Sherlock

Hunt down social media accounts by username across 400+ networks. This Actor runs the open-source Sherlock project (MIT) on Apify's serverless infrastructure — no local install, no Python setup, just give it a username and get a clean dataset of every site that has a profile under that name.

🧭 Looking for more? Browse the rest of the futurizerush Apify catalog — 50+ Actors covering social-media scraping, lead generation, brand monitoring, and trend analysis.

What You Get

• 👤 Username Discovery — Check a single username or a batch of up to 50 in one run
• 🌐 400+ Networks Covered — Mainstream social platforms, niche communities, gaming, art, dev, and crypto
• ✅ Match-Only Output — By default, only profiles that were actually found are returned (saves you from sifting through hundreds of "not found" rows)
• 🎯 Targeted Search — Optionally restrict the lookup to a short list of sites
• 🔗 Direct Profile Links — Every match includes a clickable URL to the live profile
• 📦 Bulk-Friendly — Process several usernames in one run with progressive results
• 📊 Run Summary — A per-username breakdown lands in the key-value store after every run

Use Cases

• OSINT & Investigations — Map a subject's online footprint across the open web
• Brand & Trademark Monitoring — See where your handle is taken (or impersonated)
• Identity Verification — Cross-check a person's stated profiles
• Account Audit — Find old accounts you've forgotten about under your own handle
• Recruiting & Sourcing — Quickly surface a candidate's public profiles
• Username Availability Research — Pick a handle that's free across the platforms you care about

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
usernames	Array of strings	Yes	The usernames to look up. Letters, digits, dot, underscore, or hyphen. Up to 50 per run.
siteList	Array of strings	No	Restrict the search to specific sites (e.g. ["GitHub", "Twitter", "Reddit"]). Empty = check all 400+.
onlyFound	Boolean	No	When on (default), only matches are returned. Turn off to also see available, blocked, or unknown sites.
includeNsfw	Boolean	No	Include adult sites in the catalog. Off by default.
timeout	Integer	No	Per-site response timeout in seconds. Default 60.

Example Input

{
  "usernames": ["johndoe", "janedoe"],
  "siteList": ["GitHub", "Instagram", "Twitter"],
  "onlyFound": true,
  "includeNsfw": false
}

Output

Each result describes one username found on one social network.

Field	Description
username	The username that was looked up
site_name	Name of the social network
site_url_user	Direct URL to the profile that was matched
site_url_main	Homepage of the network
status	One of claimed, available, unknown, illegal, waf
is_nsfw	Whether the network is flagged as adult content
response_time_ms	How long the site took to answer, in milliseconds
context	Additional notes from the lookup, when available
checked_at	ISO-8601 timestamp of the check (UTC)

Example Output

{
  "username": "johndoe",
  "site_name": "GitHub",
  "site_url_user": "https://github.com/johndoe",
  "site_url_main": "https://github.com",
  "status": "claimed",
  "is_nsfw": false,
  "response_time_ms": 432,
  "context": null,
  "checked_at": "2026-04-26T12:34:56+00:00"
}

A per-run SUMMARY record is also written to the key-value store with per-username counts and totals.

Powered by Sherlock

This Actor is a clean Apify wrapper around the open-source Sherlock project — the most widely used username-search tool — with batch processing, progressive streaming results, a structured dataset, and a per-run summary on top.

• Project: https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock
• License: MIT (commercial use permitted with attribution)

All credit for the underlying detection logic and the site catalog goes to the Sherlock project and its contributors.

🚀 Want more Apify Actors? Explore the futurizerush catalog — social media scrapers (Threads, TikTok, Instagram), lead generation, market research, and more.

Notes & Limitations

• Username detection is heuristic. A small number of sites can return false positives (the site responds the same way for any username) or false negatives (a temporary block or rate limit). Always verify a match before acting on it.
• Some sites return unknown or waf when they are unreachable or behind anti-bot protection — these are not failures of the Actor, just sites that could not be definitively answered at the moment of the check.
• The site catalog tracks Sherlock's bundled list. New networks are added and stale ones removed in upstream releases.
• Login-walled or region-restricted profiles may not be detectable.

FAQ

How many sites does it check? Over 400 social networks, taken from the bundled Sherlock catalog.

Can I check a single username only? Yes — provide a single entry in usernames.

What does status mean?

• claimed — A profile with this username exists on the site.
• available — The username is free on this site.
• unknown — The site could not be queried reliably.
• illegal — The username is not allowed by the site's own format rules.
• waf — The site responded with an anti-bot challenge.

Why does the same username sometimes give different results? Sites change their detection signals, deploy anti-bot challenges, or rate-limit clients. Re-running can give a cleaner answer.

Does it support proxies or Tor? Not in this version. Direct connections work for most lookups.

Can I add my own sites? Not in this version. The catalog comes from the upstream Sherlock release.

Disclaimer

This Actor is intended for educational, research, and lawful identity-verification purposes only. By using it you agree to:

• Use the data responsibly and in compliance with applicable laws and platform Terms of Service
• Not use the results for harassment, doxxing, stalking, or any unauthorized commercial purpose
• Verify any match before acting on it — username detection is heuristic and can be wrong
• Take full responsibility for how the data is used

The developer is not affiliated with Sherlock or any of the social networks listed and is not responsible for any misuse of this tool or the data it returns.

Support

For questions or issues, please reach out through Apify support.

If you find this Actor useful, you can support it (and the broader futurizerush catalog) by browsing through this affiliate link.

License & Attribution

This Actor wraps the open-source Sherlock project (PyPI package sherlock-project, version 0.16.0), which is distributed under the MIT License. The license text and copyright notice are reproduced below in compliance with its redistribution terms:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2019 Sherlock Project

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

A canonical machine-readable copy is also bundled with this Actor as THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md.

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Sherlock · username search · social media username checker · OSINT tool · profile finder · username availability · online presence audit · brand handle monitoring · identity verification · social network lookup · open-source intelligence · OpenClaw · Claude Code · Gemini · Antigravity · Codex · ChatGPT · Apify Skills