Before diving into online tools and resources, remember that your town or county already has public records that you can access for free. But if you cannot find what you are looking for in those records, here are the most popular online tools for obtaining information on persons as well as businesses:
Cost: $795 - $1,995 per year
National Student Clearinghouse is an online database that tracks and verifies students major degrees and dates of attendance which is very efficient and helpful for schools with a vast number of students.
National Student Clearinghouse
Cost: Free
Investment Adviser Search allows you to search the complete compilation of Investment Adviser Firms currently registered with SEC and state securities regulators. Furthermore, the site has also a database of individual investment adviser representatives.
Cost: Free
Using Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR), the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission allows you to pull up the electronic documents of companies registered under the SEC.
U.S Securities and Exchange Commission
Cost: Free
The Bureau of Industry and Security - U.S Department of Commerce allows you to view the Denied Persons List. A “Denied Person” is an individual whose export privileges have been forfeited by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, also known as the BIS. A US company or individual is unable to participate in an export transaction with any persons or corporations on the Denied Persons List.
Bureau of Industry and Security
Cost: Free/ Donation/ Custom Data Fee
Open Secrets is run by donations and can arrange custom data requests according to the federal campaign finance data you need. They can pull up data all the way back to 1979.
Cost: Membership Fee
If you want to hire a private investigator worldwide, the Council of International Investigators is the right way to go. They have specialists available for every kind of investigation and have a vetting process to ensure quality.
Council of International Investigators
Cost: Free
A non-profit digital library containing millions of books, jobs, and people, Internet Archive consists of 330 billion web pages, 20 million books, and more.
Cost: Free
If you’re looking for an online entity, Whois Domain Tool enables you to trace the ownership and tenure of a domain name. Get hosting history, a name server report, reverse name, and domain search.
Cost: Free
Federal Inmate Locator allows you to determine the whereabouts of U.S Bureau of Prisons inmates incarcerated from 1982 to the present.
Cost: Free
Comb through up-to-date records for 1.8 million IRS-recognized tax-exempt organizations from Guidestar, the world's largest source of information on nonprofit organizations.
Cost: 14-day Free trial
A well-known genealogy site, Ancestry.com does a lot more than uncovering ancient relatives. Using the site, you can discover in-depth family history, information about your ethnicity, retain access to global military records, and more.
Cost: 7-day Free trial
Newspaper.com boasts the largest online newspaper archive. You can use it to search historical newspapers from the 1700s to 2000s.
Cost: Free
Indeed is a massive online resume database where you can find job listings and information about employers and applicants.
Cost: Free
Search people via their phone number, name, address, and/or e-mail address by using SpyDialer which contains billions of phone numbers obtained using social media and user-contributed address books.
Cost: Free
The official repository for records of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard, and other government agencies. Historical Military Records provides access to records of veterans who separated from service after 1955.
Cost: Membership
The World Organization of Detectives is the foremost international association of professional investigators and security service organizations. Hire private investigator and security professionals worldwide.
World Organization of Detectives
Cost: Free
Governmentattic provides access to the electronic copies of thousands of Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Cost: $5-$50
Using the The Work Number, you can verify an employee’s employment, income, work number, social service, and more.