BeenVerified vs. TruthFinder—Which Is Better?

Author
Authors
Clay Team
&
Date
Apr 2, 2024

If you need a background check platform, BeenVerified and TruthFinder are among the first solutions that come to mind. Both platforms have been around for a while and serve the same general purpose, so identifying the differences might be challenging.

In our BeenVerified vs. TruthFinder comparison, you’ll see the two options go head-to-head and learn what sets them apart. We’ll go over their features, pricing, and overall user experience to help you find the more fitting solution.

What Went Into Making This Review?

To draw a fair comparison between BeenVerified and TruthFinder, we took the following steps:

  • Examining both platforms first-hand to determine their usability and UI differences
  • Gathering information about the platforms’ strengths and weaknesses from industry experts
  • Consulting reputable review sites to see the real-life results both platforms achieve and identify the most common complaints

TruthFinder vs. BeenVerified—Key Similarities and Differences

BeenVerified and TruthFinder tap into various sources to simplify background checks and make data gathering easier. Both options are web-based and offer support for iOS and Android, though BeenVerified has a slight edge because it’s also available on iPad and Apple Watch.

These platforms look quite similar at first glance, but you can see some notable differences when you scratch the surface. That’s why we compared them according to four factors:

  1. Features and data availability
  2. Interface and user experience
  3. Pricing
  4. Credibility and data quality

💡 Features and Data Availability

You can find basic information like someone’s email, address, or phone number using either BeenVerified or TruthFinder, though the former is more feature-rich and encompasses more data points. The following table compares the main features of both platforms:

Feature BeenVerified TruthFinder
People search
Reverse phone lookup
Username search
Address lookup
Email lookup
Unclaimed property
Vehicle lookup

While the features are similar, they’re structured differently between the two platforms. BeenVerified has dedicated tools for each, while TruthFinder bundles some data points together. For example, emails, addresses, and social media profiles are encompassed by TruthFinder’s Background Check feature, while they’re separated in BeenVerified (though both platforms give you all this data through People Search).

Court and criminal records are also available as a part of People Search with both platforms, so they help you avoid the dangers of associating yourself with shady individuals.

Due to the additional features unavailable with TruthFinder, BeenVerified takes the crown here—it has more use cases and is a more robust solution overall.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

💻 Interface and User Experience

BeenVerified lets you access all its features from the home screen, and getting started is simple enough—choose the type of search you need and enter the available information (e.g., someone’s name). 

When you do, the platform will start guiding you through the search process. You’ll see a clean interface with progress charts and updates as BeenVerified searches its database.

Source: BeenVerified

Sadly, things start going downhill at some point in the search. At the 75% mark, BeenVerified asks you to create an account. There’s no indication you’d need one when you start the search, so this feels a bit unsavory because the platform pulls you in before asking for your name and email.

The search continues when you sign up, only to reveal another unpleasant surprise—as soon as your information becomes available, BeenVerified asks you to pay for a trial to access it

While it’s reasonable to charge for information you’d otherwise spend hours looking for, some upfront transparency would be appreciated. Unfortunately, TruthFinder doesn’t offer it either as it operates by the exact same principle.

If anything, it includes even more “hooks” throughout the search process, including information snippets and a countdown timer showing when your report will supposedly be available.

Source: TruthFinder

The only slight advantage of BeenVerified is the UI design, which feels more modern compared to TruthFinder’s. As for the overall experience with both platforms, it could be much better. If you’re not willing to pay right away, you’ll only waste time on the search.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

💸 Pricing

Now that you know you can’t access data for free with BeenVerified or TruthFinder, it’s time to compare their pricing structures. Right off the bat, we can say that BeenVerified has a notable advantage—a seven-day trial unavailable with TruthFinder. It’s not a free trial, though, so you get two options:

  1. Casual—$1
  2. Plus—$5

The only difference between these trials is that Plus gives you access to PDF downloads. There aren’t any additional features, so this option isn’t worth it unless you genuinely need a PDF report. 

As for regular plans, you can choose between a one- and three-month subscription:

Subscription Cost
1 Month $29.99/month
3 Months $19.49/month (billed as a one-time payment of $58.48)

Note that you’ll be billed $29.99 immediately after your trial expires, so you need to close the account beforehand to avoid the charge. The only way to cancel the subscription is by calling or emailing BeenVerified, which is far from the most convenient way to do it. 

Unlike BeenVerified, TruthFinder doesn’t give you the option to unlock the data you searched for through a trial—you must pay the monthly subscription immediately. You have two options, though they’re slightly different from BeenVerified’s plans, as shown in the following table:

Subscription Cost
1 Month $28.05/month
2 Months $23.28/month (billed as a one-time payment of $46.56)

As you can see, there aren’t any major cost differences here, so neither platform offers significantly better value for money. Still, if you don’t want any monthly commitments, BeenVerified’s trial makes it a better choice.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

🥇 Credibility and Data Quality

BeenVerified and TruthFinder make some bold promises when it comes to the results you should expect. Unfortunately, many users feel both platforms fail to make good on them. The following table outlines the platforms’ ratings on reputable review and customer protection websites:

Platform BBB Grade Trustpilot Rating SiteJabber Rating
BeenVerified C 3.5/5 2.5/5
TruthFinder A+ 2.2/5 2.4/5

It’s clear that the reputation of both platforms has taken quite some hits. Some of the main complaints regarding BeenVerified include the following:

  • Outdated and incorrect information
  • Continued billing after account closure and complicated refund processes
  • Customer support issues

Many of these issues have also been reported among TruthFinder users, barring the refund problems as they don’t seem to be as prominent. Sadly, the data accuracy issue remains, particularly when it comes to public records. One user reported getting incorrect information about a potential employee’s criminal charges, which resulted in them not knowing the candidate had been arrested for violent crimes.

In contrast to such reviews, many users report having no issues with either platform’s data quality. According to a Reddit post, BeenVerified seems to be more accurate and “work most of the time.” Still, the ongoing billing and refund issues damage the platform’s credibility, so we don’t have a clear winner here.

Winner: It’s a tie 🏅

The Verdict—Which Platform Should You Use?

When we sum up everything discussed so far, BeenVerified seems to have a slight edge over TruthFinder. While the platform is far from perfect, it has some notable advantages, such as:

  • More features
  • A seven-day trial
  • A better-looking UI

That being said, either platform will only suit your needs if you’re looking for a background check solution for personal use. These options aren’t intended for businesses and can’t be used for bulk data searches involved in different processes like sales and go-to-market efforts.

If you need a platform that lets you gather and enrich data at scale, let us introduce another option—Clay.

Clay—All the Data You Need at Your Fingertips

Clay is a data enrichment and sales automation platform that makes it easy to find all the information you need about companies and individuals alike. It’s packed with useful features, most notably:

  • 50+ data providers—Clay draws data from many sources like SignalHire, Hunter.io, and dozens of others to ensure maximum coverage and help you get numerous data points easily
  • Waterfall enrichment—When you start searching for data, Clay will examine its sources one by one until it finds the data you’re looking for. You don’t need to sign up for any separate platforms, and you only pay for the data you’ve obtained
  • AI enrichment—Clay uses AI powered by GPT-4 to let you conduct research and summarize the results without tedious work
  • Claygent—You can use Clay’s AI web scraper to dig out information from all over the web in no time

With Clay, you can go far beyond basic contact information. It’s a perfect choice for gathering all the data you need to send out hyper-personalized emails and supercharge your outreach efforts. If you need proof, ask First Round Capital, which uses Clay to enrich and update over 220k CRM contacts

Source: Clay

When you have the data you need, you can export it to your CRM and other platforms in no more than a few clicks. The platform supports over 100 integrations, so it can fit your workflow like a glove. Here’s what users have to say about it:

Source: Product Hunt

The icing on the cake is Clay’s AI email builder, which lets you automate entire email sequences by creating personalized drafts based on your data. No more generic emails or tedious writing processes!

💡Bonus read: To learn more about why Clay is a better choice compared to other, similar solutions, read our guides on:

Get Started for Free, Upgrade as Needed

You can create a free Clay account in three steps:

  1. Visit the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s numerous features

The free account doesn’t have a time limit, so you can take your time to play around with Clay and see all the results it can get. If you wish to upgrade, you can choose from four paid tiers:

  1. Starter—$149/month
  2. Explorer—$349/month
  3. Pro—$800/month
  4. Enterprise—Custom

Each plan unlocks exciting new features, from email sequencing integrations to custom automaton templates. You can also choose your preferred number of credits within each plan so you can avoid overspending and get the most out of every dollar you invest. 💲

If you want to learn more about Clay, visit the Learn hub and join the ever-growing Slack community. You can also sign up for the newsletter to receive useful tips on fine-tuning your outbound campaigns.

If you need a background check platform, BeenVerified and TruthFinder are among the first solutions that come to mind. Both platforms have been around for a while and serve the same general purpose, so identifying the differences might be challenging.

In our BeenVerified vs. TruthFinder comparison, you’ll see the two options go head-to-head and learn what sets them apart. We’ll go over their features, pricing, and overall user experience to help you find the more fitting solution.

What Went Into Making This Review?

To draw a fair comparison between BeenVerified and TruthFinder, we took the following steps:

  • Examining both platforms first-hand to determine their usability and UI differences
  • Gathering information about the platforms’ strengths and weaknesses from industry experts
  • Consulting reputable review sites to see the real-life results both platforms achieve and identify the most common complaints

TruthFinder vs. BeenVerified—Key Similarities and Differences

BeenVerified and TruthFinder tap into various sources to simplify background checks and make data gathering easier. Both options are web-based and offer support for iOS and Android, though BeenVerified has a slight edge because it’s also available on iPad and Apple Watch.

These platforms look quite similar at first glance, but you can see some notable differences when you scratch the surface. That’s why we compared them according to four factors:

  1. Features and data availability
  2. Interface and user experience
  3. Pricing
  4. Credibility and data quality

💡 Features and Data Availability

You can find basic information like someone’s email, address, or phone number using either BeenVerified or TruthFinder, though the former is more feature-rich and encompasses more data points. The following table compares the main features of both platforms:

Feature BeenVerified TruthFinder
People search
Reverse phone lookup
Username search
Address lookup
Email lookup
Unclaimed property
Vehicle lookup

While the features are similar, they’re structured differently between the two platforms. BeenVerified has dedicated tools for each, while TruthFinder bundles some data points together. For example, emails, addresses, and social media profiles are encompassed by TruthFinder’s Background Check feature, while they’re separated in BeenVerified (though both platforms give you all this data through People Search).

Court and criminal records are also available as a part of People Search with both platforms, so they help you avoid the dangers of associating yourself with shady individuals.

Due to the additional features unavailable with TruthFinder, BeenVerified takes the crown here—it has more use cases and is a more robust solution overall.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

💻 Interface and User Experience

BeenVerified lets you access all its features from the home screen, and getting started is simple enough—choose the type of search you need and enter the available information (e.g., someone’s name). 

When you do, the platform will start guiding you through the search process. You’ll see a clean interface with progress charts and updates as BeenVerified searches its database.

Source: BeenVerified

Sadly, things start going downhill at some point in the search. At the 75% mark, BeenVerified asks you to create an account. There’s no indication you’d need one when you start the search, so this feels a bit unsavory because the platform pulls you in before asking for your name and email.

The search continues when you sign up, only to reveal another unpleasant surprise—as soon as your information becomes available, BeenVerified asks you to pay for a trial to access it

While it’s reasonable to charge for information you’d otherwise spend hours looking for, some upfront transparency would be appreciated. Unfortunately, TruthFinder doesn’t offer it either as it operates by the exact same principle.

If anything, it includes even more “hooks” throughout the search process, including information snippets and a countdown timer showing when your report will supposedly be available.

Source: TruthFinder

The only slight advantage of BeenVerified is the UI design, which feels more modern compared to TruthFinder’s. As for the overall experience with both platforms, it could be much better. If you’re not willing to pay right away, you’ll only waste time on the search.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

💸 Pricing

Now that you know you can’t access data for free with BeenVerified or TruthFinder, it’s time to compare their pricing structures. Right off the bat, we can say that BeenVerified has a notable advantage—a seven-day trial unavailable with TruthFinder. It’s not a free trial, though, so you get two options:

  1. Casual—$1
  2. Plus—$5

The only difference between these trials is that Plus gives you access to PDF downloads. There aren’t any additional features, so this option isn’t worth it unless you genuinely need a PDF report. 

As for regular plans, you can choose between a one- and three-month subscription:

Subscription Cost
1 Month $29.99/month
3 Months $19.49/month (billed as a one-time payment of $58.48)

Note that you’ll be billed $29.99 immediately after your trial expires, so you need to close the account beforehand to avoid the charge. The only way to cancel the subscription is by calling or emailing BeenVerified, which is far from the most convenient way to do it. 

Unlike BeenVerified, TruthFinder doesn’t give you the option to unlock the data you searched for through a trial—you must pay the monthly subscription immediately. You have two options, though they’re slightly different from BeenVerified’s plans, as shown in the following table:

Subscription Cost
1 Month $28.05/month
2 Months $23.28/month (billed as a one-time payment of $46.56)

As you can see, there aren’t any major cost differences here, so neither platform offers significantly better value for money. Still, if you don’t want any monthly commitments, BeenVerified’s trial makes it a better choice.

Winner: BeenVerified 🏆

🥇 Credibility and Data Quality

BeenVerified and TruthFinder make some bold promises when it comes to the results you should expect. Unfortunately, many users feel both platforms fail to make good on them. The following table outlines the platforms’ ratings on reputable review and customer protection websites:

Platform BBB Grade Trustpilot Rating SiteJabber Rating
BeenVerified C 3.5/5 2.5/5
TruthFinder A+ 2.2/5 2.4/5

It’s clear that the reputation of both platforms has taken quite some hits. Some of the main complaints regarding BeenVerified include the following:

  • Outdated and incorrect information
  • Continued billing after account closure and complicated refund processes
  • Customer support issues

Many of these issues have also been reported among TruthFinder users, barring the refund problems as they don’t seem to be as prominent. Sadly, the data accuracy issue remains, particularly when it comes to public records. One user reported getting incorrect information about a potential employee’s criminal charges, which resulted in them not knowing the candidate had been arrested for violent crimes.

In contrast to such reviews, many users report having no issues with either platform’s data quality. According to a Reddit post, BeenVerified seems to be more accurate and “work most of the time.” Still, the ongoing billing and refund issues damage the platform’s credibility, so we don’t have a clear winner here.

Winner: It’s a tie 🏅

The Verdict—Which Platform Should You Use?

When we sum up everything discussed so far, BeenVerified seems to have a slight edge over TruthFinder. While the platform is far from perfect, it has some notable advantages, such as:

  • More features
  • A seven-day trial
  • A better-looking UI

That being said, either platform will only suit your needs if you’re looking for a background check solution for personal use. These options aren’t intended for businesses and can’t be used for bulk data searches involved in different processes like sales and go-to-market efforts.

If you need a platform that lets you gather and enrich data at scale, let us introduce another option—Clay.

Clay—All the Data You Need at Your Fingertips

Clay is a data enrichment and sales automation platform that makes it easy to find all the information you need about companies and individuals alike. It’s packed with useful features, most notably:

  • 50+ data providers—Clay draws data from many sources like SignalHire, Hunter.io, and dozens of others to ensure maximum coverage and help you get numerous data points easily
  • Waterfall enrichment—When you start searching for data, Clay will examine its sources one by one until it finds the data you’re looking for. You don’t need to sign up for any separate platforms, and you only pay for the data you’ve obtained
  • AI enrichment—Clay uses AI powered by GPT-4 to let you conduct research and summarize the results without tedious work
  • Claygent—You can use Clay’s AI web scraper to dig out information from all over the web in no time

With Clay, you can go far beyond basic contact information. It’s a perfect choice for gathering all the data you need to send out hyper-personalized emails and supercharge your outreach efforts. If you need proof, ask First Round Capital, which uses Clay to enrich and update over 220k CRM contacts

Source: Clay

When you have the data you need, you can export it to your CRM and other platforms in no more than a few clicks. The platform supports over 100 integrations, so it can fit your workflow like a glove. Here’s what users have to say about it:

Source: Product Hunt

The icing on the cake is Clay’s AI email builder, which lets you automate entire email sequences by creating personalized drafts based on your data. No more generic emails or tedious writing processes!

💡Bonus read: To learn more about why Clay is a better choice compared to other, similar solutions, read our guides on:

Get Started for Free, Upgrade as Needed

You can create a free Clay account in three steps:

  1. Visit the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s numerous features

The free account doesn’t have a time limit, so you can take your time to play around with Clay and see all the results it can get. If you wish to upgrade, you can choose from four paid tiers:

  1. Starter—$149/month
  2. Explorer—$349/month
  3. Pro—$800/month
  4. Enterprise—Custom

Each plan unlocks exciting new features, from email sequencing integrations to custom automaton templates. You can also choose your preferred number of credits within each plan so you can avoid overspending and get the most out of every dollar you invest. 💲

If you want to learn more about Clay, visit the Learn hub and join the ever-growing Slack community. You can also sign up for the newsletter to receive useful tips on fine-tuning your outbound campaigns.

More Articles