Why look for an Epieos alternative?
Usually one of three reasons, and they point at different replacements.
The free tier ran out. Epieos gives away enough to answer a single curious question and meters the rest, so anybody using it twice a week hits the wall quickly.
The coverage stopped short. It is strong on email and thinner elsewhere, which becomes obvious the first time you start from a phone number rather than an address.
The price stopped making sense. Thirty full requests a month is either plenty or nothing, depending entirely on whether this is your job or your curiosity.
Worth saying before the list: Epieos is good, and this is not an article about it being bad. It popularised the technique for people who were never going to run a Python tool, which is a real contribution.
What should a replacement actually do?
Four things, and only the last one separates the serious tools from the rest.
- Take the identifier you have. Email, phone, username, name. A tool that only accepts one of them will strand you.
- Check enough services to be worth the fee. Under a hundred and you may as well run the free tool.
- Merge, rather than list. The value is one account appearing under three sources being recognised as one account.
- Show you what failed. A source that errored is unknown, not negative, and a tool that hides the difference will let you conclude something false.
That last point is the one nobody advertises, because showing failures makes a report look worse and makes it correct. It is also the cheapest thing to check before you pay: run any tool against an address you already know the answer for, and see whether it distinguishes a miss from a module that fell over.
The six alternatives, ranked
OSINT IndustriesBest for depth
The closest thing to a professional-grade Epieos. Takes email, phone, username, name and crypto wallets, and goes deeper per identifier than anything else on this list. Reports export to PDF and Word, and API access starts at the middle tier. It is priced for people doing this as a job rather than out of curiosity.
- Identifiers
- Email, phone, username, name, crypto
- Price
- £19, £49 or £99 a month
- Credits
- 30, 100 or 300 a month
- Free tier
- None
Good at
- Deepest per-identifier coverage here
- Crypto wallet lookups nobody else offers
- API from the middle tier up
Weak at
- Most expensive option on this list
- No free tier to evaluate it with
- Overkill if you check one address a month
HoleheBest free, if you can use a terminal
The technique itself, unwrapped. Holehe asks 120+ sites whether an address is registered by driving their forgotten-password flow, and it does not alert the address owner. It is GPL licensed and runs on your machine, so nothing you search is logged by anybody. Much of what the paid tools sell is this, with a front-end.
- Identifiers
- Email only
- Sites
- 120+
- Price
- Free, GPLv3
- Interface
- Command line
Good at
- Same mechanism the paid tools charge for
- Nothing you search leaves your machine
- Open source, so you can read what it does
Weak at
- Email only — no phone, username or name
- Around 30 of the modules rate-limit frequently
- Output is a list, not a merged report
Predicta SearchBest cheap replacement
The most direct like-for-like swap at a third of the price. Reverse lookups on email, phone, username and name, unlimited searching, and a monthly allowance of full reports rather than a per-search meter. It does not publish how many networks it checks, which is the main thing to hold against it.
- Identifiers
- Email, phone, username, name
- Price
- From €9.99 a month
- Reports
- 30 detailed a month, unlimited searches
- API
- 5 credits included
Good at
- Cheapest paid option that covers all four identifiers
- Unlimited searching, metered only on full reports
- No long commitment
Weak at
- Does not publish its source count
- Free tier is very limited
- Reports are thinner than OSINT Industries
DetectiveCheckBest for people who are not investigators
Ours, and fourth on this list rather than first because OSINT Industries goes deeper and both Holehe and Predicta cost less. What it does better is the report itself: 71 sources on an email address and 71 platforms on a handle, merged, with every source listed including the ones that errored or came back empty.
- Identifiers
- Email, phone, username, name, photo, password
- Sources
- 71 email, 71 username, 13 name, 8 phone
- Price
- From $15 a month
- Free tier
- Sample report, no account
Good at
- Every source shown, failures included
- Findings carry a source and a confidence rating
- Written for people who have never done this before
Weak at
- Phone coverage is thin — 8 sources against 71 for email
- No API
- Not usable for employment or tenancy decisions under the FCRA
IDCrawlBest free option with a web interface
Free, no account, no card, and it will not make you open a terminal. Searches by name, username, email or phone and organises what it finds across the large social platforms. The catch is geography: it is built around United States records and gets noticeably thinner everywhere else.
- Identifiers
- Name, username, email, phone
- Price
- Free
- Account
- Not required
- Coverage
- United States
Good at
- Genuinely free with no sign-up
- Good username coverage on the big platforms
- Fastest way to check a US name
Weak at
- Thin outside the United States
- No merged report or export
- No way to tell a miss from a failed check
MaigretBest for usernames specifically
Not an Epieos replacement so much as the thing to reach for when your identifier is a handle rather than an address. Checks a username across several thousand sites and pulls out whatever profile detail each one publishes. Free, open source, and the deepest username coverage available at any price.
- Identifiers
- Username only
- Sites
- Several thousand
- Price
- Free, open source
- Interface
- Command line
Good at
- Widest username coverage of anything here
- Extracts profile details, not just existence
- Runs locally
Weak at
- Username only
- Long tail of dead sites inflates the result count
- Needs Python and patience
They are near-identical underneath. What separates them is price, coverage and whether they admit what failed.
Which of these are actually free?
Three, and they are free in two different ways that matter more than the price.
Holehe and Maigret are free because they are open source and run on your machine. Nothing you search is logged by anybody, which is the strongest privacy position available and the reason to prefer them when the subject is you. The cost is a terminal and a list rather than a report.
IDCrawl is free because it is ad-supported, which is a different arrangement: your searches happen on their servers and they are a business. That is fine, and it is worth knowing which of the two kinds of free you are using before you type in your own address.
The paid tools all meter the same way, incidentally. You are charged per full report rather than per search, so the number that matters when comparing them is the monthly report allowance and not the sticker price.
What can none of them do?
Four things, and every one of them is implied by somebody's marketing.
- Instagram. It rate-limits data centres, requires a session for the endpoint that used to answer, and serves the same page for real and invented handles. Nothing on this list checks it, including us.
- Give you a name for any address. Where a name is not public, no tool can invent one. Anything promising it is guessing or reselling broker data.
- Prove two accounts are one person. Handles get recycled, squatted and shared.
- Complete coverage. Every result is bounded by the identifier you supplied. A second address you do not know about stays invisible.
The first of those is the one to watch when comparing marketing pages, because Instagram is the platform everybody actually wants and the one every vendor is quietly unable to deliver. A tool that lists it as covered is telling you something useful about the rest of its claims.
How do these tools actually work?
All of them run the same trick, which is worth understanding because it explains why their results are so similar and where they diverge.
A sign-up form has to tell you when an address is already registered, or two people end up sharing an account. A password-reset form has to tell you when it is not, or the reset goes nowhere. Both answers are given to anybody who asks, so any of these tools can ask a few hundred forms the same question and collect the replies.
That is why the differences are not really about technique. They are about how many services a tool bothers to ask, how well it merges duplicate answers, how often its modules break when a platform changes a form, and whether it admits any of that to you.
Is it legal to use these tools?
Searching public sources is lawful in the United States and the EU. The restrictions are all on what you do with the result, and they apply to every tool on this list equally.
In the United States, using any of these to decide somebody's employment, housing, credit, insurance or tenancy puts you under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and none of these services is a consumer reporting agency. In the EU and the UK, public personal data is still personal data and processing it needs a lawful basis under the GDPR.
The open-source ones carry the same rules. Running Holehe locally does not put you outside the GDPR. Where the search happens changes who logs it, not what you are allowed to do with what comes back.
Which one should you pick?
By the shape of your problem rather than by the feature list, because most of the features are the same.
| If you | Use | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Do this for a living | OSINT Industries | Deepest coverage, and the price is a work expense |
| Want it free and can use a terminal | Holehe | Same mechanism, nothing logged by anybody |
| Want the same job for less | Predicta Search | All four identifiers from €9.99 |
| Have never done this before | DetectiveCheck | The report explains itself and shows its failures |
| Are searching a US name | IDCrawl | Free, no account, built around US records |
| Are starting from a handle | Maigret | Widest username coverage at any price |
Most real work uses two of them. A free tool to answer the cheap question, and a paid one when the answer needs to be merged, dated and exportable.
Common questions
What is the best Epieos alternative?
It depends on why you are leaving. For more depth, OSINT Industries at £19 to £99 a month goes furthest per identifier. For the same technique free, Holehe runs 120+ checks from your own machine. For the same job cheaper, Predicta Search covers email, phone, username and name from €9.99 a month.
Is there a free alternative to Epieos?
Yes. Holehe is open source under GPLv3 and checks an email address against 120+ sites from your own machine, and Maigret does the same for usernames across several thousand sites. IDCrawl is free with a web interface and no account, but it is built around United States records and thins out elsewhere.
How much does Epieos cost?
Epieos has a free tier covering a limited set of modules, and a paid Osinter plan at €29.99 a month that unlocks the rest with 30 full-access requests included. It checks an identifier against more than 140 online services. Check their pricing page before relying on these figures, since plans change.
Is Holehe better than Epieos?
It is the same technique without the interface. Holehe checks 120+ sites for free and logs nothing, but it is email-only, it returns a list rather than a merged report, and roughly 30 of its modules rate-limit frequently. Epieos accepts more identifier types and does the merging for you. Which is better depends on whether you want the tool or the result.
Can any of these find someone's Instagram?
No. Instagram rate-limits requests from data centres, requires a logged-in session for the endpoint that used to answer, and serves the same public page for a real handle and an invented one. Any tool advertising Instagram results is reselling stale data or reading a page that no longer distinguishes the two.
Are these tools legal to use?
Searching publicly available sources is legal in the United States and the EU. Use is restricted: in the US, deciding employment, housing, credit, insurance or tenancy from any of these falls under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and none of them is a consumer reporting agency. In the EU and UK, public personal data still needs a lawful basis under the GDPR.
Do these tools notify the person being searched?
No. They query public sources and the account-existence behaviour that platforms expose to anybody who asks. Holehe specifically documents that its password-reset checks do not alert the address owner. What can reach somebody is what you do afterwards, such as writing to the address you found.
Why do different tools give different results for the same email?
Because they ask different numbers of services, and because modules break constantly. A platform changing its sign-up form silently disables that check everywhere until each tool patches it. Two tools disagreeing usually means one of them asked a service the other did not, or one of them failed a check and did not say so.
