The Best Background Check Software | Top 12 Reviewed for 2023

With the best background check software, you can get detailed reports to learn someone’s contact information, and criminal records, amongst loads more, including marriage records, verifying someone’s identity, etc. This helps to streamline your hiring process, prevent fraud, or investigate an individual with ease.

Whether you’re a business owner or a private investigator, here we look over the best background check software in 2023 — we explore their pros, cons, and features to help you find the ideal background check service for you or your business. Read on to find out how providers like TruthFinder, US Search, and Checkmate can help you learn everything you need to know about an individual’s background.

The Best Background Check Software 2023 | Quick Answer

There’s an abundance of background check software out there, with a lot of them being inefficient or outright scams. Today we bring you a detailed breakdown of the cream of the crop — although TruthFinder claims the title for the best background check software in our testing, here’s a quick overview of the leading competition:

1. TruthFinder — Overall, the Best Background Check Software in 2023
2. Checkmate — Best Private Investigator Background Check Software
3. US Search — The Best Criminal Background Check Site in the US
4. Intelius — The Best Background Check Software for Ease of Use
5. Certn — Perfect for Full Global Background Checks
6. Paycom — Best Background Service for Automated Processes
7. Turn — First-Class Criminal Background Check Service
8. Checkr — Quality, Easy-to-Use Background Check Software
9. EZ Screen — Well-Rounded Comprehensive Background Checker
10. Employment Hero — Solid Background Checker With Abundant Peripherals
11. GoodHire — Phenomenal Background Check Software for SMBs
12. Good Egg — Excellent Background Checker With Continuous Checks

The Best Background Check Software 2023 | In-Depth Reviews

Now, let’s go over the market’s leading background check solutions, covering what each one has to offer you in some more depth.

1. TruthFinder — Overall, the Background Check Software in 2023

TruthFinder is the most comprehensive, detailed, and customizable background check software tool out there. In fact, it’s even one of the best tenant screening solutions. With over 60,000 5-star reviews and hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers, businesses, private investigators, and property owners alike choose TruthFinder.

With pre-employment background checks, it’s paramount to find out as much as you can about the education, experience, and finances of your prospective hire. However, lately, it’s become more and more important to find out about any controversial public statements or social media posts that contradict your firm’s ideals.

TruthFinder will not only show you their employment history, drug tests, criminal history, and basic personal information, but also any blogs, social media accounts, or personal websites your potential employee has.

One of the hardest things for background check software to find is criminal activity. While most software on this list will let you check their criminal records, TruthFinder takes it one step further.

The tool will scour the dark web — a place routinely frequented by criminals in order to find out whether the employee has leaked any information in the past. This feature applies to your whole organization, so you can ensure your data is safe without individually looking up every employee.

TruthFinder also has a “reverse phone lookup” feature where you can type in a phone number, and the service will find the individual it’s connected to.

From there, you can use the best private investigator background check software to conduct a background check through its regular search. Backing this up with detailed location data, marriage records, and other details, TruthFinder is the best pick for PIs looking for a background check tool.

2. Checkmate — Best Private Investigator Background Check Software

Checkmate is the perfect background check software for private investigators while maintaining a plethora of use cases for businesses. It excels at pulling data from a wide swath of sources and presenting it in an extremely clear, user-friendly manner.

The tool will scour all available public records and find any information on whether your target has traffic records, a gun license, criminal record, arrests, or prior marriages and divorces.

It’ll also show you any social media accounts and websites associated with the individual. Plus, with its Android app, you can even pull all of this information on the go to create an entire profile on the target, all from your mobile device.

As a private investigator, you’ll want your data and searches to be hidden. To facilitate this, Checkmate’s website is Norton Symantec secured. Furthermore, it processes all payment data with 256-bit encryption — the same level of security that the best VPN services and the military use.

On top of this, it uses a secure SSL connection to facilitate a private, 128-bit encrypted connection at all times. This ensures that your target won’t be able to catch wind of you looking them up and that your information won’t leak.

Naturally, it has a reverse phone lookup feature. This lets you type in a phone number such as an unknown number calling your client, or yourself, and tries to find the owner of that number.

From there, you can use its regular background check to find out who it is and learn more about the individual. This can be incredibly useful in cases such as investigating a cheating spouse, letting you find out a lot even without a cheating spouse spy app.

3. US Search — The Best Criminal Background Check Site in the US

US Search is the best background check software if your priority is to discover whether a prospective employee has a criminal record or has appeared in court. As the name suggests, you’ll only be able to benefit from US Search’s capabilities if you reside in the United States.

The tool pools information from many publicly available records and condenses them into a single report. There, you’ll be able to see their address history, criminal records, drug tests (if public), employment history, and more.

The criminal record check is quite in-depth, and almost always accurate, which is crucial for businesses that can’t afford to hire a felon but aren’t spoiled for choice in terms of candidates. This data will help to ensure that you hire a suitable fit.

Needless to say, US Search is a great background check software for small businesses, and it’s fairly cheap and has an extremely clean and intuitive UI. This is extremely useful for businesses that can’t dedicate the man-hours to deal with cumbersome UIs, or for those looking to dip their toes into the space without breaking the bank.

Finally, US Search is excellent at finding contact information, be this email addresses, phone numbers, or social media accounts. This makes it an excellent choice for private investigators looking to invest in a tool that’ll streamline their workflow, as you can contact the target without them knowing it’s you.

4. Intelius — The Best Background Check Software for Ease of Use

Intelius makes conducting a background check as easy as typing in a few relevant pieces of information and receiving a detailed, thorough report containing everything you need to know to evaluate a potential hire or investigate an individual.

Its user interface is slick and simple, ensuring you spend less time browsing information and more time making hiring decisions. Sometimes, rather than looking at any specific information, you’ll want your background check to cover a lot of areas — and Intelius is perfect for this.

Not only will it cover the usual fanfare of address, phone number, criminal records, and the like, but also assets, gun licenses, and a variety of other information — all the data you need to make an informed decision on the best prospective employee.

However, no matter how easy background check software is to use, problems can arise, and in competitive industries, where hiring quickly matters, you’re not going to have time to waste with issues. Thankfully, Intelius’ has phenomenal customer support.

There’s an available phone number and email service available on the site to help resolve any issue you may come across — plus, the hours are also quite nice, operating 7 AM to 5 PM PT, Monday to Friday.

Finally, Intelius runs routine promotions through email and other services. Currently, if you register on the Intelius site, you should receive an email offer for a discount or a 5-day free trial. This flexibility and the ability to take advantage of some of its features for free make it an excellent background search software for beginners.

5. Certn — Perfect for Full Global Background Checks

Certn is the best background check software for conducting global international background checks. If you’re a larger firm, or a small business looking to vet remote/international hires with ease, there are few that could accomplish it as well as Certn.

Doing international background checks can be a nightmare. Even simple identity verification can be difficult to conduct across borders, and due to international rules and regulations, most background check software operates in only 1-2 countries.

This is where Certn breaks the mold, allowing you to conduct fully international background checks covering employment history, credit checks, education verification, and more. This lets you have an easier time screening remote talent or hiring across borders.

Certn excels at providing in-depth background checks covering a wide variety of data since it pulls from over 200,000 data sources. This helps patch holes that other background check tools might have in their report.

Even if someone has a house in Germany but lives in the US, you’ll know about it. Plus, due to the innovative technology used for the tool, Certn’s turnaround times are extremely low, with a search usually taking around 10 minutes.

Certn is a go-to background check software for small businesses, as it offers a cheap package that gives you up to 100 high-quality checks annually for only $10/month. And if you’re really interested in a candidate, you can pay to go even deeper and gain more insight into them without breaking the bank. This makes it a reliable solution that’ll scale alongside you.

6. Paycom — Best Background Check Software for Automated Processes

Paycom is a social media screening company alongside a background checker. It aims to provide a smoother, more automated way to screen candidates so you can hire more qualified people faster.

This FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) compliant tool comes with a variety of different benefits, including management streamlining, onboarding assistance for employees, applicant tracking, and more.

Hence why Paycom is considered a one-stop shop for all of your HR software needs — it does a phenomenal job at helping managers and client acquisition specialists handle basic day-to-day activities without the need to learn multiple complex toolkits. This, in turn, helps you and your teams focus on tasks that require human care.

Besides this, automation is the name of the game at Paycom, letting you set up automatic background checks for prospective employees to receive criminal background checks, identity verification, health screening information, and more. You can even take this a step further and automate reference checks, rather than having to call each company individually.

Another way Paycom makes hiring employees more efficient is by automatically scanning their data for predetermined criteria. If they don’t match them, the tool will automatically disregard them and will let you hire them in a single click if they do.

7. Turn — First-Class Criminal Background Check Service

Turn is an easy-to-use hiring solution that comes with background check software. It operates internationally and has been shown to decrease time-to-hire by up to 73%.

The tool excels at providing first-class criminal background checks — not only will it check the usual suspects like the sex offender registry, felonies, and the like, but it’ll also check global watchlists, plus you’ll even know if the candidate has an unpaid parking ticket.

In some industries, the traffic violation search can be crucial, as the employee might be required to operate a vehicle. Being able to find this out on time lets you ensure that you’re only hiring safe, competent candidates.

Each report is FCRA-compliant and is backed by Turn’s internal compliance team. In fact, they’re so secure in their high performance you can try this background check software free of charge for the first 20 applicants. If you’re a smaller business looking to try background check software, this can help you decide if your team needs one.

Finally, Turn places a large emphasis on your data’s security. It takes advantage of machine learning, a variety of compliances, content security policies, and attack-blocking technologies to ensure that your information is free from all attacks. This makes it an excellent choice for larger businesses that can afford its higher price tag but can’t afford to have their data leaked.

8. Checkr — Quality, Easy-to-Use Background Check Software

Checkr is an incredibly simple, yet effective background check software. If you’re a PI looking for a quick and easy way to get essential background information or a smaller firm that might have a hard time using some of the more complex tools on this list, it might be the best pick for you.

One of the tool’s most interesting features is the ability to set up different rule sets that the tool will assess the candidate with. This means that if your firm has multiple jobs on offer you could, say, set it up so that it checks for a criminal record and drug tests for a PR position while looking at their driving record and license for a driver’s position.

This lets you streamline the hiring process and ensure your candidates are meeting your prerequisites without wading through each individual resume. Besides all this, Checkr is available in over 200 countries, which, alongside its ease of use, makes it an excellent choice for large businesses with establishments across the world.

Instead of your subsidiaries working with different software at each location, and mucking up hiring processes, you can use Checkr at all of them. It also significantly lessens the training needed for hiring personnel, as the tool automates screening references and past employment.

The tool’s most revolutionary feature, however, is its continuous checks. This feature will periodically run a check on all of your employees and report back any changes to their records that may happen. This lets you stay ahead of controversy and intervene with problematic employees before it can damage your business.

9. EZ Screen — Well-Rounded Comprehensive Background Checker

EZ Screen is a US-based employee background check company with a well-balanced assortment of features presented in a user-friendly manner.

Geared toward SMBs, EZ Screen can run many types of background checks, this includes credit checks, criminal record-focused reports, and more. Being able to streamline what kind of background check you’d like to see will improve hiring efficiency, as your client acquisition professionals won’t need to worry about wading through endless waves of irrelevant information.

Regardless of which one of its many types of background checks you run, the data arrives swiftly and is pulled from hundreds of thousands of sources simultaneously.

Having a web this large, while covering only the United States, lets EZ Screen maintain a huge degree of precision when it comes to their data. This can be a massive help for SMBs, as having a potential employee rejected due to a mistake in the background check can have lasting consequences for your business.

EZ Screen can integrate your process seamlessly into the 200+ Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) currently set up, meaning that regardless of what kind of ATS you use, you’ll be able to set it up to instantly know if employees meet your criteria. In fact, it’ll even let you hire or reject them with the press of a single button. This presents a large increase in efficiency, as you won’t need to manually cross-reference the ATS and background check results.

10. Employment Hero — Solid Background Checker With Abundant Peripherals

Employment Hero is a software suite supporting over 80,000 businesses across the world. It focuses on HR and recruitment software, with its background check acting as the backbone of many of its recruitment products.

Being a full software suite, Employment Hero is the perfect choice for businesses looking to handle all of their HR and recruitment needs with one provider.

Not only do you get excellent background check software, but also an HR manager, payroll management software, reviews assistance, and more. This lets you streamline your recruitment process and help talent acquisition specialists focus on finding quality talent, rather than endlessly screening the wrong people.

The company works internationally and is capable of conducting international police checks, employment history, and reference checks, credit history checks, and more. Having an assortment of all these different options, as well as native integration with your other HR software, makes ensuring your candidates meet the right prerequisites for the job a breeze.

Beyond this, Employment Hero offers compliance assistance, which will help your business comply with regulations regardless of the field or country. With compliance becoming more and more important in the business world, it can be hard to stay on top of everything, and Employment Hero ensures you won’t find yourself paying unexpected fines.

11. GoodHire — First-Class Background Check Software for SMBs

GoodHire might be the perfect background check software if you’re an SMB looking for a fluff-free, streamlined solution that does a great job of minimizing the need for human effort.

The tool uses AI and a vast array of databases to ensure it shows you what you need to know about the potential employee. It’ll do this in accordance with state laws, so it won’t show you things like non-convictions in a state like California, where not hiring based on that is illegal. Similarly, you can set up your own requirements and have GoodHire filter out the rest — significantly thinning down the hiring process.

The tool will show you the criminal record, address history, and everything else you need for pre-employment background checks. With that being said, it’s worth noting that the tool only works within US borders, so businesses outside the US will be better off with a different solution.

Finally, GoodHire helps you streamline your entire business operation by integrating with a variety of HR management software. However, it can only integrate with software the company has pre-approved, so if you’re looking to create your own integrations and plugins, you’re better off opting for a tool like Checkr.

12. Good Egg — Excellent Background Checker With Continuous Checks

Good Egg is an innovative background check solution with a variety of interesting features, and solid reporting capabilities.

One of the biggest worries for many companies is that their potential employee might do something unadvisable after being hired, or after you’ve already conducted a background check.

Because of this, Good Egg continuously runs checks to ensure that the employee stays who you want them to be. It breaks its reports down into 3 sections: Past, Present, and Future. This helps ensure that you’re always making the right hiring decisions and that you can intervene on time if an employee starts acting inappropriately.

The Past section shows you all the usual information — criminal record, past employment, education verification, and similar data. The Present section will show you where the employee is currently, where they work, whether they’re timely, where they live, and if they’ve failed any drug tests. This helps you have a full picture of a candidate, as a candidate with a rough past can still be a solid choice if they’ve reformed.

The Future section, however, is perhaps the most interesting one. It shows you their social media activity, professional references, web screening results, and more. This helps you better assess the risk of employing each individual employee, letting your business save funds down the line.

How We Chose the Best Background Checker Software

Running a background check is an essential part of any business’ reputational risk management. Hence that there was a lot that we took into consideration when determining which software would make the cut for this list.

Here’s a summed-up list of crucial criteria that we used to grade each tool to compile our top 12 best background check services:

How to Use a Background Checker App

Now, let’s go over how to use a background checker app using our number 1 pick — TruthFinder.

Step 1 — Sign Up and Set Up Your Account

First off, you’ll want to visit the TruthFinder site using the button below. From there, create an account and purchase your desired membership level. TruthFinder will then send you an email to confirm your email address. Click the link in the email to set up your account.

Step 2 — Familiarize Yourself With the Dashboard

Once you’ve made your account, you can log in from the upper-right corner of the screen. From there, you can familiarize yourself with the dashboard and view any reports you create. Speaking of which …

Step 3 — Run Your First Background Check

In order to run your first background check, visit the TruthFinder website, and type in the Name, Last Name, and City/State of the individual you want to check. Then, pick the type of background check you want to run, and the green “Search” button. Wait for TruthFinder to complete your check, and you can find it in your Reports tab as seen above.

Background Check FAQs