Links on Super Easy may earn us a commission. Our Editorial Guideline.

BeenVerified review: One of the best people search tool in 2024

Woman using BeenVerified to find someone
Faster & more detailed than almost everything else we’ve tried

OUR VERDICT

BeenVerified isn’t the most well-known people search tool out there, but it’s actually been around since 2007, and it’s a cut above almost everything else  —  including the household names. It’s fast, accurate, very detailed and reasonably priced, if a little frustrating to use when you’re not a paid subscriber.

FOR AGAINST
– Fast (if you have a paid account)
– Easy to use
– Search by name, phone number, address, email address, social media username or VIN number
– Neighborhood watch, Dark web scan, unclaimed money search, Property check and business to business search
– Detailed, easy to read reports
– Up-to-date, accurate information
– Desktop and mobile apps
– No Tinder information
– Very slow and frustrating if you don’t have a paid account
– Criminal record and bankruptcy reports require several extra clicks
– No single report plan option

Try it now

Introduction

We’ve all been in the situation where we know a little about a person  —  like just their name, phone number, email address or Instagram username  —  and we want to learn more about them. Perhaps you want to learn a little about their background before dating them, or you’re organizing a school reunion, or someone owes you money and you need to serve them, or you want to research an online seller before buying from them.

If that sounds like you, then BeenVerified should be your go-to search tool. 

In fact, BeenVerified isn’t just for finding people. You can also use it to learn more about a property or vehicle.

No matter what you’re looking for, there’s a good chance BeenVerified will find it for you. In our tests, it provided a treasure trove of information with just a few clicks, and almost never completely failed to find someone. Read our full review below to learn more…

NOTE: This review is of BeenVerified’s paid product. Nearly all of the features discussed are limited to paid accounts only.

BeenVerified: Flexibility

Most people search sites allow you to search by name, phone number (‘reverse phone’) and address (‘reverse address’). In other words, they can only help you find the person if you know that person’s full name, phone number or address.

But what if you know none of these things?

This is one of BeenVerified’s standout differences. Like the rest, it allows you to search by name, phone and address, but it also allows you to search by email address, social media username and VIN number.

So even if you don’t know the person’s name, phone or address, there’s still a pretty good chance you’ll be able to find them. (And that you’ll be able to learn a lot about them. See Information found below for more details.)

BeenVerified: Ease of use

Searching for someone with BeenVerified couldn’t be simpler. Everything is clearly and intuitively laid out, and all the controls are clearly labeled (and behave as expected).

To search for someone:

  1. Sign in and click one of the search tools at the top of the page.
  2. Type the information you know about the person (e.g. if you clicked the Email Search tool, type the person’s email address), then click Search.
  3. Click View possible owners then Search person. (If you see more than one potential owner, it’s possible the person uses different names  —  possibly fake names.)
  4. Click View person report.
  5. Scroll down the report, or click a link in the Overview to jump to that section.

    (Note that the ‘Criminal or Traffic’ and ‘Bankruptcies’ sections in the Overview will have stars next to them when you first view the report, not numbers as illustrated above. This is because you have to agree not to use this information for any purpose prohibited by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Once you agree, you’ll see numbers here.)
  6. Take note of the information you’re interested in. e.g. The person’s phone numbers:
  7. Click an option in the toolbar at the top of the report if you want to do more. E.g. Click Monitor if you want BeenVerified to send you notifications when more information is added to the person’s report.

BeenVerified: Speed

In our tests, BeenVerified was very fast:

ActionAverage time
Initial search3 seconds
Open person report (first time)11 seconds
Open person report (subsequent times)3 seconds
Search county jurisdictions for digitized Criminal or Traffic Records (really just an agreement that you won’t use this information for any purpose prohibited by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA))2 seconds (excluding reading time)
Search for digitized Bankruptcy Records (really just an agreement that you won’t use this information for any purpose prohibited by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA))2 seconds (excluding reading time)

In fact, for most actions, BeenVerified feels no slower than loading a normal web page.

NOTE: If you don’t have a paid account, BeenVerified is ridiculously slow! Slower than 58% of the other paid people search tools we’ve tested, in fact. It took us 6 minutes to get to the point where the site prompted us to buy a detailed report or a subscription. That whole time it displays an endless series of unnecessary ‘Searching Databases’ animations and notifications. Nearly all the paid people search tools do this if you don’t have a paid account. It’s obviously designed to make you think they’re working harder than the competition, or that they have access to more data. But BeenVerified is definitely worse than most on this front.

BeenVerified: Anonymity

When you use BeenVerified to search for someone, there’s no way for the subject of your search to find out you searched for them.

Here’s what BeenVerified says on the matter:

BeenVerified: Information found

BeenVerified sources its information from dozens of public records providers, which it says “gives us access to billions of data points”.

A BeenVerified report may contain the following information about a person:

  • First & last names
  • Aliases
  • Phone numbers
  • Email addresses
  • Social media profiles
  • Current & past addresses
  • Relatives & housemates
  • Neighbors
  • Friends & co-workers
  • Neighborhood demographics
  • Jobs & businesses
  • Education
  • Professional & business licenses
  • Birth month and year, & age
  • Marital status
  • Properties
  • Vehicles
  • Tax records & bankruptcies
  • Criminal records, traffic offenses, sex offender registration
  • Judgements & liens

BeenVerified: Cost

BeenVerified has three payment tiers:

  • 7-day trial membership  —  $1
  • 1-month membership — $22.86/month
  • 3-month membership — $14.86/month

All three tiers are limited to 100 reports per month.

BeenVerified: Legality & ethics

It’s illegal to use the data provided by BeenVerified (and all other people search tools) for any purpose prohibited by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

All people search tools state this somewhere on their site, but BeenVerified is genuinely committed to it. They’ve reviewed some of our content and explicitly asked us to not position their tool as a way to do background checks and criminal checks, even though it can technically do them. They do this because they don’t want people misusing their tools, and they’d clearly rather sacrifice the additional revenue than be party to any unethical or illegal use. They were very strict about this, and I respect their stance.

So long as you don’t use the information for those illegal purposes, using BeenVerified is completely legal and ethical. All the information provided is already publicly available, so you could probably find it yourself, manually, if you’re willing to invest the time, effort and money required, and you’re very good at research.

In other words, it’s only unethical if you do something unethical with it. It’s not unethical to know something about someone; it’s only unethical if you use that information unethically. If, for example, you plan to use the information to stalk or bully someone, then yes that’s completely unethical. Likewise, it’s unethical to use the information to steal from them, to steal their identity, or to gain their confidence in order to trick them into doing something they ordinarily wouldn’t do.

BeenVerified: Verdict

OUR VERDICT

We’ve reviewed a lot of people search tools, and BeenVerified is one of the best we’ve seen so far. 

Try it now     

Search by email (reverse email lookup):

Search by phone number (reverse phone lookup):

Search by name:

Search by social media username:

exclamation-blueThere’s no guarantee you’ll find the information you’re looking for with the tools discussed in this article. They all source their information from publicly available data sources, such as county, state and federal courts, government departments, and police records, and those sources may contain incorrect or incomplete data. It’s illegal to use these tools to make decisions about employment, admission, consumer credit, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. Read the Fair Credit Reporting Act to learn more....

By Glenn Murray

Glenn is Super Easy’s Customer Experience Director. He plans and executes training programs, designs user experiences, conducts conversion rate experiments, sets our style and tone of voice, contributes to SEO implementation & strategy, and oversees important internal & external communications. He also manages our technical support team.

Glenn lives on the Central Coast of Australia, just north of Sydney, and enjoys walking, reading, music, wine and craft beer.

Contributor(s):

0 0 votes
Article Rating
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Failed to load the Search bar. Please refresh the page and try again.
Click here to reload
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x