confirm whether the match is really the person you care about.
• Confidence scores help you separate solid matches from noise. Treat low-confidence hits as leads to investigate, not as proof.

A note on ethics

CheckMate.bio indexes public and breach-derived data. It does not grant access to private messages or full passwords (passwords from breach records are always masked), or to anything you wouldn't be able to find with enough patience and the right search queries. Use it for the same reasons you'd Google someone: safety, due diligence, re-connecting with people, or simply knowing what a public profile says about you. Be honest about your reasons, and respect the answer you get.