# Username Checker: 13 Verified Developer & Creator Platforms (`themineworks/username-checker`) Actor

Check whether a username exists on GitHub, YouTube, Behance, Flickr, SoundCloud, HackerOne and 8 more developer and creator platforms. Every platform verified live to distinguish a real account from a fake one. No login, no API key.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/themineworks/username-checker.md
- **Developed by:** [The Mine Works](https://apify.com/themineworks) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, Lead generation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$1.00 / 1,000 username checkeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Username Checker: 13 Verified Developer & Creator Platforms

> 🏆 Part of The Mine Works' 149-actor portfolio · 40,000+ runs · 200,000+ results delivered across our full distribution stack · 99.9%+ success rate

> 💰 $1.00 / 1,000 results.

> ⚡ Every platform here was verified live. A handle is not judged by guesswork, it is tested against a real known account and a nonsense one, and platforms that could not tell the two apart were dropped.
> 💸 Pay per username checked, not per platform. A run with no usernames is never billed.

Check whether a username exists on GitHub, YouTube, Behance, Flickr, SoundCloud, HackerOne, Bitbucket, Dev.to, Goodreads, Blogspot, Itch.io, Gumroad and Buy Me a Coffee, all in one call. No login, no browser session, no API key.

### Why 13 platforms, not hundreds

Most username checkers on the market advertise coverage across hundreds of sites. Before writing a single line of this actor, every candidate platform was tested live: a known-real username and a random nonsense username were both fetched, and the two responses were compared. Of 51 platforms tested this way, 38 were rejected, for three different reasons:

- **Some sites blocked the request outright** (a 403, or no response at all): Reddit, X/Twitter, Quora, GitLab, Medium, npm and others render nothing to a plain HTTP fetch without a real browser session.
- **Some sites returned the identical response for both usernames**: Instagram, Twitch, Pinterest, Replit and several more serve a generic client-side shell page regardless of whether the account exists, because the actual profile data loads via JavaScript after the page arrives. A checker built against these would report every username as "found" on every one of them, silently and confidently wrong.
- **One site, Houzz, looked distinguishable in initial testing but proved non-deterministic**: the identical fake username returned "not found" on one request and "found" on another request minutes later. That is not a logic bug to fix, it is the site's own infrastructure being inconsistent, so it was removed rather than shipped.

The 13 platforms in this actor are the ones that gave a genuinely different, verifiable answer for a real account versus a fake one. That is a smaller number than a "460 platforms" claim, and it is also true. A checker whose site definitions nobody re-verifies degrades silently as those sites change their front ends; this one only claims what was actually confirmed working.

### Input

- **usernames** (required): one or more usernames to check, without the @.
- **platforms**: optionally restrict the check to specific platforms from the 13 supported. Leave empty to check all of them.

### Example output

```json
{
 "username": "torvalds",
 "checked_at": "2026-08-30T00:00:00.000Z",
 "platforms_checked": 13,
 "platforms_found": 3,
 "results": [
 { "platform": "github", "category": "developer", "exists": true, "http_status": 200, "profile_url": "https://github.com/torvalds" },
 { "platform": "devto", "category": "developer", "exists": false, "http_status": 404, "profile_url": null },
 { "platform": "youtube", "category": "creator", "exists": true, "http_status": 200, "profile_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@torvalds" }
 ]
}
```

### Who this is for

Checking whether your own handle is available or already taken across the platforms you actually care about before you commit to a brand name. Verifying that a candidate, contributor, or business contact's claimed usernames genuinely exist, as a lightweight identity check. OSINT and research workflows that need a fast, structured existence check rather than opening fourteen tabs by hand.

### Frequently asked questions

**Why isn't Instagram or Twitter/X included?** Both were tested and rejected. Instagram returns the same generic page for a real and a fake username without a browser rendering the page, and Twitter/X blocks a plain HTTP request outright. Including them would mean guessing, not checking, and guessing isn't what this actor is for.

**What does `exists: null` mean?** The platform returned something other than its two verified signals (for example, a rate limit), so the result is genuinely unknown rather than assumed either way. This is rare, and the run log records it.

**Can more platforms be added?** Yes, but only after the same live verification: a real account must resolve differently from a nonexistent one. A platform whose front end changes to a JavaScript-only shell would be re-tested and could be removed rather than left silently wrong.

**What counts as a result I'm charged for?** Each username checked, regardless of how many of the 13 platforms it was found on. A run given no usernames is never charged.

**Why not just check by hand?** One request per platform, against a set of platforms that were each verified beforehand with a real handle and a nonsense one. A site that returns a generic 200 for any URL never makes it in, so it never shows up as a false positive. That verification step is the part manual checking skips.

**Does it use each platform's API?** No. Plain HTTP fetches. No login, no API keys, no per-platform rate-limit registration.

### Pricing

| Event | Price | You pay when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Username checked | $0.001 | A username is checked across the platforms you requested |

$1.00 per 1,000 checks, flat across every Apify plan. One username checked against all 13 platforms is one charge, not thirteen. There is no per-run start fee, and a run with no usernames is never charged.

### Run it on a schedule

Most people run this once: clearing a brand name before launch, or verifying a
handle someone says is theirs. If you want it recurring, for example watching a
handle you would take if it were released, the setup is the same as any Apify
actor.

1. Run it once with the input you want repeated, then click **Save as a task**
   so that exact input is attached to every future run.
2. In the Apify Console go to **Schedules** and create a new one, either a
   preset (hourly / daily / weekly) or a cron expression.
3. Save. It then runs unattended, billed the same pay-per-result way. Nothing
   is charged for the schedule existing.

### Use from Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

Hosted MCP endpoint, no install, OAuth on first connect:

```
https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/username-checker
```

Claude Desktop / Cursor config (token auth):

```json
{
 "mcpServers": {
 "username-checker": {
 "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/username-checker",
 "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
 }
 }
}
```

Ask your agent: *"Check whether the handle acme-labs is taken on the developer and creator platforms you can verify."*

### Part of the outbound prospecting toolkit

Clear a brand handle here, then resolve the company's [official domain](https://apify.com/themineworks/company-domain-finder) and its [LinkedIn company page](https://apify.com/themineworks/domain-to-linkedin-resolver) in the same pipeline.

Keywords: username checker, username availability checker, check handle availability, GitHub username checker, brand name clearance, username squatting check, social handle verification

# Actor input Schema

## `usernames` (type: `array`):

One or more usernames to check across the supported platforms.

## `platforms` (type: `array`):

Limit the check to specific platforms. Leave empty to check all 13. Valid values: github, bitbucket, devto, hackerone, youtube, soundcloud, behance, flickr, goodreads, blogspot, itch\_io, gumroad, buymeacoffee.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "usernames": [
    "github"
  ],
  "platforms": []
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "usernames": [
        "github"
    ],
    "platforms": []
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("themineworks/username-checker").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "usernames": ["github"],
    "platforms": [],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("themineworks/username-checker").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "usernames": [
    "github"
  ],
  "platforms": []
}' |
apify call themineworks/username-checker --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,themineworks/username-checker"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/61uorzPH3Z2j6umXA/builds/UGvZIAuAUdCSKLtFq/openapi.json