Sherlock vs Maigret
Sherlock
Sherlock is an open-source (MIT) command-line tool that checks whether a username is registered on more than 400 social networks and websites. It can search several usernames at once and saves the accounts it finds to text, CSV or Excel files, with options for proxies, timeouts and checking a single site. It installs with pipx, pip or uv, or runs in Docker. The project has been on GitHub since 2018.
Pros
- Free and open source under the MIT licence
- Widely used: more than 90,000 stars on GitHub
- Simple to install and script
Things to check
- Command line only; no web interface
- Reports whether an account exists, with little profile data
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT).
Maigret
Maigret is an open-source (MIT) tool that collects a profile of a person from a username alone. Its project description says it checks about 6,000 websites. It extracts the information available on the profiles it finds, follows links to other accounts, and searches again recursively using any new usernames and IDs it discovers. Results can be filtered by site category and country and exported as HTML or PDF reports. It installs with pip, runs from a terminal or a web interface, and is also offered through a community Telegram bot.
Pros
- Free and open source under the MIT licence
- Recursive search turns one username into a wider set of leads
- Report output ready to share
Things to check
- Self-hosted: you install and run it
- Site count is stated by the project and not independently checked
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT).