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UsernameLookup
02 what a lookup returns

What one username lookup returns

A username lookup checks one handle against 300+ public websites and tells you, site by site, whether a profile with that exact name exists. You get the profile link, the HTTP answer we received, how long the site took to respond and when we checked it.

That sounds simple, and the idea is. The hard part is doing it honestly. Many sites answer a missing profile with a normal page, some redirect to a login wall, a few rate limit anyone who asks too often. We test each site with its own signals, so a result says found only when the public page really belongs to that username.

Investigator comparing a printed list of usernames with a laptop showing search results

result card / anatomy

Gh

GitHub coding

github.com/harbor.lens

Found
display name
Harbor Lens
response
200 · 138 ms
checked
10:42:07 UTC
avatar hash
a91f…3c
likely same person 84 / 100
same display name links to Reddit
  1. 01Site, category and the exact public URL we opened.
  2. 02State in three values: found, free or no clear answer.
  3. 03HTTP status, response time and check time, so you can verify.
  4. 04Identity score with the reasons, built only from public page data.

Reading a result without guessing

  • Found means a real public page

    We only mark a profile as found when the site's own signals agree: the right status code, the expected page markers and no redirect to a generic page.

  • Free means the name looks unclaimed

    The site answered clearly that no account uses that handle. For availability we also check the signup rules where a platform publishes them.

  • No clear answer is a real state too

    Timeouts, blocks and login walls are reported as they are. A re-check button runs that site again instead of pretending we know.

Laptop on a desk at dusk with search results filling the screen

How a username search runs

step 1 · under 1 s

You type the handle

Pick the categories you care about, switch availability on or off and press Search username. We check the opt-out list before anything else.

step 2 · a few seconds

Sites answer in parallel

Dozens of public profile URLs are requested at once with a short timeout per site. Cards appear in the order the answers come back, and the counter keeps moving.

step 3 · saved

You keep the record

On a plan, every run lands in your history. Run it again next month and the diff shows which profiles appeared or disappeared in between.

03 brand monitoring

Brand impersonation monitoring that finds fake accounts first

Fake support accounts don't announce themselves. They show up as @acme_supp0rt on a Tuesday afternoon, reply to an angry customer and ask for a card number. Monitoring watches your brand names around the clock and tells you within the hour.

  • Lookalike generation, typos, homoglyphs like 0 for o or rn for m, separators and suffixes such as _support, _official, _help and _giveaway.
  • Scan frequency by plan, daily on Pro, every 6 hours on Investigator, hourly on Brand Monitoring and every 15 minutes on Brand Enterprise.
  • Evidence that holds up, profile URL, timestamp, HTTP status and page title, stored the moment we found it, even if the account is renamed an hour later.
  • Executive watch, up to 10 named executives on Brand Monitoring, because founders and CFOs get impersonated as often as the brand does.

alert feed / brand "acme"

hourly scan · last run 10:00 UTC

  • new New lookalike @acme_supp0rt on Instagram

    homoglyph: 0 for o, suffix "_supp0rt" · 2 min ago

    risk 92 Report
  • New lookalike @acme.official.help on TikTok

    brand + "official" + "help" · 38 min ago

    risk 81 Reviewing
  • New lookalike @acmegiveaways on X

    brand + "giveaways" · 3 h ago

    risk 74 Reviewing
  • New lookalike @acrne on Threads

    rn reads as m · 9 h ago

    risk 66 Reviewing
evidence: url · timestamp · http 200 · page title · sent to #brand-alerts and webhook
Two people at a wall of screens in a dark security operations room with one warm orange light

From fake profile to takedown request in four steps

  1. 01 / detect

    Detect

    Every scan generates lookalikes of your brand terms and checks which of them now exist as public profiles.

  2. 02 / score

    Score

    Each finding gets a risk score from how close the name is, the words around it and what the profile page shows.

  3. 03 / alert

    Alert

    New findings go to email, Slack or your webhook the moment the scan finishes, with the evidence attached.

  4. 04 / report

    Report

    One click opens the platform's own impersonation form, pre-filled with the profile link and our snapshot.

We don't remove accounts ourselves, and nobody honest can promise that. Takedowns are decided by each platform. What we do is make the request fast and complete, so your team files it in two minutes instead of twenty.

04 availability

Check username availability on every platform at once

Naming a product, a channel or a new brand? Put the name and a few variants in, and the availability matrix shows where each one is taken and where it is still open, social networks and domains side by side.

Founders usually check five sites by hand and discover the sixth one a week after launch. The matrix covers the platforms people actually type into a browser, plus 25 domain extensions through DNS and registry data.

availability / 5 names × 10 targets

taken free no clear answer
Example availability matrix for five name variants
name Instagram TikTok X YouTube GitHub Reddit Twitch .com .io .ai free
harborlens 5/10
harbor.lens 4/10
harbor_lens 6/10
harborlenshq 10/10
useharborlens 9/10

Example data for a fictional brand. Your matrix uses live checks at the moment you run it.

Variants without the busywork

Dots, underscores, a "hq" or "use" prefix, a short suffix. Paste up to 100 names on Investigator and above, or let us suggest the usual variants for you.

Domains in the same row

A handle you can't match with a domain is half a brand. We read DNS and registry records for .com, .io, .ai, .co, .app and twenty more, then flag the rows where everything lines up.

Export the shortlist

Download the matrix as CSV and send it to whoever signs off on the name. Every cell keeps the time it was checked, because availability changes by the hour.

Marketing team around a table with laptops planning the name of a new brand
05 api

A username API for signup checks and investigations

One GET request returns every site we checked, the state of each, the profile links and, on Investigator and above, the identity score with its reasons.

Trust and safety teams call it when someone signs up with a handle. A brand new account whose username exists nowhere else on the web reads differently from one with a twelve year footprint on GitHub, Reddit and Steam. You decide what to do with that signal. We just make it cheap to get.

auth
Bearer key per workspace
long runs
202 with a poll_url
limits
per minute and per month
over the limit
429, never a surprise bill
Developer at a standing desk with a blurred terminal in a minimal grey office

request

GET /api/v1/username/{username}

curl https://usernamelookup.com/api/v1/username/harbor.lens?wait=20 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ul_live_••••••••••••"

response

200 OK · application/json

{
  "id": "01k7c2m9q4x8z6r3t5v7w1y2b0",
  "username": "harbor.lens",
  "status": "done",
  "sites_total": 323,
  "sites_checked": 323,
  "found_count": 23,
  "confidence": {
    "score": 84,
    "reasons": [
      {
        "signal": "display_name",
        "detail": "Same display name \"Harbor Lens\" on 6 profiles.",
        "points": 40,
        "sites": [
          "GitHub",
          "Reddit",
          "Steam",
          "Medium",
          "Etsy",
          "Twitch"
        ]
      },
      {
        "signal": "cross_links",
        "detail": "3 public links between found profiles.",
        "points": 30,
        "sites": [
          "GitHub",
          "Reddit",
          "Medium"
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  "sites": [
    {
      "site": "GitHub",
      "slug": "github",
      "category": "coding",
      "status": "found",
      "profile_url": "https://github.com/harbor.lens",
      "response_ms": 138,
      "first_seen": "2026-08-14T09:12:40+00:00"
    },
    {
      "site": "Twitch",
      "slug": "twitch",
      "category": "gaming",
      "status": "free",
      "profile_url": null,
      "response_ms": 187,
      "first_seen": null
    }
  ],
  "poll_url": null
}

Shortened example. A real response lists every site that was checked.

API limits by plan

plan calls per month calls per minute
Pro 1,000 30
Investigator 10,000 60
Brand Monitoring 50,000 120
Brand Enterprise 500,000 600

Every call counts once against your monthly quota, whether it returns 23 profiles or none. Availability has its own endpoint, GET /api/v1/availability/{name}, and monitoring findings reach you by signed webhook, so you never have to poll for them.

06 who uses it

Who runs a username search every week

People who search usernames for a living don't want a toy. They want a record they can trust, an answer they can repeat and a way to stop doing it by hand.

Trust and safety specialist talking with a colleague in an open office in natural light
brand teams

Brand and social teams

Catch fake "@brand_support" accounts before customers get phished.

Hourly scans for lookalikes of every brand name, alerts in the Slack channel your team already watches, and a case board that shows what is new, what is being reviewed and what has been reported.

trust and safety

Trust and safety, fraud and KYC

Score the footprint of a username at signup.

Call the API when an account is created. A handle that exists on thirty sites with consistent names tells a different story from one that appeared today. Use it as one signal among many, never as a verdict on a person.

security

Security and threat intel

Investigate phishing profiles and executive impersonation.

Bulk lookup up to 100 handles from an incident, keep evidence snapshots with timestamps, add case notes and export a PDF report your legal team can read without a walkthrough.

agencies

Social and PR agencies

Monitor every client brand from one workspace.

Ten brands on Brand Monitoring, fifty on Brand Enterprise, ten seats or unlimited ones, and alerts routed per client to separate channels or webhooks.

founders

Founders and creators

Check and secure a name everywhere before launch.

Run the availability matrix on your shortlist, grab the handles that are open, then keep three usernames under a daily watch so copycats show up in your inbox, not in your comments.

legal

Legal and investigations

Document where a handle was used, and when.

Each found profile carries the URL, HTTP status, page title and check time. Run it again later and the history shows exactly what changed between two dates.

07 comparison

How UsernameLookup compares with other username checkers

There are two kinds of tools around this problem. Quick checkers answer once and forget. Digital risk platforms watch everything, but you meet a sales team before you see a price. We sit between them on purpose.

Feature comparison by tool category
what you get One-off username checkers UsernameLookup Sales-led digital risk platforms
Search one username across hundreds of sites 300+ sites Not the main job
Found, free and no clear answer kept apart Often only found or not Varies
Profile link, HTTP status and check time on every result Link only, if any
Search history and diff between runs
Likely same person score with reasons Investigator and above Varies
Lookalike monitoring of brand names Daily to every 15 min
Alerts by email, Slack and webhook
Evidence snapshots and pre-filled report links
REST API with published limits Rarely Every plan Usually on contract
Public prices and self-serve checkout No account at all From $24 a month, billed yearly Quote after a sales call
Takedowns filed for you by the vendor No, you file in minutes Often included

Categories, not named products. Individual tools differ, so check the details of any tool you consider.

pick a quick checker when

You need one answer, one time, and nobody will ask you next month what changed. Honestly, for a weekend project that's enough.

pick UsernameLookup when

The same names matter every week: your brand, your clients, the handles your users sign up with. You want history, alerts and an API without a procurement cycle.

pick a full platform when

You need a vendor to file takedowns, chase fake domains and watch the dark web for you, and you have the budget for an annual contract negotiated with a sales team.

08 worked example

What manual username checks really cost

Checking one brand by hand looks harmless. Six platforms, eight lookalike spellings, about 30 seconds per search. That's 48 searches and roughly 24 minutes, for one brand, once.

Do that every weekday for three brands and someone on your team spends six hours a week typing names into search boxes. And they still miss the account that appeared at 6 pm on Friday. Put your own numbers in the calculator. It doesn't store anything and it doesn't need an account.

Head of brand protection discussing a chart on a tablet with a finance director in a meeting room

roi / manual checks vs a plan

140
$15$200
manual checks per month
$1,430
26 hours of someone's month
suggested plan, billed yearly
$74
Investigator per month
difference per month
$1,356
before counting what a missed fake account costs

Monthly cost = hours per week × hourly cost × 52 ÷ 12. The plan suggestion switches to Brand Monitoring above 10 hours a week, when hourly scans of several brands start to matter.

scenario / fake support account

One impersonation, counted step by step

These are assumptions for the arithmetic, not data from any customer. Change them to fit your brand.

  1. aA fake @acme_supp0rt answers complaints for 5 days before a weekly manual check spots it.
  2. bIt reaches 4 customers a day and 1 in 10 hands over card details or a login.
  3. cEach case costs about $150 in support time, refunds and a replaced card.
  4. =5 × 4 × 0.1 = 2 victims, about $300, plus the reviews nobody can refund. With an hourly scan the same account is in your alert feed within the hour, usually before its first reply.
09 boundaries

Public profiles only, with an opt-out for anyone

Is a username search legal? Checking whether a public page exists is the same thing your browser does when you type the address. We keep it at exactly that level, and we built the limits into the product rather than into a footnote.

UsernameLookup answers one question: does a public profile with this handle exist, and where. It does not tell you who the person is, where they live or how to reach them. That is a deliberate product decision, not a missing feature.

what we check

  • Public profile URLs that anyone can open without logging in
  • The fact that an account exists, its link and the page title
  • Display name, picture fingerprint and links between profiles, only for the identity score
  • Domain records from public DNS and registry data

what we never do

  • Log in to sites or read anything behind a login
  • Link a username to a real name, address, phone or email
  • Build profiles of private people or sell what we find
  • Search adult sites by default

Opt-out for any username

Confirm by email code and the name goes on a suppression list we check before every single lookup. See the opt-out page.

Rules for every account

Stalking and harassment are banned in our acceptable use policy, and rate limits per account and per address keep misuse slow and visible.

Security you can review

Storage, encryption, retention, audit log and DPA are described on the security page, written for the person who signs off on vendors.

10 / pricing

Username lookup pricing

Four plans, public prices, self-serve checkout. Pay yearly and save 50 percent.

Pro

For creators, founders and solo analysts who check names every week.

$24 / month

billed $288 yearly

$49 / month

billed monthly, cancel anytime

Get Pro
  • 300 full lookups a month across every site we check, all results with links
  • 300 availability checks a month including 25 domain extensions
  • Search history, diff between runs and CSV export
  • Monitor 3 usernames with a daily scan, 50 alerts a month
  • API with 1,000 calls a month
  • 1 seat

recommended for teams

Investigator

For investigators and trust and safety analysts who build cases.

$74 / month

billed $888 yearly

$149 / month

billed monthly, cancel anytime

Get Investigator
  • 2,000 lookups a month and bulk lookup of up to 100 usernames
  • "Likely same person" confidence score with the reasons behind it
  • Case notes, evidence snapshots and PDF report export
  • Monitor 15 usernames, scanned every 6 hours, 500 alerts a month
  • 2,000 availability checks a month
  • API with 10,000 calls a month
  • 3 seats

Brand Monitoring

For brand and social teams that hunt impersonators every hour.

$249 / month

billed $2,988 yearly

$499 / month

billed monthly, cancel anytime

Get Brand Monitoring
  • 10 brands monitored with lookalike generation, scanned every hour
  • Typos, homoglyphs and suffixes generated for every brand
  • 5,000 alerts a month by email, Slack and webhook
  • Case board with pre-filled impersonation report links
  • Executive impersonation watch for up to 10 named executives
  • 10,000 lookups a month, API with 50,000 calls a month
  • 10 seats with roles

Brand Enterprise

For enterprises, platforms and security providers watching many brands.

$999 / month

billed $11,988 yearly

$1,999 / month

billed monthly, cancel anytime

Get Brand Enterprise
  • 50,000 lookups and 50,000 availability checks a month, bulk lookup of up to 100 usernames
  • 50 brands monitored, scanned every 15 minutes
  • 25,000 alerts a month across every channel
  • API with 500,000 calls a month and a 99.9 percent uptime SLA
  • SSO (SAML) and audit log
  • Unlimited seats
  • DPA and security review pack
  • Priority support by email
Usage limits per plan
limit, counted per billing period Pro Investigator Brand Monitoring Brand Enterprise
Lookups per month 300 2,000 10,000 50,000
Availability checks per month 300 2,000 10,000 50,000
Monitored 3 usernames 15 usernames 10 brands 50 brands
Scan frequency daily every 6 h every 1 h every 15 min
Alerts per month 50 500 5,000 25,000
API calls per month 1,000 10,000 50,000 500,000
Seats 1 3 10 unlimited

No overage charges. At 80 percent of a limit you get a heads up, at 100 percent the meter stops until the next period or an upgrade.

Deleting never refunds quota. Limits count usage in the billing period, so the number you see is the number you used.

Cancel anytime in billing settings. You keep access until the end of the period you paid for.

11 questions

Username lookup questions, answered plainly

Legal limits, accuracy, what counts against your plan and what happens at the limit. Something missing? Write to [email protected].

What is a username lookup?

A username lookup takes one handle, for example harbor.lens, and checks whether a public profile with that exact name exists on each site we cover, 300+ of them. For every site you see found, free or no clear answer, plus the profile link, the HTTP status, the response time and when we checked. It answers where a username is used. It does not tell you who is behind it.

Is it legal to search a username, and is this stalking?

Opening a public profile page is what any browser does, and that is the only thing we do. We never log in to a site, never read anything behind a login and never connect a username to a real name, address, phone number or email. Our acceptable use policy bans stalking and harassment, every account and every address has rate limits, and anyone can remove a username from search through the opt-out page. The product is built for brand protection, fraud prevention, security work and naming, not for tracking people.

How do I stop my username from showing up in searches?

Use the opt-out page. Enter the username and your email, confirm the code we send, and the name goes on a suppression list. We check that list before every lookup, from the website and from the API, so the name returns no results for anyone. It takes about a minute and you don't need an account.

How accurate are the results? Do you have false positives?

Every site is tested with its own signals: the status code, markers that appear only on a real profile page and markers of the "not found" page. Found means those signals agree. When a site times out, blocks the request or sends us to a login wall, we say no clear answer instead of guessing. You can re-check a single site with one click. No checker is perfect, because sites change their pages, so we keep the profile link on every result and you can verify it in a second.

What counts as one lookup?

One lookup is one username checked across all the categories you selected, whether that is ten sites or every site we cover. An availability check is counted in its own meter, and each API call counts once in the API meter. Limits count usage in the billing period, so deleting a search or a monitor never gives the quota back. The meters reset when your next billing period starts.

What happens when I reach my plan limit? Can I get a surprise bill?

No. There are no overage charges. At 80 percent of any limit you see a notice in the dashboard. At 100 percent that meter stops, and you either wait for the next billing period or upgrade. An upgrade is charged right away for the difference, prorated, and the new limits apply as soon as the payment goes through.

How fast will I hear about a fake account using my brand?

It depends on the scan frequency of your plan: daily on Pro, every 6 hours on Investigator, every hour on Brand Monitoring and every 15 minutes on Brand Enterprise. When a scan finds a new lookalike, the alert goes out at the end of that scan by email, Slack or webhook, with the profile link, a timestamp, the HTTP status and the page title.

Can you take the fake account down for me?

Platforms decide takedowns, not us, and that is true for every vendor. What we do is collect the evidence the moment we find the profile and give you the platform's own impersonation report form with the details filled in. Most teams file a complete report in a couple of minutes, then move the case to reported on the case board and close it when the account is gone.

How is this different from a quick username checker?

Quick checkers answer once and forget. We keep a history of every run with a diff between them, separate found from free from unclear, add a likely same person score with the reasons on Investigator and above, watch your brand names on a schedule, send alerts and give you an API. Everything is self-serve with public prices.

Can I use the API in our signup flow?

Yes. Create an API key in the dashboard and call GET /api/v1/username/{username} with the key as a Bearer token. Short lookups return the full result in one response, longer ones return 202 with a poll_url. Each plan has a monthly quota and a per minute limit, and a 429 response tells you when either is reached. Use the footprint as one signal next to your other checks, never as the only reason to block someone.

Do you check adult sites?

No. Adult sites are excluded from the catalog by default, and the hero search, the dashboard and the API all use the same catalog.

Can I try it before paying?

Yes, once. The search box at the top runs a real lookup without an account and shows the first eight profiles it finds with their links. The rest of the result, the identity score and the history open with a plan. There is no permanent no-cost tier, because every lookup costs us real requests to hundreds of sites.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. Cancel in billing settings. Your plan stays active until the end of the period you paid for and does not renew after that. Yearly plans cost 50 percent less per month than monthly ones, and you can switch between them from the same page.

12 from the blog

Guides on username search and impersonation

All articles
Aerial top-down view of a city street grid at dusk

start here

Search a username now and see the real result

One search runs without an account. You see the first profiles with links in seconds, and you decide after that whether a plan is worth it.

  • 300+ public sites, results stream in as they answer
  • Availability on platforms and domains in the same run
  • Plans from $24 a month billed yearly, no overage
Site categories to check

Public profiles only. No personal data. 300+ sites checked in seconds.

Check a username on 300+ sites

Search username