About Us
Last updated: August 2026
Review Public Records compares four background check and people-search services: Instant Checkmate, TruthFinder, Intelius, and US Search. The reviews and rankings on this site are written by our internal team, who have spent over 13 years working inside the public records data industry — building consumer record-search products, testing background check and people-search services firsthand, and evaluating data accuracy and coverage across dozens of providers.
How We Test
Every service ranked on this site is evaluated through direct, hands-on testing rather than marketing claims or third-party summaries. The process is the same for each: run a search on our own identities first and document exactly what comes back — phone numbers and their accuracy, email addresses, date of birth, relatives, and address history. Then search immediate family members and evaluate the same fields, followed by second-degree connections. By the time 15 or more people across different ages and backgrounds have been searched on a given service, a much clearer picture emerges than any feature list or marketing page provides.
This same methodology has been run across every major service in this category — not just the four reviewed here — which is part of what informs the relative scoring below.
What the scores are based on
| Factor | What we're evaluating |
|---|---|
| Record coverage | Depth across criminal & traffic records, address history, relatives, and contact info |
| Data accuracy | How often returned phone, email, and identity data actually checks out |
| Coverage consistency | Whether results hold up across different ages and demographics, not just best-case searches |
| Report clarity | How well results are organized and explained for someone who isn't a data professional |
| Handling of gaps | Whether a service is upfront about missing data or presents incomplete results as complete |
| Overall experience | Search flow, site usability, and value relative to price |
Where you'll see this show up most: marriage records are consistently the weakest data category across this entire industry, and coverage tends to be thinner for younger individuals with less established public-record history than for older ones. Scores reflect that reality rather than treating every record type as equally reliable.
Advertiser Disclosure
Our top-ranked sites are reviewed on the basis of our own views, knowledge, and expert opinions. We are able to provide this free resource thanks to referral fees we receive from companies reviewed here. This may influence scores and ordering but does not influence review content. The owner of this site is an employee of The Control Group Media Company, LLC, which provides management services to Instant Checkmate, TruthFinder, and Intelius. All opinions expressed on this site are our own.
Important FCRA Notice
You may not use any of the services listed on this site or the information they provide to make decisions about consumer credit, employment, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. None of the sites listed here provide consumer reports and are not consumer reporting agencies as defined under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 USC 1681 et seq.
Questions about a specific review or how we reached a score? Get in touch.