Best Free OSINT Username Tools in 2026: Ranked by Use Case

There is no single best username OSINT tool. The right one depends on whether you need depth, speed, a report for someone else, or no installation at all. So instead of one ranked list, this guide picks the best free tool for each common job and backs each pick with data we checked on October 14, 2026: site coverage, export formats, license and, the part most lists skip, whether the project is still maintained.

If you want a broader list that includes non-username helpers such as the Wayback Machine and search operators, see our 10 free OSINT tools for username investigations. The OSINT tools hub has a page per tool.

Disclosure and trademark note: we make FreeUsername, a browser username search. It is listed separately below and not ranked against the open-source projects. The open-source WhatsMyName dataset in this list is a separate project by other people; our site runs its own engine. All project names belong to their owners; we are not affiliated with any of them.

Our picks at a glance

Best for	Tool	Why
Deep investigations	Maigret	About 5,900 sites, recursive search, profile parsing, many report formats
Simple, scriptable checks	Sherlock	Easy install, several usernames per run, clean CSV/XLSX output
Best site data	WhatsMyName dataset	Community-vetted found and not-found signatures, open license
Username plus email	Blackbird	Searches both, on WhatsMyName data, with PDF reports
Scoring weak matches	Social Analyzer	0 to 100 rating per profile, OCR and browser detection
Username as part of a wider case	SpiderFoot	200+ modules covering domains, IPs and emails as well

The numbers (checked October 14, 2026)

Tool	Sites (as of October 2026)	Interface	Exports	License	Stars (as of October 2026)	Last update
Maigret	~5,900 (top 500 by default)	CLI, web UI, library	HTML, PDF, XMind, JSON, CSV, TXT, graph	MIT	38,967	Release Sep 18, 2026
Sherlock	481 in its data file (README: 400+)	CLI	TXT, CSV, XLSX	MIT	94,116	Release Sep 8, 2026
WhatsMyName	717 in wmn-data.json	Dataset + web interface	Depends on the tool	CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)	2,947	Commit Oct 13, 2026
Blackbird	600+ (WhatsMyName data)	CLI	PDF, CSV	No license file	9,129	Commit Jul 13, 2025
Social Analyzer	1,000+	Web app, CLI, library	JSON	AGPL-3.0	24,303	Commit Jan 12, 2026
SpiderFoot	500+ (Account Finder module)	Web UI, CLI	CSV, JSON, GEXF	MIT	23,472	Commit Apr 13, 2026 (last release 2022)

Counts and stars were taken in October 2026 and will drift. Stars measure popularity, not accuracy. Site counts are the projects' own figures, and a bigger list also means more sites that can give false hits. Sherlock's and WhatsMyName's counts are the entries we counted in their data files on the day; the rest come from each README.

How we chose

• Free and open: usable at no cost, with public code or data.
• Username first: the tool's main job is finding accounts from a handle (SpiderFoot is the one exception, included for wider cases).
• Maintained: sites change their pages constantly, so a tool that has not been updated for years slowly fills up with wrong answers. We looked at the latest release and commit.
• Honest output: how the tool helps you tell a real match from a false one, through exclusions, two-sided signatures or scores.
• Hand-off: whether results export in a form you can keep or share.

We did not run timed benchmarks for this article. Speed depends heavily on your connection, the site list and how many sites rate-limit you, so a single timing would mislead more than it helps.

1. Maigret: best for deep investigations

Maigret checks the most sites of any free tool here and does the most with each hit: it extracts profile details, follows new usernames and IDs, and builds reports in formats from PDF to Neo4j. It installs with pip, Docker, a snap or a Windows executable, and has its own web UI. The trade-off is time and noise: a full -a run is long, and more sites means more results to verify. Maigret guide.

2. Sherlock: best for simple, scriptable checks

The most popular project on the list does one thing well. Give it one or more usernames, get a list of sites where they exist, saved as TXT, CSV or XLSX. It is actively maintained and keeps a list of upstream exclusions for sites known to misreport. Its list is smaller than Maigret's and it doesn't parse profiles. Sherlock guide.

3. WhatsMyName: best site data

WhatsMyName is a community dataset rather than a program. Each entry records what a site returns for an existing account and for a missing one, which makes its checks harder to fool. The project points to a free web interface for searching, and many tools build on the data, Blackbird and the current version of our Android app among them. It covers fewer sites than Maigret, by design: entries are vetted. WhatsMyName overview.

4. Blackbird: best for username plus email

Blackbird runs on WhatsMyName data and adds email search and PDF reports, plus an optional AI profile. Two cautions: the last commit was in July 2025, and we found no license file in the repository. Sherlock vs Blackbird compares it with the classic option.

5. Social Analyzer: best for scoring weak matches

Instead of yes or no, Social Analyzer rates each possible profile from 0 to 100, using several detection layers including OCR and a real browser. That helps with triage. Setup is heavier, and its Python package has not been republished since 2022. Maigret vs Social Analyzer goes into the trade-offs.

6. SpiderFoot: best when a username is one part of the case

SpiderFoot is a general OSINT automation framework. Its Account Finder module looks for a username on 500+ sites, while other modules handle domains, IPs and emails, and a correlation engine links the results. Overkill for a single handle; useful for a full investigation. SpiderFoot guide.

Honorable mention: Holehe

Holehe starts from an email and checks where it is registered. It is not a username tool, and its last commit was in September 2024, but it is still a common first step when a case begins with an address. Holehe guide.

Where FreeUsername fits (disclosure: ours)

FreeUsername is a free browser tool. It checks 3,450+ sites with its own search engine and its own detection rule for each site, shows Found, Not found, Blocked and Unknown separately, adds public display names, avatars and bios where it can, checks up to five usernames at once and exports JSON or CSV. No install and no sign-up, and the username is not stored or logged.

Where the others are better: we have no API or CLI for automation (use Sherlock or Maigret), no recursive search or PDF reports (Maigret), no email search (Blackbird, Holehe) and no confidence score (Social Analyzer). Try a username or read the OSINT username search method.

If you only need the Sherlock-style check without a terminal, we compare no-install Sherlock alternatives separately.

We also ran Sherlock, Maigret, Blackbird and our own engine on the same 10 usernames with default settings and published the results. On five made-up handles, Sherlock reported 4 false hits per name, Maigret and our engine 1, and Blackbird none. See our October 2026 benchmark for speed, errors and the raw CSV.

Whichever you pick, verify

1. Open every hit and confirm the profile exists and matches what you are looking for.
2. Compare two tools. A site found by only one is worth a second look.
3. Record the URL, the date and a screenshot for anything you rely on.
4. Treat a shared username as a lead, never as proof that one person owns both accounts.