Spokeo alternative: CheckMate.bio vs Spokeo on results, errors, price and speed

CheckMate.bio is a Spokeo alternative for searching by email address, paid per report with no membership. In our benchmark, on the four public test addresses, CheckMate.bio found 565 accounts registered to the address and Spokeo 4, and on two of our three inboxes most of what Spokeo listed belonged to other people. Spokeo is the better pick when you need a US person's address, phone numbers, relatives or court records.

We make CheckMate.bio, so read our numbers with that in mind. The tables below show every address.

CheckMate.bio vs Spokeo at a glance

How we tested them

Both tools searched seven addresses: four well-known public test addresses and three real inboxes we have permission to check (Personal inbox A and B, Work address A). Spokeo ran its email search, CheckMate.bio its full report.

Completeness: what each one found

Across the seven addresses, CheckMate.bio found 605 accounts by email and 34 through checked username matches, and Spokeo 6, three of them accounts of its own. A Spokeo email report describes a person, and we counted only its accounts.

Errors: accounts that belong to someone else

Spokeo got things wrong in two ways. On two addresses it answered with somebody else entirely, and elsewhere it attached other people's accounts to the address. Leaving those two addresses aside, we marked 13 of its 19 finds wrong.

Whichever tool you use, open a profile and compare it with what you already know before you act on it.

A cheaper Spokeo alternative: price per account

Spokeo sells memberships, and the trial report it sometimes offers turns into a monthly bill unless you cancel. CheckMate.bio sells single reports and packs valid for 90 days, with no account and nothing that renews.

A Spokeo report covers more than accounts, so the per-account figure prices only the part we tested.

Speed

Spokeo is the quicker of the two: 20 and 25 seconds in the two runs we timed, against 20 seconds to 2 minutes 19 seconds for a CheckMate.bio full report. The CheckMate.bio free search usually takes about a minute.

Spokeo alternative test: conclusions

CheckMate.bio found 605 accounts by email on seven addresses and Spokeo 6, and under 1% of CheckMate.bio's email finds were wrong, against 68% of Spokeo's. Per account found on the four test addresses, CheckMate.bio cost $0.0035 to $0.007, Spokeo about $0.24 on its trial and about $5 on a month's membership. CheckMate.bio needs no account and nothing renews; Spokeo bills monthly after the trial.

When Spokeo is the better choice

• You have a name, phone number or street address, not an email.
• You need a US person's public records: address history, phone numbers, relatives or property details.
• You run many reports: a membership includes up to 100 a month.
• Speed matters most: Spokeo answered in 20 to 25 seconds.

Other Spokeo alternatives we tested

• BeenVerified sells memberships only, $36.89 a month or $71.94 every three months, and found 9 right accounts and 9 wrong: CheckMate.bio vs BeenVerified.
• IDCrawl is free, matches names and usernames and has a Spokeo-sponsored email box; we marked 36 of its 46 finds wrong: CheckMate.bio vs IDCrawl.
• TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch search US people by name, phone and address for free.
• MailAccess, free if you run it yourself, found 246 accounts on the four test addresses, and Epieos's paid plan, €29.99 a month, found 234.

We compare all of them in True People Search alternatives: TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch, Spokeo, BeenVerified and IDCrawl compared.

Questions people ask

What is the best Spokeo alternative?

For an email address, CheckMate.bio found the most in our benchmark: 565 accounts on four public test addresses, against 4 for Spokeo. For a name, phone or address search of someone in the US, the free TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch cover the basics.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Spokeo?

Yes, if you search now and then. CheckMate.bio costs $0.99 per full report, or $4.99 for 10, with no membership. Spokeo's $0.95 trial bills $29.95 a month unless you cancel, and its memberships cost $19.95 for a month or $44.85 for three.

How much does Spokeo cost?

Basic results are free. Single-report offers appear after a search, such as a $0.95 report with a 7-day trial that then bills $29.95 a month. Memberships cost $19.95 for a month or $44.85 for three months, each with up to 100 reports a month, and renew automatically.

Is Spokeo free?

Partly. Spokeo shows basic results for free, such as city and state, age, relatives and locations. Full reports need a payment, and Spokeo says a trial is not always offered.

Why did Spokeo show the wrong person?

Spokeo looks for the owner of an email address in public records, social networks and websites, and the person it settles on can be someone else. In our test it returned a report on another person for one work address and two unrelated profiles for test@example.com.

Does Spokeo work outside the US?

Spokeo says its services are meant to provide contact information for people living in the US, and it does not accept payments from outside the US. Its help center adds that the email and username search covers all publicly accessible social profiles. CheckMate.bio checks an email address whatever country its owner lives in.

How do I remove myself from Spokeo?

Paste the URL of your listing into Spokeo's opt-out page and confirm through the email it sends. Each listing is removed separately. Spokeo says removal takes 24 to 48 hours and that your information may reappear later.

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.