Running a background check on someone is a smart move, whether you’re trying to reconnect with an old bud, doing it to keep yourself protected, or just being plain curious.

The best online background services will allow you to search by name, phone number, email address, social media username, and other types of personally identifying information (PII) to track someone down and generate a detailed background report based on the information.

And the good news is, it doesn’t have to be costly. In this article, we’re showing you 5 methods you can run a cheap background check. Read on…

1. BeenVerified

BeenVerified is a 7-in-1 people search tool. It is capable of searching by name, phone number, email address, physical address, and social media username to uncover public records of a person.

In addition, its vehicle search, featuring hundreds of data points, helps you research a motor vehicle’s history via VIN, license plate number, and model type.

Pros:

• Background search (by name)
• Reverse phone lookup
• Reverse email lookup
• Social media username search
• Reverse address lookup
• Vehicle search

Cons:

• Lacks court records

1. To run a background search at BeenVerified, head to BeenVerified Official Website.
2. Choose a search method, enter the information, and click SEARCH.
   
3. Within seconds, you’ll receive a report, detailing the available public records of the person you searched for.

2. PeopleLooker

PeopleLooker is a people search engine characterized by its high accuracy. It gets its data from public records, governments, local & state courts, and FBI sources, which makes it a destination for accurate and authentic reports.

1. Go to the PeopleLooker Official Website.
2. Choose a search type, enter the info, and click Search.
   
3. Wait as PeopleLooker fetches matching records and builds them into a detailed report for you.
   

3. Social Catfish

Meet someone new online and wonder if they are who they say they are? Or do you have a hunch that your partner may be fooling around behind your back? Social Catfish may just give you the answer.

Social Catfish bills itself as an online dating investigation service, with the goal to help you find people and verify their identities. All you need to do is enter someone’s name, email address, username, location, and phone number or upload a photo, then the Social Catfish engine will quickly trace it to its owner and find records associated with the person. This includes hidden social media accounts, dating profiles, undisclosed criminal history, or other secrets you may want to dig out.

Pros:

• Include international databases
• Missing money search
• $5.73 for 5-day access
• Reverse image search is available as an a la carte option

Cons:

• Hit or miss results with reverse image search
• Slightly more expensive than other options

To do a dating background check with Social Catfish, just follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Social Catfish Official Website.
2. Choose a search type, then provide the information, and click Search.
   
3. Within seconds, Social Catfish will dish up a report that reveals the identity of your online love interest.
   
   

Hire a private investigator at Social Catfish

If you’re serious about learning as much as possible about the person, and you want guaranteed results, you can pay for a Social Catfish Specialty Service. The people search experts at Social Catfish will do all the hard work for you, using the same tools that the FBI uses. And they guarantee they’ll find the person.

4. Spokeo

Spokeo is the best social media aggregator. It is capable of tracking someone’s digital footprint on 120+ social networks. This means that whether the person you’re searching for is on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, MySpace, or lesser-known sites such as OkCupid and Meetme, a search at Spokeo will show you all.

Thanks to Spokeo’s influence on MTV’s reality show Catfish, it is now widely used to expose the true identity of imposters in romance scams.

Pros:

• Free basic search (which includes the city and state, age, relatives, and locations of the individual you search)
• Very affordable
• Easy-to-read reports
• Highly accurate
• Very fast results
• 7-day trial for only $0.95

Cons:

• Limited criminal record database
• Doesn’t support iOS

1. To run a background check at Spokeo, go to the Spokeo Official Website.
2. Choose Name/Phone/Email/Address/Username search, then enter the information as prompted and click SEARCH NOW.
   
3. Spokeo will start scanning data and find matching results for you. Once finished, you will receive a summary of a person’s life up until so far.
   
   

5. RentRedi

If you’re an independent landlord, you know how a bad tenant could make your job tough. Luckily, RentRedi can help you eliminate the nuisance early in the screening. A RentRedi report will provide you with detailed background information that may impact your decision of accepting or denying a tenant: credit scores, criminal history, national eviction records, estimated income, etc. if available. With RentRedi, you don’t need to be a professional to screen your tenants.

Pros:

• Auto-tenant screening feature
• More affordable than other services of its kind
• Easy to use

Cons:

• No free trial plans

How we chose our recommended products

At our site, we take product recommendations very seriously. We have an entire team dedicated to constantly evaluating various services in popular categories like background checks in order to provide the most helpful, up-to-date advice to our readers.

When compiling this list of top cheap background check services, we carefully assessed numerous options against key criteria to determine which ones deliver maximum value. Specifically, here is what we looked for and how these and other recommended picks are selected:

Comprehensiveness – Services needed to search across a wide range of public records to uncover as much information as possible about a person, including full names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, relatives, social profiles, etc. Access to billions of records was preferred.

Affordability – As this article focuses on cheap background checks, cost was the most critical factor we assessed. We highlighted services providing low-cost trials under $1 as well as affordable ongoing subscription rates.

Ease of Use – The background check process at each service had to be fast and straightforward even for beginners. Intuitive interfaces, flexible search options (name, phone, email, etc.), and clearly presented reports were favored.

Accuracy – While public records aren’t always fully up to date, accuracy is still important. We checked customer feedback and offerings to gauge the reliability of each service’s background reports.

Compliance – We do want to note that most of our recommended cheap services are not Fair Credit Reporting Act or similarly compliant. As the disclaimer later explains, this means they legally cannot be used for tenant screening, employment checks, or other regulated purposes. However, they still provide helpful public insights to consumers.

That’s it – 5 cheap background check services to help you pay pennies on the dollar. As a hack, you can combine these offers to stack up to 36 days of background checks at incredibly low costs and test them all to find out the one that suits you best.

It should also be noted that although these offers cost under $1, a standard subscription will eventually kick in(when the trial ends). So if you don’t intend to commit to a particular service, make sure you cancel it before it progresses into a standard subscription.