PeopleFinders Review

These days, whatever you do, you can never be too careful. If you want to board a plane, buy a property or enroll your children into school, you have to go through a thorough background check and for a good reason. Anyone can claim to be anyone and use it to cause harm to others. People tend to mistrust each other now more than ever, which is why there is a growing need for online background check companies.

In the early days of background checks, people had to put a lot of hours and leg work into getting enough information on someone they did not trust. Today, thanks to all the advancements in technology, all the information you need about anyone is just one click away.

PeopleFinders is an online background check company that guarantees a hassle-free experience in providing you intel on people you are interested to know more about. Its high-speed search engine goes through billions of public records to produce the most accurate and in-depth reports. Keep reading this honest PeopleFinders review to learn more.

What Is PeopleFinders?

Established in 1988, PeopleFinders is a pioneer in the background check industry. It covers more than 6,000 different data sources, enabling people to reconnect with lost relatives, look up phone numbers or check criminal and financial histories. After more than 30 years in the industry and with one of the biggest public record databases with over 43 billion public records, PeopleFinders lets you perform searches based on name, address, and phone number, providing accurate and detailed reports in the shortest time possible. 

PeopleFinders offers services for personal use like people search, address search, phone search, background check, and criminal and public records. You can choose between different monthly memberships depending on the type of information you require, including PeopleFinders Membership, which is the most basic plan, Premium PeopleFinders Membership, which offers more data, and PeopleFinders Rewards, which includes special discounts for single reports as well as other benefits. There are various special offers too.

For businesses seeking data-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions, there is Enterprise Solutions, a service that includes batch, data append, API, and other online services. Enterprise Solutions is suitable for law firms, real estate agents, collection agencies, investigators, and many others. 

The PeopleFinders data platform stores over 2 billion records with proprietary matching algorithms designed to establish matches between people, places, phone numbers, and businesses. This creative approach to in-depth checking is contributed to PeopleFindrers’ founder and chairman Rob Miller, who has been a licensed private investigator in California since 1986 and has a degree in Criminal Justice from California State University Sacramento. His background as a professional investigator earned him a great deal of respect as an expert in the field and helped position PeopleFinders as one of the leading brands in the industry. One other thing that contributes to PeopleFinders’ long-lasting success is understanding the need for functionality by offering its users easy-to-use search options available on both desktop and mobile devices, paired with an excellent customer support team. 

It is important to point out that PeopleFinders is not a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which means it cannot be used for employment screening, household worker screening, tenant screening, professional service provider screening, credit or insurance eligibility screening, and education or scholarship qualification screening.

Is PeopleFinders Legit?

For the purposes of our PeopleFinders review, we tested the service using the name of world-famous actor Mel Gibson and the name of one of our colleagues.

After entering the actor’s name into the first and last name fields, we added his state of residence. This left us with 100 possible hits, so we used the advanced search option, where we were offered additional fields for age and middle name. With this information, we narrowed the search down to 13 people, one of which turned out to be the right one. With the basic PeopleFinders Membership, we were only able to see information like age, partial-birth date, address, email, phone number, and known relatives. The report was clear and ready in seconds and the information was accurate and up to date. Our first test was a complete success. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the second name we tested, that of our colleague. We entered the same information as we did for Mel Gibson, but PeopleFinders came up with nothing. The advanced search did not produce any results either. The reverse address search was also unsuccessful. Since there are no options for searching for a person using an email address or a social media account, our search ended there.

After performing our standard tests, we can say that PeopleFinders is a legitimate background check site, but you may not always get the information you are looking for, especially if you have a basic membership. 

What Is PeopleFinders Used For?

Like we already mentioned in this PeopleFinders review, this company’s goal is to provide its users with the quickest and easiest way to search through one of the largest public record databases in the world. You can search people by name, address or phone number for various purposes like finding family members, friends, colleagues, and school friends, gaining access to current phone numbers and addresses, checking someone’s background, and finding out an owner of a phone number. Depending on what you need, you can use PeopleFinders for the following:

People Search

PeopleFinders’ public records database offers information about more than 250 million people across the US. To learn more about someone, all you need to do is enter their first and last name and city and state of residence. Your search results may include: 

• Current and past addresses
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Known relatives and other associates

Address Lookup

PeopleFinders offers information about millions of addresses and their surroundings. You can use address lookup to perform a more in-depth check of the property you are interested in. To obtain the required data, all you need to do is enter the street, house number, city, and state. The results may include:

• History of your home or business
• Previous residents
• Tax values
• Information on neighbors
• Known criminals in the area

Background Check

PeopleFinders’ background check includes information on most adult US residents obtained from local, state, national sources. By entering a person’s name, city, and state, you get access to one of the most complete online public record databases available today. You can find out information like: 

• Criminal records
• Bankruptcy filings
• Property ownership status
• Other available public records data

Criminal Records

PeopleFinders offers access to one of the most detailed criminal records databases, enabling you to perform a thorough search of your coworkers, friends or neighbors. After entering a person’s name, city, and state, you will discover useful information about that person’s criminal past.

Public Records

Public records search gathers information from multiple data sources that are constantly updated. With PeopleFinders’ search engine, you can quickly sift through over 40 billion public records by entering someone’s name, city, and state and end up with the following information:

• Address history
• Phone numbers
• Bankruptcies
• Liens/foreclosures
• Traffic citations
• Census records
• Birth data
• Property ownership history
• Professional and business licenses
• Marriage and divorce data
• Other

Reverse Phone

You can use reverse phone lookup to find out information about unknown landline and cell phone numbers. By entering a phone number, you can find out the owner’s:

• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Carrier and connection status details
• Other important background info

Enterprise Solutions

If you are a business in need of data-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions, PeopleFinders can offer you two options depending on the required number of reports. Enterprise Solutions is a smart choice for businesses of all sizes interested in obtaining premium public records that include 40-year address history, real-time data updates, and largest cell phone coverage publicly available. The two available options are: 

• Enterprise Light with 1,000 reports per month
• Enterprise Power with 5,000 reports per month

How Accurate Is PeopleFinders?

Based on the results we got while testing the platform for our PeopleFinders review, we can vouch for the accuracy of the information received.

We compared the information from our search results with data from several different sources and got a perfect match. Still, the information provided in our report was pretty basic and we were not able to do a related search based on the original report. 

In the future, we would love to see the basic membership include more search criteria, but meanwhile, there is always an option to buy additional single reports that provide more data and thus form a more accurate report.

Is PeopleFinders Safe?

According to its privacy policy, PeopleFinders does not sell private information obtained when you register on the site or store it in its public records databases. PeopleFinders also guarantees that no one will be informed about the content of your search and that all your transactions are secure. 

The company collects your personal information when you:

• Register and create an account – name, e-mail, billing information, and password
• View and interact with its features and functionalities
• Accept cookies and other technologies – IP address, device identifier, browser type, operating system, mobile carrier, ISP, and URLs from the sites you visit and sites that have embedded PeopleFinders platform technology
• Voluntarily interact with third party services available through PeopleFinders

PeopleFinders uses your personal information:

• When you register and create an account and choose its services
• To offer you advertisements relevant to your experience on its applications
• To send promotional communications through email
• For its internal business purposes, such as to analyze trends and statistics, for audits, and to determine the effectiveness of its promotional campaigns
• To protect its security or integrity
• To contact you regarding your transactions, account, changes to the company’s terms, conditions, and policies, and/or for other administrative purposes

PeopleFinders also collects information about your search subjects like name, address, phone, email or social security number – but only for your request. The information is stored for some time and it is not in any case used by PeopleFinders.

How Much Does PeopleFinders Cost?

With PeopleFinders, you can choose between 3 membership options for personal use:

1. PeopleFinders Membership costs $24.95 per month with a discount offer of $9.95 for the first month and includes people search and reverse phone lookup services providing information like phone numbers, addresses, email, age, date of birth, data for cells, landlines, and unlisted numbers.
2. PeopleFinders Premium Membership costs $29.95 per month with an introductory offer of $9.95 for the first month and covers background checks, public records reports, property records, criminal records, people searches, and reverse phone lookups.
3. PeopleFinders Rewards offers discounts for reports like PeopleFinders Local, Genealogy Records, Assisted Searches, and others, a $1 price tag for single reports including people search, background check, criminal records, public records, reverse phone, and property records, and a free monthly self-background check. PeopleFinders Local includes savings on movies, meals, amusement parks, and more. This membership serves as an addition to PeopleFinders or PeopleFinders Premium Membership.

After performing a name search, you also get additional membership offers that include:

1. 1 Month Reports Membership for $19.95 
2. 3 Months Reports Membership for $12.95 per month
3. 1 Background and Criminal Check Report for $29.95

Reports Memberships include the following: 

• Arrest records  
• Police records
• Court records
• Search warrants
• Current and past contact info
• Criminal records data
• Reverse phone lookups
• Public records data
• Addresses and phone numbers
• Bankruptcies, judgments, liens
• AKAs, age, date of birth
• Property records
• Relatives and associates
• Business and professional
• Background check reports
• Birth and death records

There is also a special offer for a free 5-day trial for PeopleFinders Membership as well as a full background report for only $1. After the trial period, you will automatically be charged the regular fee of $19.95 unless you cancel before the trial runs out. 

The monthly memberships allow you to enjoy benefits like elite searching, accurate results, customer service, and many others.

For business use, there are two available options:

1. Enterprise Light with 1,000 reports per month for $72 per month.
2. Enterprise Power with 5,000 reports per month for $159 per month.

The site’s refund policy is conducted on a case-by-case basis, which means the company can offer a refund or an additional search in case you are not satisfied with the results. You can contact PeopleFinders’ customer care team up to 15 days after purchase.

PeopleFinders Pros & Cons