Everything you need to find people, trace companies, track flights and ships, verify photos, and monitor events — without a degree in cybersecurity. If you can use Google, you can use these. We host what we can. The rest are free.
Every section has an "explain it like you're new" intro. Because not everyone grew up reading Bellingcat, and that's fine — you're here now.
Someone gave you a name, a username, an email, or a face. These tools help you find out who they really are.
How this works: People use the same username, email, and photos across dozens of websites. These tools exploit that. You give them one piece of information — a name, an email, a phone number, even just a face — and they find everywhere that person exists online. It's like Googling someone, but actually effective.
The nuclear option. Enter any identifier — name, email, phone, username — and it automatically queries 200+ data sources. Returns everything: social profiles, linked accounts, domain registrations, breach appearances, and connections between them. Hosted on our servers, password-protected.
Got someone's email or phone number? This will tell you which social media accounts, apps, and services they've signed up for. Surprisingly thorough. Uncomfortably thorough, actually.
Type a username and it checks 600+ websites to find every account using that name. People reuse usernames everywhere — this exploits that habit.
Similar to UserSearch but faster for a quick sweep. Checks dozens of social networks and domains in seconds. Good for mapping someone's digital footprint.
Upload a photo of someone's face and Yandex will find where it appears online. Better at face matching than Google — significantly better. The reason is Russian engineering. Don't ask follow-up questions.
Dedicated face search engine. Upload a photo, find every website where that face appears — news articles, social media, public records. Free tier shows results, paid tier shows URLs. Powerful and slightly terrifying.
Search for someone's name or handle across social media in real time. See what they're posting, where they're mentioned, and how often. Monitors Twitter/X, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube.
Reverse lookup for US-based individuals. Search by name, email, phone, or address. Returns associated records including relatives and previous addresses. US-only but comprehensive.
Upload a face, search the internet. Different index to PimEyes — often finds results the other one misses. Use both for maximum coverage. Free tier shows blurred results, paid shows full URLs.
Who owns this phone number? Truecaller has a database of billions of numbers built from user contributions. Works worldwide. The caller ID app that doubles as a people search engine.
Username search across hundreds of platforms. Open source, community-maintained, and more up-to-date than most alternatives. Enter a username, see everywhere it exists.
US people search aggregator — name, email, phone, or address returns a full profile: social media, relatives, property records, court records. The amount of data it pulls together is frankly alarming.
Search by name and find someone's social media profiles, web presence, and public records. Less aggressive than Spokeo, more useful than Google. Good starting point for a person search.
Search 400 million+ US court records for free. Lawsuits, criminal cases, bankruptcies, divorces. If someone's been in a US courtroom, they're probably in here.
Who owns what, who's connected to whom, and who's been sanctioned. Follow the money, follow the paperwork.
How this works: Every company in the world has to register somewhere — and those records are public. These tools search company registries across 140+ countries to show you who owns a company, who runs it, who funds it, and whether anyone involved is on a sanctions list. Think of it as a background check — but for businesses.
The largest open database of companies in the world — 200+ million entries from company registries across 140+ jurisdictions. Search by name, officer, or registration number. Find shell companies, directors, and corporate structures.
Investigative data platform from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Cross-references leaks, public records, and company data. If someone's hiding money, this is where journalists look first.
Unified database of sanctioned entities — people, companies, and vessels — from every major sanctions list worldwide. UN, EU, US, UK, and dozens more. Search by name and find out if someone's on a list they probably don't want to be on.
Official UK company registry. Every registered UK company, its directors, filing history, and financial statements. Free, government-run, and surprisingly easy to use.
Every filing made by every public company in the United States. Annual reports, insider trading disclosures, ownership changes. The paper trail that executives wish you didn't have access to.
Database from the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Pandora Papers. Search for people and companies linked to offshore structures. 800K+ entities from the biggest financial leaks in history.
European company information — Germany, UK, Switzerland, and more. Shows connections between companies, key figures, and financial data. The European equivalent of following the breadcrumbs.
The US Treasury's official sanctions list search. If the US government doesn't want you doing business with someone, they're in here. Includes SDN list, blocked persons, and sectoral sanctions.
28 million+ beneficial ownership records from 200+ jurisdictions. Who actually owns a company — not just who's listed as director, but who profits. The question every investigation starts with.
Visual relationship maps between companies and their officers. See who serves on which boards, which companies share directors, and how corporate networks connect. The spider web made visible.
Who funded this company, how much, and when? Startup funding rounds, acquisitions, leadership changes, and investor networks. Follow the money from seed round to exit.
What's it actually like inside that company? Employee reviews, salary data, interview experiences, and CEO approval ratings. The stuff that doesn't make it into the annual report.
Someone sent you a photo or video claiming to show something. Is it real? Is it from today? Is it even from that country? Find out.
How this works: Every photo contains hidden data — when it was taken, what camera was used, sometimes even GPS coordinates. These tools read that data. They can also detect if a photo has been Photoshopped, find every other website where an image appears, and even figure out where a photo was taken just by looking at the shadows. If someone sends you a "breaking news" photo, run it through these before you share it.
Upload any image and find every place it appears online — including modified versions. If someone's recycling an old photo and claiming it's breaking news, TinEye will catch them.
Reverse image search that's better than Google at finding faces, buildings, and locations. Upload a photo, find its origin. Works especially well for images from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Detects if a photo has been edited. Upload an image and it highlights areas that have been modified — Photoshop edits, splicing, copy-pasting. Also shows hidden metadata like GPS coordinates and camera model.
Browser plugin built for journalists. Right-click any video online and it extracts keyframes, runs reverse searches, and checks metadata. The go-to tool for verifying viral videos. Install the Chrome/Firefox extension.
Someone posted a photo — but when was it actually taken? SunCalc calculates sun position and shadow length for any location and date. Match the shadows in the photo to confirm the time and date. Used by Bellingcat in multiple investigations.
Point it at anything — a building, a sign, a product, a landmark — and it tells you what it is and where it is. Useful for identifying locations from photos when you have no other clues.
Access 800 billion+ saved web pages going back to 1996. If someone deleted a post, changed their bio, or took down a page — it's probably still here. The internet never truly forgets.
One search box to check Google's cache, Bing's cache, and the Wayback Machine simultaneously. Find deleted pages without guessing which cache service has them.
Browser-based image forensics. Clone detection, noise analysis, error level analysis, and more — all in one tool. Easier to use than FotoForensics and runs entirely in your browser. Nothing uploaded anywhere.
AI-powered geolocation. Upload any photo and it guesses where it was taken — no GPS data needed. It reads clues from vegetation, architecture, road markings, and signage. Surprisingly accurate. Slightly unsettling.
Search inside YouTube videos by what was said, not just the title. Searches subtitles and transcripts across millions of videos. Find the exact video where someone said a specific thing.
See the hidden data behind any YouTube video — exact upload time, description edit history, tags, thumbnail changes. The metadata YouTube shows you is a fraction of what's actually there.
Upload two images and see exactly what changed between them. Pixel-level comparison. Useful for spotting edits, before/after satellite comparisons, or catching subtle document alterations.
Where's that plane going? Why is that ship sitting off the coast with its transponder flickering? These tools answer those questions in real time.
How this works: Planes and ships broadcast their position constantly using signals called ADS-B (aircraft) and AIS (ships). Anyone with the right receiver can pick them up — and thousands of volunteers around the world do. These tools collect those signals and show them on a map in real time. You can see where any aircraft or vessel is, where it's been, and where it's going. Yes, including military ones.
Real-time global flight tracking. Tap any plane and see its route, altitude, speed, aircraft type, and registration. The most popular flight tracker — and for good reason. Free tier covers most needs.
Unlike Flightradar24, this one doesn't filter out military or government aircraft. Community-fed, unfiltered, uncensored. If a plane is in the sky and has a transponder, it's here. Including the ones that don't want to be.
Non-profit flight tracking with historical data going back to 2013. Has an API for researchers. If you need to prove a specific plane was in a specific place on a specific date, this is your source.
Real-time vessel tracking for 250,000+ ships worldwide. See routes, port calls, ownership, cargo type, and photos. Free tier shows current positions — paid tier adds historical routes and fleet tracking.
Ship tracker with colour-coded vessels by type — tankers in red, cargo in green, passenger in blue, military in grey. Historical route playback lets you see where a ship has been over the past week.
Live police, fire, EMS, and aviation radio scanner feeds from thousands of locations. Hear what emergency services are saying in real time. Often the fastest source during breaking events — faster than Twitter, faster than news.
Listen to radio signals from software-defined receivers around the world — military, aviation, maritime, and amateur bands. No equipment needed, just your browser. Tune in from anywhere.
Track satellites and decode their signals using a global network of community-operated ground stations. See what's orbiting overhead and what it's transmitting. Open source.
Flight tracking with excellent historical data. Where was this plane last week? Last month? FlightAware keeps records. Free tier is generous. Paid tier is what investigators use.
Tracks aircraft belonging to authoritarian regimes. When a dictator's private jet lands in Geneva, this tool knows. Built by journalists. Used by journalists. Embarrassing for dictators.
Which airspaces are currently dangerous due to armed conflicts? This map shows active risk zones, NOTAMs, and shoot-down risk areas. Useful for understanding where military activity is escalating.
Track fishing vessels worldwide and spot illegal activity — ships fishing in protected waters, turning off transponders, or operating in sanctioned zones. The ocean's surveillance camera.
Track a shipping container by its number across all major carriers. Where is that container right now? Which port? Which ship? The entire supply chain, visible.
Every undersea internet cable in the world, mapped. Who owns them, where they land, and what happens to your data when one gets cut. More relevant to geopolitics than most people realise.
You have a photo, a rough description, or a set of coordinates. These tools help you pinpoint exactly where something happened — down to the street corner.
How this works: Satellites photograph the entire Earth multiple times a day — and much of that imagery is free. These tools let you look at satellite photos, compare how a location has changed over time, walk the streets virtually, and match clues in a photo (like shadows, signs, or terrain) to a real-world location. Investigators call this "geolocation" — figuring out exactly where a photo or video was taken.
Satellite imagery of the entire planet with a historical slider — compare how any location looked last week versus ten years ago. Measure distances, check terrain, and find landmarks that match a photo.
Near-real-time satellite imagery from NASA. See fires, smoke plumes, floods, and environmental changes as they happen. Updated multiple times daily. Useful for verifying reports of natural disasters or large-scale events.
European Space Agency satellite data — free. Radar imagery that works through clouds and at night, plus multispectral imaging that reveals things invisible to the naked eye. Registration required, but the data is extraordinary.
Query OpenStreetMap for anything — "show me all military bases in this region" or "find every hospital within 50km." Powerful for verifying what infrastructure exists near a location. Slightly technical but very rewarding.
High-resolution satellite imagery with a timeline slider. Compare construction, destruction, troop movements, or environmental changes over time. Easier to use than Copernicus for quick visual comparisons.
The obvious one that people forget about. If you have a rough location, Street View lets you virtually walk the streets. Match buildings, signs, road markings, and vegetation to photos and videos.
Near-real-time satellite imagery with weather overlays — storms, fires, winds. Easier to use than Copernicus for quick visual checks. See what the world looks like right now from space.
Crowdsourced street-level photos from around the world. Coverage in places Google Street View doesn't reach — including conflict zones, rural areas, and developing countries. Community-contributed.
1.3 million declassified US spy satellite photos from 1960–1984. See what any location looked like during the Cold War. Military bases, cities, borders — photographed from orbit by the CIA. Now public.
40+ years of Landsat satellite imagery, free to download. 30-metre resolution, global coverage. Compare how any location has changed over decades. Registration required, data is extraordinary.
A map where users have labelled millions of buildings, facilities, and areas. Military bases, government buildings, factories — identified and annotated by the crowd. Useful for figuring out what's inside a compound.
Interactive weather map with animated wind, rain, temperature, and wave data. Beautiful and useful. Verify weather conditions at a location and time — was it raining when that photo was taken?
Draw an area on a map and estimate crowd size based on density. Was that protest really "a million people"? This tool does the maths. Used by journalists to fact-check crowd claims.
What's happening right now, where, and according to whom. Real-time situational awareness without the news cycle delay.
How this works: News takes hours — sometimes days — to reach you through traditional media. These tools track events as they happen: conflicts, protests, earthquakes, fires, and humanitarian crises. Some use satellite data, some aggregate social media, some are run by researchers who manually verify every incident. You get the information before the headline is written.
Our own. Real-time global event monitoring across 220 countries in over 60 languages, with flight and ship tracking, distress alerts, and community reports. Filtered by severity. Updated every 5 minutes. No ads, no tracking. Obviously.
Real-time conflict map covering multiple war zones. Each dot is a verified event with source links. Started with Ukraine, now covers Syria, Middle East, Africa, and more. Fast, visual, and reliable.
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data — the gold standard for conflict researchers. Every reported battle, protest, riot, and act of violence, geocoded and categorised. Downloadable datasets going back decades.
UN-curated humanitarian information service. Situation reports, disaster updates, and crisis analyses from every major humanitarian organisation. The first place aid workers check. Updated constantly.
Monitors news media from every country in 100+ languages, translating and geocoding events in real time. Over a quarter billion event records. If it was reported somewhere on Earth, GDELT probably indexed it.
Real-time earthquake monitoring worldwide. Every seismic event, magnitude, depth, and affected area. Alerts within minutes of an earthquake anywhere on the planet. Also detects nuclear tests.
Active fire data from satellites, updated every few hours. See wildfires, industrial fires, and — occasionally — artillery strikes and airstrikes. Satellite thermal signatures don't lie about what's burning.
Real-time social media monitoring. Search for keywords, locations, or hashtags across all major platforms. See what people are saying about an event as it unfolds — often before the news picks it up.
Council on Foreign Relations' map of every active armed conflict. Background context, severity ratings, and trend analysis. Less granular than Liveuamap but better for understanding the big picture.
Monthly conflict trend bulletin from the International Crisis Group. Which situations improved, which deteriorated, and which are about to explode. The executive summary of global instability.
Real-time lightning strikes worldwide. Every bolt, mapped as it happens. Useful for weather verification, and occasionally for confirming reports of explosions that turned out to be thunderstorms.
See what's happening right now, from the ground, with your own eyes. No analysis, no narrative — just a live feed.
How this works: There are millions of cameras connected to the internet — traffic cameras, weather cameras, city cameras, port cameras — many of them publicly accessible. These tools collect them in one place so you can watch any location live. Snapchat and Citizen go further by showing you what real people are filming at any location, right now. It's ground truth without leaving your desk.
Directory of publicly accessible IP cameras worldwide. Streets, ports, beaches, cities — thousands of live feeds from cameras whose owners left them open to the internet. Ethically grey. Legally grey. Undeniably useful.
Network of live streaming webcams from landmarks, cities, and tourist spots worldwide. Times Square, Abbey Road, construction sites. Less investigative, but useful for real-time ground-level verification.
Global webcam directory on a map. Click a country, see what cameras are streaming. Thousands of feeds — weather, traffic, harbours, city centres. A window into anywhere.
Public Snapchat stories pinned to their locations on a map. See what people are filming right now at any location — protests, celebrations, disasters, daily life. The world's most accidental citizen journalism platform.
Map of known surveillance camera locations, mostly in European cities. Crowd-sourced data showing where the cameras are. Know your environment.
Live map of incidents in US cities — shootings, fires, police activity, accidents — reported in the last few hours. Faster than local news. Sometimes faster than 911. US-only.
People post things without realising they're broadcasting their location. These tools make that visible.
How this works: When people post photos, videos, or tweets, many platforms tag the post with their location — sometimes without the poster even knowing. These tools search social media by geography instead of keywords. Draw a circle on a map, and see every public post made from inside it. Someone says "nothing's happening here"? Check what people are filming there.
View geotagged posts from Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, and VK on a map. Draw a circle around any location and see what people have posted from there. The social media X-ray.
Find geotagged YouTube videos on a map. Search by keyword and location to find videos filmed at or near a specific place. Event verification from angles the news didn't show.
Find tweets by geographic location and radius. Set a point, set a distance, see what people tweeted from there. Real-time location-based social media intelligence without needing an API key.
See trending Twitter hashtags and topics on a world map. What's going viral where? Useful for spotting emerging events before they reach international news.
Historical photographs pinned to their locations on a map. See what any street, building, or neighbourhood looked like 50 or 100 years ago. Before-and-after geolocation across decades.
Browse geotagged photos from Flickr's massive library on a world map. Millions of photos pinned to locations — useful for identifying landmarks, verifying locations, and finding reference imagery.
Every search you make on Google tells Google what you're interested in. These don't.
How this works: When you search on Google, Google saves your query, links it to your identity, and uses it to build a profile of you. If you're researching something sensitive — a person, a company, a conflict — that search history becomes a liability. These tools let you search the same sources without anyone knowing what you searched for. Same results, zero footprint.
Our self-hosted search engine. Aggregates results from 70+ search engines without any of them seeing your query. No tracking, no profiling, no ads. Your searches are between you and nobody — we don't even log them. Works over Tor.
Search the clearnet, Tor, and I2P from one search box. Aggregates results across all three networks without exposing your identity to any of them. Built for research, not for shopping.
Need to share something sensitive? Paste it here. It's encrypted in your browser before it reaches our server — we never see the plaintext. Set it to self-destruct after one read, add a password, set an expiry. Zero knowledge.