How Sleuthly works
You start from a photo, a name or an email. We search the public web, including beyond your own country, and return one clean report, with the source linked next to every single result. No magic: everything is verifiable.
Your search is private and silent. The person you look up is never notified.
- Public data only
- Every result names its source
- Opt out anytime
- No subscription traps
Three steps, no black box
- 1
You give us a starting point
Drop in a photo, type a name, or paste an email address. That's the whole input. You don't need an account to start, and you don't need to tell us why.
We don't store your photo · your report never enters our index · we don't profile you or anyone else.
- 2
We search the public web
We search public sources across several countries, not only the ones your local search engine shows you. For a photo, we look for where that face and that image appear publicly. For a name or email, we look for public profiles, sites, companies and mentions.
We promise the kind of result, never a guaranteed number. We don't claim "every site" or a count of images, we show you what we found, and where.
- 3
You get one report, with every source linked
Results come back as one clean report: matching photos, public profiles, companies and roles, and mentions, each with a badge showing its public source and a link, so you can check it yourself. Download it as a PDF whenever you want.
example.com, public profile· 2026
How can it recognise the same person in different photos?
Think of it like a fingerprint, but for a face. Sleuthly reads the proportions of the face, the distances between eyes, nose and mouth, which stay recognisable across different photos, years and situations. It doesn't compare the whole image, but those ratios: that's why it can suggest the same person even in a different photo.
A face is a clue, not proof. Sleuthly shows you a possible match and the source behind it, you decide. We never label a result "certain".
Photo search and face recognition
Two different questions. Sleuthly answers both.
Photo search
Find where this exact image appears online.
Looks for copies and re-uploads of the picture itself, the same file, reposted, embedded or shared elsewhere.
When to use it: best when you want to know where your photo has been used or reposted.
Face recognition
Find the same person in different photos.
Looks for the same face in other photos, different shots, different days.
When to use it: best when you have one photo and want to know who else online is the same person.
Photos get cropped, mirrored, recoloured or lightly edited when they're reposted. Photo search is built to catch those altered versions too, a cropped or mirrored copy of your picture should still surface. We're honest about the limit: heavy edits or AI-redrawn images may not match, and we'll show a "Possible match, verify the source" label rather than pretend we're sure.
How good is your starting point?
The quality of your result depends a lot on what you start with. Here's the honest version:
A clear, well-lit photo of one face
This is the best starting point. One front-facing, in-focus face gives the strongest, fewest and most confident possible matches.
A blurry photo, a group shot, or a face at an angle
Still workable, but expect more uncertainty: you may get several possible matches to compare instead of one, and some with lower confidence. Crop to the single face you care about before you search.
A common name, or a name shared by many people
A name like "Mario Rossi" or "John Smith" will return several candidates, namesakes, not one person. That's why we show each candidate with its source and a possible-match label, and why adding a city, an email or a photo narrows it down. We'd rather show you several candidates honestly than guess one and be wrong.
Whatever you start with, we never invent a result to fill a gap. If we found little, we'll tell you.
What we don't do
We read the public web, we don't build it. We don't break into private accounts, we don't get past anyone's login, and we don't build a database of faces by automatically collecting the web at random. You can ask to be removed from what we surface, any time, free.
See what's public, start with a photo, a name or an email.
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