Which background check are you actually buying?
Three products share the phrase and their prices differ by two orders of magnitude. Working out which one you want settles the cost question faster than any comparison does.
The consumer subscription. Sold monthly to anybody, it reads assembled public records and is not a background check in the legal sense. Published prices ran from $5.99 to $36.89 a month on 2 August 2026.
The regulated screening report. Bought by an employer or a landlord through a consumer reporting agency, priced per report, and the only one of the three that may decide a job or a tenancy. Checkr's rate card opened at $29.99 that day.
The record itself. Held by a court, a state registry or a federal agency, and usually free or nearly free where you can name the court. PACER charges $0.10 a page and waives the bill under $30 a quarter.
Most people arrive wanting the second and buy the first, which is the expensive mistake in this category.
What does a consumer people-search subscription cost?
Between $5.99 and $36.89 a month, depending on how much of the bundle you take. Every figure below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2 August 2026, and prices here change without notice.
| Service | Published price | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| Whitepages | $5.99 a month | Contact details only |
| DetectiveCheck | $15 a month | 30 lookups, any identifier |
| Intelius | $21.35 a month on two | People search, unlimited |
| BeenVerified | $23.98 a month on three | 100 reports a month |
| TruthFinder | $28.33 a month | People search, unlimited |
| Instant Checkmate | $28.38 a month on three | People search, unlimited |
| BeenVerified | $36.89 a month on one | 100 reports a month |
Two of those are cheaper than they look and one is dearer. TruthFinder sells reverse phone separately at $4.99 a month, so a number-only question need not cost $28.33. Instant Checkmate's one-month rate was $35.47 rather than $28.38.
Spokeo is missing because no price could be read from its own pages that day, as our piece on Spokeo records.
What does an FCRA-regulated screening report cost?
Per report rather than per month, and roughly $25 to $95 depending on depth. These are the prices an employer or a landlord pays a consumer reporting agency, read on 2 August 2026.
| Product | Published price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Checkr | $29.99 a report | Employment, Basic |
| Checkr | $59.99 a report | Employment, Essential |
| Checkr | $94.99 a report | Employment, Complete |
| Checkr | $24.99 a report | Tenant, Starter |
| Checkr | $44.99 a report | Tenant, Complete |
| TransUnion SmartMove | $25 | SmartCheck Basic |
| TransUnion SmartMove | $49 | SmartCheck Premium |
Two cautions on that table. Checkr states that pass-through court and database fees sit outside those prices, so a county criminal search adds $25 and an employment verification starts at $12.50. And GoodHire published the identical $29.99, $59.99 and $94.99 tiers the same day, because it is a Checkr company.
Three labels on one shelf. The phrase is shared; the products behind it are priced two orders of magnitude apart.
Why does the regulated report cost more?
Because you are buying a legal permission along with the records, and the permission is the expensive part.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act names the purposes a consumer report may be furnished for and permits no others. A report may not be used to decide employment, tenancy, housing, credit or insurance unless it comes from a consumer reporting agency.
That agency has to verify the buyer has a permissible purpose, follow reasonable procedures for accuracy, run a dispute process for the person checked, and, for employment, collect written authorisation first. None of that is free to operate, and all of it is priced into the per-report figure.
The consumer subscription buys none of it. It is cheaper per month precisely because it carries no permissible-purpose check, no dispute route and no liability for the decision you make. DetectiveCheck is on that side of the line too, and section 4 of our terms says so.
The three markets, side by side
The same phrase, the three things it buys, and what each one is allowed to decide. Prices as published on 2 August 2026.
| Market | What it costs | May it decide a job or a tenancy? |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer people-search subscription | $5.99 to $36.89 a month | No, and each vendor says so |
| FCRA screening report via a CRA | $24.99 to $94.99 a report | Yes, with consent and a dispute route |
| The public record at the source | $0.10 a page on PACER, often nothing | It is the record, not a decision |
Read the middle row as the answer to the question most people are really asking. If a hiring or letting decision depends on it, the first row is not a cheaper version of the second — it is a different product that the law forbids you to use that way.
And if nothing depends on it, the third row is where the records in the other two came from in the first place.
What the monthly price is really charging for
A month of unlimited reports, renewing until you stop it. That is the shape of nearly every consumer price in the table above, and it explains most of what people find confusing about them.
The model assumes repeat use. TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate sell unlimited reports inside a subscription; BeenVerified caps you at 100 reports a month on both its plans. If you run one lookup and walk away, you paid the whole month for it.
The three-month plans compound that. BeenVerified's $23.98 a month is $71.94 taken at once, and Instant Checkmate's $28.38 is $85.13 charged at signup, both read on 2 August 2026. The monthly figure is the advertisement; the quarterly one is the charge.
A trial is a subscription with a delay. Intelius sold a $0.95 five-day trial converting to $35.30 a month and a $0.95 seven-day trial converting to $34.95, both on its own pricing page on 2 August 2026. Whichever you pick, put the renewal date in a calendar the day you sign up.
What can you get for nothing?
More than the paid tier of most of these sites, if you already know which court or register holds the thing you want.
Federal cases live in PACER, which charged $0.10 a page with a $3.00 cap per document on 2 August 2026, waives the bill when a quarter comes to $30 or less, and states that court opinions are always free. Most occasional users never pay anything.
The National Sex Offender Public Website, a Department of Justice partnership with the states and territories, searches every state registry at no charge. State and county courts run their own portals, many free to search.
The trade is labour rather than money. Nothing is matched to a person for you, and you have to know which court heard the case. Our guide to finding someone online for free covers the rest of that route.
Is a month of anything the right shape for one lookup?
Usually not, and this is the part the affiliate pages on this query leave out.
If you have one name and one question, you are being sold a month of unlimited access to answer it once. The honest arithmetic is that a single free source often settles it: a reverse image search, a court portal, or the registry that holds the licence you are checking.
Paying makes sense when the free route has failed or when the assembly is the point — one query instead of forty tabs, with the source named against each finding. That is a real product, and it is worth a month's fee to some people and to nobody else.
Buy for the job rather than the bundle. A phone-only plan at $4.99 a month handles the weekly question; one month of something broader covers the occasional case; free covers more than either when you already know where to look.
What DetectiveCheck charges, and what it does not cover
Fifteen dollars a month, printed on the plans page before you search anything, and it buys a narrower thing than the table above implies.
It answers which accounts exist for an email address, a handle, a name or a number, checking 71 sources against an address, 71 platforms against a handle, 13 registers against a name and 8 against a phone number. Every source is listed in the report, including the ones that errored or came back empty.
It holds no addresses, no relatives, no property and no criminal records. Phone coverage is thin next to email, at 8 sources against 71, so a number-only lookup returns a short report. And it may not decide employment, tenancy, credit or insurance, exactly like every consumer product priced above.
You can read a sample report without an account, and what a report contains walks through it section by section.
Common questions
How much does a background check cost?
It depends which of three markets you are in. A consumer people-search subscription ran $5.99 to $36.89 a month on 2 August 2026. An FCRA-regulated report bought through a screening agency started at $24.99 for tenant screening and $29.99 for employment on Checkr's published rate card the same day. Court records at the source are often free.
How much does an employment background check cost?
Checkr's published pricing on 2 August 2026 listed $29.99 a report for its Basic employment package, $59.99 for Essential and $94.99 for Complete, with court and database pass-through fees charged on top. GoodHire, which is a Checkr company, published the identical three figures that day. The employer pays, not the applicant.
How much does a tenant screening report cost?
Checkr listed tenant packages at $24.99, $34.99 and $44.99 a report on 2 August 2026. TransUnion SmartMove priced SmartCheck Basic at $25, SmartCheck Plus at $40 and SmartCheck Premium at $49 the same day. Which side pays varies: several of these services let the landlord pass the fee to the applicant.
Can I get a background check for free?
You can get most of the records for free, but not assembled into a report. PACER charges $0.10 a page, caps a document at $3.00 and waives the bill when a quarter comes to $30 or less. The National Sex Offender Public Website is free, and many county courts publish free search portals. What you spend instead is time.
Why is a people-search subscription cheaper than a screening report?
Because it does not carry the legal permission. A consumer reporting agency has to verify a permissible purpose, follow accuracy procedures, run a dispute process and, for employment, collect written consent. Those obligations are priced into the per-report figure. The subscription skips all of them and may not be used for those decisions at all.
Can I use a $15 subscription to screen an employee or a tenant?
No. Employment, tenancy, housing, credit and insurance decisions fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires a consumer reporting agency. No consumer people-search service is one, ours included, and each says so. In 2023 the FTC required TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate to pay $5.8 million partly over that boundary.
Why do these sites charge monthly instead of per report?
Because the product is a month of unlimited or metered access rather than a document. TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate sell unlimited reports inside a subscription; BeenVerified caps both its plans at 100 reports a month. Run one lookup and you have paid for the month. The charge repeats until you cancel it.
What is the cheapest way to look one person up?
Free first, and often that finishes it: a reverse image search on the photograph, whatever they published themselves, and the relevant court or registry portal. If you need it assembled, Whitepages Premium Contact Info was $5.99 a month on 2 August 2026 and TruthFinder's phone-only plan $4.99, both cancellable online.
Do background check prices include court fees?
Not always, and this is where a quoted price grows. Checkr states that standard court and third-party database access fees sit outside its package prices and are passed through at cost. On its published rates for 2 August 2026, a county criminal search added $25 and an employment verification started at $12.50 a check.
How much does a background check on yourself cost?
Checkr listed personal checks starting from $49.99 on 2 August 2026, and its Profiles product at no charge. The free route is usually better value: request your own records from the court or agency that holds them, and search the free registries directly. You already have the consent problem solved.
