🕵️ Sherlock — Username Hunter Across 400+ Social Networks

Hunt down a person's online footprint by username across 400+ social networks, forums, and platforms — in seconds, in parallel, with smart proxy fallback.

⚡ Powered by the open-source sherlock-project detection ruleset, wrapped as a production-grade Apify Actor.

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🚀 Why Choose Us?

• 🌐 400+ sites — the same battle-tested ruleset that powers Sherlock CLI, refreshed live from upstream.
• 🛡️ Smart proxy fallback — runs with no proxy by default, auto-escalates to datacenter → residential only when a site fights back, then sticks with residential for the rest of the run.
• ⚡ Truly parallel — up to 200 sites checked concurrently per username.
• 💾 Live results — every confirmed hit is pushed to the dataset the moment it's found, so you can watch the table fill up.
• 🎯 Bulk usernames — enter as many as you want, one row per hit.
• 🔁 Automatic retries — exponential backoff on 5xx, timeouts, and rate-limits.

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🧰 Key Features

• 🔎 Username hunting across GitHub, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, X, Telegram, Pinterest, Steam, Spotify, and 390+ more.
• 🛡️ Proxy-tier escalation: NO_PROXY → DATACENTER → RESIDENTIAL × 3.
• 📊 Two dataset views: Found Accounts (one row per hit) and Summary (one row per username).
• 🧵 Configurable concurrency, timeout, retries, and backoff.
• 🪵 Detailed progress logs every 10% so long runs feel alive.

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📥 Input

{
  "usernames": ["johndoe", "elonmusk"],
  "sites": [],
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Field	Type	Default	What it does
usernames	string[]	—	One or more usernames to hunt. Required.
sites	string[]	[]	Optional whitelist (e.g. ["GitHub", "Reddit"]). Empty = scan all sites.
proxyConfiguration	object	{useApifyProxy: false}	Defaults to no proxy; auto-falls-back to datacenter then residential on block.

⚙️ Concurrency, timeout, retries and backoff are tuned internally with battle-tested defaults — no knobs to fiddle with.

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📤 Output

The actor produces two views in the same dataset:

1. Found Accounts (one row per hit — live updates)

{
  "username": "johndoe",
  "site_name": "GitHub",
  "profile_url": "https://www.github.com/johndoe",
  "proxy_tier": "NO_PROXY",
  "status_code": 200,
  "found_at": "2026-05-19T14:32:18+00:00"
}

2. Summary (one row per username — pushed at the end)

{
  "username": "johndoe",
  "total_found": 287,
  "links": [
    "https://www.github.com/johndoe",
    "https://www.reddit.com/user/johndoe",
    "..."
  ]
}

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🚀 How to Use (Apify Console)

1. 🔑 Log in at https://console.apify.com → Actors.
2. 🔍 Find Sherlock — Username Hunter and open it.
3. 📝 Enter one or more usernames (bulk supported).
4. 🛡️ Leave proxy on default (no proxy) — fallback is automatic.
5. ▶️ Click Start.
6. 📺 Watch the logs as hits stream in.
7. 📊 Open the Output tab when the run completes.
8. 💾 Export to JSON / CSV / XLSX.

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🤖 Use via API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"usernames":["johndoe","elonmusk"]}'

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💡 Best Use Cases

• 🕵️ OSINT — investigate a person's online footprint.
• 🛡️ Brand monitoring — check whether your handle is taken across platforms.
• 🔐 Account audit — discover dormant accounts under your own usernames.
• 🧪 Username availability — bulk-check before launching a product.

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💸 Pricing — Pay Per Event

• apify-actor-start — handled by Apify (first 5 s of compute free).
• apify-default-dataset-item — charged automatically per pushed row, so you only pay for confirmed hits + summaries.

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❓ FAQ

Q: Why is no proxy the default? A: Most Sherlock sites don't need a proxy. Running direct is fastest and cheapest. The actor only escalates to datacenter / residential proxies when a site actively blocks the request, then stays there for the rest of the run.

Q: How accurate is detection? A: We use the upstream sherlock-project/sherlock ruleset (status-code / message / response-url checks). False positives are rare but possible on sites that return generic landing pages.

Q: Can I scan only specific sites? A: Yes — fill in the Limit to specific sites field with case-insensitive names (e.g. GitHub, Reddit).

Q: How fast is it? A: At default concurrency=40 a single username takes ~30-60 s for the full 400+ site sweep.

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⚖️ Cautions & Legal

• 📜 Data is collected only from publicly available sources — no authentication, no private content.
• 🙅 Do not use this Actor to harass, dox, or harm anyone.
• 🌐 You are responsible for legal compliance (GDPR, CCPA, anti-spam laws, target site ToS).
• 🤝 Honor robots.txt and reasonable rate limits — being a good citizen reduces blocks too.

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📬 Support & Feedback

Open an issue or reach out via the Apify Store contact tab — we read every report.