Sherlock vs WhatsMyName
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).
WhatsMyName
WhatsMyName is a community-maintained dataset of more than 700 websites and the rules for checking whether a username is registered on each, published under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 licence. Other OSINT and digital-footprint tools build on it, and whatsmyname.app is a free browser-based tool built directly on the dataset that needs no installation. The project has been on GitHub since 2015.
Pros
- Free to use in the browser with no installation
- Open dataset other tools can reuse
- Maintained by the community since 2015
Things to check
- Checks whether an account exists; it does not build a profile
- Coverage depends on community updates to the site rules
Pricing: Free. Dataset licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.