Passive Recon
Techniques that gather information from existing public sources without directly contacting the target.
AbuseIPDB
Community-maintained database of reported malicious IP addresses, with reputation lookups and a free API tier.
Ahmia
Search engine for Tor hidden services (.onion), excluding abuse material.
Aleph
OCCRP's platform for searching and cross-referencing leaked and public documents and data.
AlienVault OTX
Open Threat Exchange sharing community indicators of compromise.
Bellingcat Online Investigation Toolkit
Curated, maintained directory of open-source investigation tools.
Blackbird
Fast username and email search across 600+ platforms.
BreachDirectory
BreachDirectory is a free breach-search tool for OSINT investigations: enter an email address or username to check whether it appears in known public data breaches, so you can spot exposed accounts and know which passwords to rotate.
BuiltWith
Technology profiler that reports the frameworks, analytics, hosting and other services a website is built with.
Censys
Search engine for internet-facing hosts, certs, and services.
Companies House
UK government register for searching company filings, officers and persons with significant control.
Criminal IP
Search engine and threat-intelligence platform for internet-exposed assets, IP reputation and domain scans.
Crunchbase
Company and investor database covering funding rounds, leadership and acquisitions for startups and private companies.
DNSDumpster
Free domain research tool that maps a domain's subdomains and hosts.
Datashare
ICIJ's tool for indexing, searching and extracting entities from large document sets.
DeHashed
Search engine over billions of breached credentials and personal records.
DomainTools
Domain intelligence platform with WHOIS history, reverse WHOIS and DNS pivoting for investigating who is behind a domain.
Epieos
Reverse email lookup and digital-footprint tracing.
ExifTool
Extracts hidden metadata from images, documents, and media.
FOCA
Extracts hidden metadata and info from Office, PDF and image files.
FOFA
Cyberspace search engine that indexes internet-exposed hosts, services and web fingerprints for querying.
FaceCheck.ID
FaceCheck ID — sometimes searched as face check id — is a freemium facial-recognition search engine that finds where a face appears across the web. It is a dual-use OSINT tool: used responsibly, treat it like PimEyes and check what a face search reveals about you before running it on anyone else.
FastPeopleSearch
Free US people lookup by name, phone or address.
FlightAware
Live and historical flight tracking with aircraft, airport and tail-number lookups; deeper history on paid plans.
FotoForensics
Online error-level analysis and metadata inspection to detect edited images.
GHunt
Investigates Google accounts, extracting data tied to a Gmail address.
GetContact
Caller-ID and spam-blocking app with a web lookup that identifies who a phone number belongs to.
Google Hacking Database
Exploit-DB's curated archive of Google search queries ("dorks") that surface exposed data.
Google Lens
Google's visual search to identify objects, places and text in images.
GreyNoise
Labels internet background scan and attack traffic to separate noise from real threats.
Holehe
Checks whether an email is registered on 120+ sites via password-reset flows.
Hudson Rock
Infostealer-intelligence platform for finding devices and credentials compromised by stealer malware.
Hunter.io
Finds and verifies professional email addresses associated with a domain.
ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database
ICIJ's searchable database of offshore entities and officers from the Panama, Paradise and Pandora Papers and other leaks.
IPinfo
IP address data service returning geolocation, ASN, company and privacy-detection details for any IP.
Instaloader
Downloads Instagram photos, videos, captions and metadata from public profiles.
IntelTechniques
Michael Bazzell's OSINT search tools, books and training resources.
Intelligence X
Search engine over leaks, pastes, darknet and historical web data.
Jimpl
Online EXIF viewer showing a photo's hidden camera, GPS and timestamp data.
Lampyre
Data-analysis and OSINT tool pulling 100+ sources into graphs, maps and tables.
LeakCheck
Data-breach search engine for exposed emails, usernames and passwords.
LittleSis
Free database mapping relationships between powerful people and organizations.
MISP
Open-source platform for sharing and correlating threat intelligence.
Maigret
Builds a dossier from a username, checking thousands of sites for matching accounts.
Metagoofil
Searches Google for public documents of chosen file types on a domain and can download them.
Namechk
Checks whether a username or domain is available or already taken across many sites.
Netlas
Internet-wide scanning and attack-surface search platform.
NumLookup
Reverse phone lookup for US numbers that shows basic results instantly, with fuller background reports on a paid subscription.
OSINT Framework
Web directory categorizing hundreds of OSINT tools and data sources.
OSINT Industries
Paid platform for reverse email/phone/username lookups across hundreds of services.
OpenCorporates
Largest open database of companies and their officers from official registries.
OpenSanctions
Open database of sanctioned entities, politically exposed persons and other watchlists.
Osintgram
Open-source Instagram OSINT tool, run as a local web app, that gathers followers, posts, comments and locations from a public account by username.
PhoneInfoga
Scans and footprints international phone numbers using OSINT sources.
Picarta
AI tool that predicts where a photo was taken from its visual content.
PimEyes
Facial-recognition search engine that finds where a face appears online.
Pipl
Enterprise identity-data service that links names, emails, phones and addresses for fraud and verification teams.
PublicWWW
Search engine that finds websites by matching source-code snippets, IDs or scripts.
Recon-ng
Modular web-recon framework with a Metasploit-like workflow.
SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search
Full-text search across SEC filings back to 2001 by company, filer name, form type and keyword.
Search4faces
Reverse face search that matches a photo against profile pictures collected from VK, Odnoklassniki, TikTok and ClubHouse.
SecurityTrails
Historical DNS, WHOIS and subdomain data for domains and IP addresses.
ShadowDragon
Commercial OSINT suite (SocialNet) for collecting and linking social-media and open-source data in investigations.
Sherlock
Hunts a username across hundreds of sites.
Shodan
Search engine for internet-connected devices, servers, and IoT.
Skopenow
Commercial OSINT platform that compiles social-media and public-record profiles for investigations and threat assessment.
Snusbase
Paid breach-search database indexing leaked credentials and personal data.
Social Analyzer
API, CLI and web app that finds a person's profiles across 1000+ social sites.
Social Links
Commercial OSINT investigation platform that gathers social-media, messenger and open-source data on a target.
Social Searcher
Free real-time search engine for public social-media posts and mentions.
SpiderFoot
Automates threat-intel and reconnaissance gathering.
Spokeo
People-search service aggregating public records and social profiles.
SpyCloud
Enterprise identity-threat platform built on credentials and data recaptured from breaches and infostealer malware.
Subfinder
Fast passive subdomain discovery tool that enumerates valid subdomains for a domain.
TGStat
Analytics platform for searching and tracking Telegram channels and groups.
Telegago
Google Custom Search engine scoped to indexed Telegram channel content.
ThatsThem
Free people search aggregating names, addresses, emails and phone numbers.
TinEye
Reverse image search that finds where an image appears and its earliest known use.
TruePeopleSearch
Free US people search returning addresses, phone numbers and relatives.
Truecaller
Caller-ID and reverse phone lookup service that shows a name and spam label for a phone number.
VesselFinder
Live AIS ship-tracking map with vessel details, ports and voyage history; extended data on paid plans.
ViewDNS.info
Collection of free DNS, WHOIS, reverse-IP and network lookup tools.
VirusTotal
Scans files and URLs against many engines and aggregates threat intel.
Wappalyzer
Identifies the technology stack (CMS, frameworks, analytics) a website runs.
Wayback Machine
Internet Archive's index of historical snapshots of web pages.
Waymore
Pulls a domain's archived URLs from the Wayback Machine and other sources for recon.
WhatsMyName
Enumerates a username's presence across sites.
Whoxy
WHOIS lookup and reverse-WHOIS history, including registrant-name search.
Yandex Images
Reverse image search noted for strong face and location matching.
ZoomEye
Cyberspace search engine mapping internet-exposed devices, services and components.
archive.today
Web archiving service that saves and serves permanent snapshots of pages on demand.
crt.sh
Searches Certificate Transparency logs to enumerate a domain's certificates and subdomains.
dnstwist
Generates and checks domain permutations to detect typosquatting and phishing lookalikes.
grep.app
Search engine for source code across public GitHub repositories.
h8mail
Email OSINT and breach-hunting tool that pulls exposures for an address.
sn0int
Semi-automatic OSINT framework and package manager for entity recon.
snscrape
Scrapes posts and profiles from Twitter/X, Reddit, Telegram and other networks.
theHarvester
Collects emails, subdomains, and names from public sources.
urlscan.io
Sandboxes and analyzes websites, capturing requests, screenshots and tech.