Skip Trace Lookup — TruePeopleSearch & FastPeopleSearch

Look up a person by name (optionally narrowed by city/state) or run a reverse phone lookup, aggregated across two of the largest free US people-search directories: TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch. Returns current city, age, phone numbers, previous locations, and possible relatives, pulled straight from each site's public results page — no account, no login, no API key. Works as a normal Actor or as an MCP tool inside Claude, ChatGPT, and any other MCP-compatible agent.

Not a background-check or FCRA product — read this first

This Actor is not a consumer reporting agency (CRA) product and its output must not be used, in whole or in part, to make any decision covered by the US Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or similar laws — including but not limited to decisions about credit eligibility, employment, tenant/rental screening, insurance underwriting, or any other purpose that requires FCRA-compliant consumer reports. The underlying sites (TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch) carry the same disclaimer, and every comparable people-search API on the Apify Store carries some form of this same notice — this Actor is no different. It is built for lawful skip-tracing and reconnection use cases only: debt-collection or process-server outreach where a subject's current address is genuinely unknown, reconnecting with lost contacts or relatives, and recruiter/sales outreach to a named individual you already intend to contact. If your use case falls under FCRA, do not use this Actor — use a licensed CRA instead. You are solely responsible for how you use the data this Actor returns, and for complying with the FCRA, the GLBA, applicable state data-broker laws, and any other law that applies to your use.

What it does

For each search you provide, the Actor queries TruePeopleSearch and/or FastPeopleSearch's public results page for that name/location or phone number, parses every matched person card on the page, and returns up to a capped number of matches per source. Each match includes whatever the source site itself displays on its public results page — this Actor never logs in, never pays for a report, and never scrapes anything behind those sites' own account wall (neither site has one on its results page; both are free, ad-supported directories).

Sources — what's covered, and what isn't

Only two of the sites commonly bundled into "skip trace" tools actually have a genuine public results page with no login and no paywall, and this Actor is scoped to exactly those two:

• TruePeopleSearch — full name search (with optional city/state) and reverse phone lookup. Free, no account required.
• FastPeopleSearch — same two lookup modes, same no-login model.

Four other sites are sometimes bundled into "skip trace" listings on the Apify Store, and this Actor deliberately does not cover them, because direct testing showed each one gates real contact data behind a paid subscription:

• Spokeo — the public page shows a match count and city/age band, but every phone number, address, and detail field is blurred behind a "Sign Up" / "Unlock" wall. No usable data is available without payment.
• BeenVerified — the public page is a name/city directory (record counts by city and age band); the individual person report is behind account signup and a paid unlock.
• TruthFinder — there is no public results page at all; submitting a search routes straight into an account-creation and paid-trial flow before showing anything, including whether a record exists.
• PeopleFinders — sits behind a Cloudflare challenge in front of the same paid-report model as the three above.

We chose not to fake coverage of those four. A tool that returns a blurred teaser or requires you to pay a third party's subscription isn't a skip-trace result — it's a landing page. If that changes, this Actor will be updated.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searches	array (required)	List of lookups. Each entry needs either fullName (optionally with city and state) or phone for a reverse phone lookup.
sources	array	Which sites to query per search: truepeoplesearch, fastpeoplesearch, or both (default: both).
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	Cap on matched records kept per search, per source (default 5, max 20) — bounds cost on common names.

Example input:

{
  "searches": [
    { "fullName": "John Smith", "city": "New York", "state": "NY" },
    { "phone": "212-555-0100" }
  ],
  "sources": ["truepeoplesearch", "fastpeoplesearch"],
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 5
}

Output

One row per matched person record:

{
  "query_full_name": "John Smith",
  "query_city": "New York",
  "query_state": "NY",
  "query_phone": null,
  "source": "truepeoplesearch",
  "full_name": "John H Smith",
  "age": 45,
  "current_location": "Brooklyn, NY",
  "previous_locations": ["Queens, NY", "Albany, NY"],
  "phone_numbers": ["(718) 555-0142"],
  "possible_relatives": ["Jane Smith", "Robert Smith"],
  "profile_url": "https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/find/person/p...",
  "resolved": true,
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-02T12:00:00.000Z"
}

A search that returns zero matches on a source is never charged and produces no row for that source; a run-level _type: "summary" row (never billed) closes out every run with counts.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: you're charged once per matched person record actually delivered (person-matched). A search that returns nothing, or a lookup that hits a bot-detection block on a source, is never charged. There is no subscription and no per-run minimum — you only pay for records you receive.

Use cases

• Debt-collection / process-server outreach — locate a current address or phone for a subject whose last-known contact information is stale.
• Reconnecting with lost contacts — find a childhood friend, classmate, or relative you've lost touch with, using a name and a last-known city.
• Recruiting outreach — get a current phone number for a named candidate you already intend to contact, when your ATS record is stale.
• Investigative and journalistic research — corroborate a subject's location history from public directory data.
• Lead enrichment — append current city/phone to an existing named contact list before an outreach campaign.

FAQ

Does this require a TruePeopleSearch or FastPeopleSearch account? No. Neither site requires an account for its public results page, and this Actor never creates or simulates one.

Why isn't Spokeo/BeenVerified/TruthFinder/PeopleFinders included? See "Sources" above — each of those four gates real contact data behind a paid subscription on their public pages. We only ship sources that return real, usable data without payment.

Can I use this for a background check or tenant screening? No. See the disclaimer at the top of this README — this is not an FCRA consumer report, and using it for that purpose is against its intended use and likely against the law depending on your jurisdiction and use case.

Why did a search return zero results? Either the person genuinely isn't in that source's index for the name/ location given, or the request hit a bot-detection page and was retried automatically on a fresh proxy session; a source-level block after retries is logged but never charged.

Can I run this on a schedule? Yes — Apify Console → this Actor → Schedules → Add schedule. It reruns with the same input on autopilot.

Use in Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

This Actor is available as an MCP tool:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/skip-trace-lookup

Or call it directly with the apify-client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('themineworks/skip-trace-lookup').call({
    searches: [{ fullName: 'John Smith', city: 'New York', state: 'NY' }],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);