Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools & Email Search Tools in 2023

List of the Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools

• SEON
• Spokeo
• Snov.io
• Beenverified
• Checkpeople
• Adapt.io
• Anymail
• Infotracer
• Spytox
• Recordfinder

The Top 10 Email Lookup Tools

Below, we’ve identified and reviewed ten email lookup solutions you can try today, including the pros, cons, and top features of each one.

Disclaimer: Everything in this article was gleaned from research, including user reviews. We did not have time to manually test all the tools. This guide was last updated in Q3 2023. Please contact us to request any changes or corrections.

What Is a Reverse Email Lookup Tool?

A reverse email lookup tool lets you enter an email address and get its owner’s personal data. This usually includes a first and last name, but may also include a residential address, phone number, or social media handle. 

Reverse email lookup tools are a form of user fingerprinting, which let you attain extra information based on a limited number of data points. 

Reasons to rely on reverse email lookup tools include open source intelligence (OSINT), risk management, or marketing, among others.

How Do Reverse Email Lookup Tools Work?

Most of the time, you simply enter the email address into the search bar and press Enter. The results will appear directly on the website. Some providers also deliver PDF reports.

For more advanced lookups, you can use API calls or web browser extensions. You can also upload lists of email addresses via CSV file or Excel spreadsheet.

Why Use Reverse Email Lookup Tools?

Both companies and individuals rely on email search tools. They tend to use these solutions for three key reasons:

• Marketing: For marketers or sales teams, it’s essential to check if the email addresses they have collected are valid. Because you don’t want your email marketing newsletters to bounce, it’s wise to confirm you’re dealing with real people as soon as possible.
  
• Background checks: Usually performed by professionals who need more info about a potential hire, a prospect, or a business contact. Some individuals request them too, for every reason you can imagine, including getting the full picture about a new romantic interest, learning more about someone who got in touch out of the blue, or, unfortunately, cyberstalking.
  
• Risk analysis: Small and large businesses use reverse email search to learn more about their users in the context of fraud prevention, risk assessment, and cybersecurity.

The above professionals are the most likely to employ these tools – but they can be equally useful to other businesses as well as to private individuals. Of course, not all these solutions are created equal. Let’s see what you should consider before signing up.

Six Key Points when Choosing a Reverse Email Lookup Tool

1. What is my goal? Are you looking to create more complete customer profiles? Do you handle riskier transactions? Do you need more information on prospects or customers?
2. How often will I need to use the tool? This may influence the kind of pricing model you should consider.
3. How detailed do I need the results to be? This ties in with the goals of your queries, especially if you are in the risk management sphere.
4. Does the tool comply with my legal data protection requirements? Obtaining data on users can put your company at risk if it’s done with the wrong tool.
5. How fast can the results be delivered? Some people will require near-instant results, but some tools can take days to deliver results.
6. Will I need additional information? Consider whether you need to deepen your search with a reverse phone lookup or IP analysis, for instance. Some tools offer this while others do not.

For this comparison article, we’ve tried to eliminate all the tools that were obviously out of scope based on the points above and the limits mentioned below.

Comparison of Reverse Email Lookup Tools

What Data Can I Get From an Email Search Tool?

One advantage of using an email address to research user information is that this leads to email profiling that can reveal a vast amount of information associated with that address. This is why using these tools is also referred to as doing an “email background check”. They are also a lot more specific than, say, finding information about a device or IP address.

Email Address Validity

The first question a reverse email search can answer is whether the email address is real or not. This is verified using an SMTP check. The tool sends a request to the email address domain (@gmail.com or @yahoo.co.uk, for instance) and checks if the address exists.

Email Domain Type and Quality Verification

In addition to the high-quality email domains on the market are those that are less trustworthy. It all has to do with how hard it is to open an account using them. For instance, while gmail.com sounds reputable, it is free and thus concerningly easy for suspicious individuals to create their own gmail accounts.

Other providers have more stringent verification processes, such as SMS verification, which makes them more secure. Plus, quality verifications can be enhanced through domain checking websites as well as by ascertaining the email address’s age. While there are exceptions to this rule, such as when established email addresses have been involved in a data breach (more on this a little later), newer addresses tend to be less trustworthy than their more mature counterparts.

Email Address and Social Media Lookup

One of the most powerful ways to check the validity of an email address these days is to see if it has been used to sign up to any social media platforms. Also known as social media profiling, this process checks if the address is used by someone on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook, among others.

This is because a good social media lookup tool will also provide information about the person’s name, location, workplace and bio – all information that would take a tremendous amount of time to collect manually, especially if you need to do this for a long list of people.

Email Address Found on Data Breaches?

A good tool can compare the address to those found on data breaches. Finding it in one of those breaches helps provide an idea of how old the email address is, and how regularly it was used, but it may hint at illicit use if a fraudster took control of it.

Email Blacklists Check

Another way to check if fraudsters have already used that email address is to look for it on public spam blacklists. If someone’s registering with a known spammer address, you might want to block them or verify their other details manually, as the account holder might not have control over the mailbox anymore (or worse, it could be a malicious address).

Email Address Quality Evaluation

Finally, an interesting data point that can be hard to measure: How likely is it that the email address was created by a real user vs a bot or fraudster, both of whom need to work fast. This has to do with the quality of the email name itself.

Using string analysis, a good email profiling tool should be able to see if the email address looks genuine, or if it’s just been generated automatically. For instance, a large volume of numbers or special characters can be suspicious, as can differences between the name in the handle and that in the account.

Frequently Asked Questions

You might also be interested in reading about:

• SEON: The Best OSINT tools
• SEON: How to Find Email Accounts by Email Address Only
• SEON: How an Email Data Breach Helps You to Verify Users

Learn more about:

Browser Fingerprinting | Device Fingerprinting | Fraud Detection API | Fraud Detection with Machine Learning & AI