Sherlock vs Maigret vs WhatsMyName: Which Username OSINT Tool to Use

Ask anyone who does username OSINT which tool to start with and you will usually hear one of three names: Sherlock, Maigret, or WhatsMyName. All three are free and community built, and all three answer the same basic question: on which websites does this username exist? They go about it differently, though, and the differences matter once you have a real investigation in front of you.

We compared them using each project's own README and documentation in October 2026. Version numbers and site counts change often, so check the repositories before you rely on a specific figure.

Trademark note: Sherlock, Maigret and WhatsMyName are the names of their respective projects and owners. WhatsMyName Apps is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

The short version

• Sherlock is the simple command-line classic. Install it, type a username, get a list of sites where it exists.
• Maigret started as a fork of Sherlock and grew into a bigger investigation tool. It checks far more sites, pulls profile details, follows new usernames it discovers, and builds reports.
• WhatsMyName is first of all a dataset: a community-maintained JSON file describing how to check each site. The project also points to a free web interface, so you can use it without installing anything.

If you want a quick answer in a browser, start with a web tool. If you are comfortable in a terminal and need depth, Maigret is the heavyweight. Sherlock sits in between: easy to script, light, and predictable.

Sherlock

Sherlock describes itself as a way to "hunt down social media accounts by username across 400+ social networks". It is a Python tool released under the MIT license. You can install it with pipx install sherlock-project, run it from the official Docker image, or get it from community packages for distributions such as Kali and BlackArch, plus Homebrew.

The help text for version 0.16.0 shows what it is built for:

• Check one or several usernames in a single run, and test variants with the {?} placeholder, which swaps in _, - and ..
• Save results as a text file, CSV (--csv), or Excel (--xlsx).
• Route requests through a proxy with --proxy, set a timeout, or limit the run to specific sites with --site.
• Open every hit in your browser with --browse, and include adult sites only if you pass --nsfw.

Sherlock does not try to parse profiles or build a dossier. It tells you where a username appears, and that is its strength. The output is easy to feed into other scripts, and the site list is small enough that a run finishes quickly. The trade-off is coverage. Four hundred sites is plenty for mainstream platforms, but niche forums and regional networks are often missing.

We cover setup and common flags in more detail on our Sherlock guide.

Maigret

Maigret says it "collects a dossier on a person by username only". Its README lists support for 5,900 sites, but a default run checks the 500 highest-ranked sites by traffic. You pass -a to scan everything or --tags to narrow the run by category or country. It is MIT licensed and needs Python 3.10 or later, though there is also a standalone Windows executable, a Snap package, Docker images, and cloud shell options.

What sets Maigret apart:

• Profile extraction. It pulls available information from profile pages and site APIs, including links to other accounts.
• Recursive search. When it finds a new username or ID on a profile, it can search for that too.
• Reports. HTML, PDF, XMind, JSON, CSV, TXT, interactive graphs, and a Neo4j export.
• A built-in web interface (maigret --web 5000) that shows results as a graph.
• Tor and I2P sites, plus domain checks.

All that power has a cost. A full run takes longer, the recursive search can wander into accounts that belong to someone else with a similar name, and the reports collect a lot of personal data in one place. That is useful for authorized investigations and a liability if you don't need it. Our Maigret guide goes through the flags we use most.

WhatsMyName

WhatsMyName is a little different. Micah Hoffman started it in 2015, and the project describes itself as "a community-maintained dataset that lets you find out if a username exists across hundreds of websites". The core is a single file, wmn-data.json, that records for each site which URL to request and what a found or missing profile looks like.

The data is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, which is why so many other tools build on it. The README lists browser extensions, Python and Rust scripts, desktop apps, and Maltego integrations. Blackbird, for example, uses WhatsMyName data for its username checks.

If you just want to run a search, the project's README points to a free web interface at whatsmyname.app. It offers category filters, an NSFW toggle, and export, and you don't install anything. The dataset is curated by hand, so it covers fewer sites than Maigret, but contributors test each entry. More on that on our WhatsMyName page.

Side-by-side comparison

	Sherlock	Maigret	WhatsMyName
What it is	Command-line tool	Command-line tool with optional web UI	Community dataset plus a web interface
Sites (per README)	400+	5,900 (500 by default)	"Hundreds"
Profile details	No	Yes, from pages and APIs	Depends on the tool using the data
Recursive search	No	Yes	No
Output	TXT, CSV, XLSX	HTML, PDF, XMind, JSON, CSV, TXT, graph, Neo4j	Export from the web interface
Setup	pipx, Docker, distro packages	pip, Windows exe, Snap, Docker	None for the web interface
License	MIT	MIT	CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)

Which one should you use?

It depends less on the tool than on the job.

• A quick check on one handle. Use a web tool. Installing Python to answer a two-minute question is overkill.
• Scripting checks into a workflow. Sherlock. The flags are simple, the output is clean, and the run is fast.
• A deep, authorized investigation. Maigret, with -a and reports turned on, then manual verification of every hit.
• Building your own tool. Start from the WhatsMyName dataset and follow its license terms.

Many investigators run more than one. The site lists overlap but are not identical, and a site that one tool marks as found can trip a false positive in another. Running two tools and comparing the results catches a lot of noise.

A web option that merges the lists

WhatsMyName Apps is our free web tool, and it is independent from all three projects. We merge the open-source site lists from WhatsMyName, Sherlock and Maigret, remove duplicates, and check 3,166 sites from your browser. We use the WhatsMyName data under CC BY-SA 4.0 and credit the project on our open-source page.

• Each result is marked Found, Not found, Blocked, or Unknown, so you can see which checks failed instead of guessing.
• For Found results, we show the public display name, avatar, and bio when the site exposes them.
• You can check up to five usernames at once and export the results as JSON or CSV.
• It is free and needs no sign-up. The username is sent to our server only to run the check and is not stored or logged.

There is no API or CLI, so if you need to automate checks, Sherlock or Maigret is the better fit. For a fast first pass, run a username search across 3,166 sites or open the OSINT username search page.

Whatever you use, verify

None of these tools prove that two accounts belong to the same person. A Found result means a profile with that name exists. Usernames are reused by strangers, sites change their pages, and anti-bot systems produce false positives. Treat every result as a lead and confirm it by opening the profile and comparing details that are hard to fake: post history, linked accounts, writing style, photos.

And use the tools for legitimate purposes. Auditing your own digital footprint, protecting a brand, or carrying out an authorized investigation is fine. Building a profile of a private person who has not agreed to it is not. Our OSINT tools hub lists more options, the use cases section covers specific jobs, and the platform checkers handle single-site lookups.