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Sherlock

Hunt down social media accounts by username across social networks

From sherlock-project·Updated June 15, 2026·View on GitHub·

Hunt down social media accounts by username across 400+ social networks The project is written primarily in Python, distributed under the MIT License license, first published in 2018. It has gained significant community traction with 85,034 stars and 9,935 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: cli, cti, cybersecurity, forensics, hacktoberfest.

Latest release: v0.16.0Sherlock v0.16.0
September 16, 2025View Changelog →
<p align="center"> <br> <a href="https://sherlock-project.github.io/" target="_blank"><img src="images/sherlock-logo.png" alt="sherlock"/></a> <br> <span>Hunt down social media accounts by username across <a href="https://sherlockproject.xyz/sites">400+ social networks</a></span> <br> </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://sherlockproject.xyz/installation">Installation</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;•&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="https://sherlockproject.xyz/usage">Usage</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;•&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="https://sherlockproject.xyz/contribute">Contributing</a> </p> <p align="center"> <img width="70%" height="70%" src="images/demo.png" alt="demo"/> </p>

Installation

<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.osint.industries/" target="_blank"><img src="images/banner.jpg" alt="OSINT Industries"/></a> </p>

[!WARNING]
Packages for ParrotOS and Ubuntu 24.04, maintained by a third party, appear to be broken.
Users of these systems should defer to uv/pipx/pip or Docker.

MethodNotes
pipx install sherlock-projectpip or uv may be used in place of pipx
docker run -it --rm sherlock/sherlock
dnf install sherlock-project

Community-maintained packages are available for Debian (>= 13), Ubuntu (>= 22.10), Homebrew, Kali, and BlackArch. These packages are not directly supported or maintained by the Sherlock Project.

See all alternative installation methods here.

General usage

To search for only one user:

bash
sherlock user123

To search for more than one user:

bash
sherlock user1 user2 user3

Accounts found will be stored in an individual text file with the corresponding username (e.g user123.txt).

console
$ sherlock --help usage: sherlock [-h] [--version] [--verbose] [--folderoutput FOLDEROUTPUT] [--output OUTPUT] [--csv] [--xlsx] [--site SITE_NAME] [--proxy PROXY_URL] [--dump-response] [--json JSON_FILE] [--timeout TIMEOUT] [--print-all] [--print-found] [--no-color] [--browse] [--local] [--nsfw] [--txt] [--ignore-exclusions] USERNAMES [USERNAMES ...] Sherlock: Find Usernames Across Social Networks (Version 0.16.0) positional arguments: USERNAMES One or more usernames to check with social networks. Check similar usernames using {?} (replace to '_', '-', '.'). options: -h, --help show this help message and exit --version Display version information and dependencies. --verbose, -v, -d, --debug Display extra debugging information and metrics. --folderoutput FOLDEROUTPUT, -fo FOLDEROUTPUT If using multiple usernames, the output of the results will be saved to this folder. --output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT If using single username, the output of the result will be saved to this file. --csv Create Comma-Separated Values (CSV) File. --xlsx Create the standard file for the modern Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (xlsx). --site SITE_NAME Limit analysis to just the listed sites. Add multiple options to specify more than one site. --proxy PROXY_URL, -p PROXY_URL Make requests over a proxy. e.g. socks5://127.0.0.1:1080 --dump-response Dump the HTTP response to stdout for targeted debugging. --json JSON_FILE, -j JSON_FILE Load data from a JSON file or an online, valid, JSON file. Upstream PR numbers also accepted. --timeout TIMEOUT Time (in seconds) to wait for response to requests (Default: 60) --print-all Output sites where the username was not found. --print-found Output sites where the username was found (also if exported as file). --no-color Don't color terminal output --browse, -b Browse to all results on default browser. --local, -l Force the use of the local data.json file. --nsfw Include checking of NSFW sites from default list. --txt Enable creation of a txt file --ignore-exclusions Ignore upstream exclusions (may return more false positives)

Credits

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Sherlock! ❤️

<a href="https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/graphs/contributors"> <img src="https://contrib.rocks/image?&columns=25&max=10000&&repo=sherlock-project/sherlock" alt="contributors"/> </a>

Star History

<picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=sherlock-project/sherlock&type=Date&theme=dark" /> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=sherlock-project/sherlock&type=Date" /> <img alt="Sherlock Project Star History Chart" src="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=sherlock-project/sherlock&type=Date" /> </picture>

License

MIT © Sherlock Project<br/>
Creator - Siddharth Dushantha

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Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from sherlock-project/sherlock via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/15/2026