Best Employment Background Check Sites | Top 5 Employee Screening Tools Reviewed

The top employment background check sites allow you to review not just a candidate’s family history but also their criminal records, educational claims, work permits, contact information, social media profiles, and much more. With the leading background check service, you can thoroughly examine the backgrounds of all potential employees in just seconds, streamlining your screening process and making it more effective.

That said, choosing the best employment background check service in a sea of options can be challenging. We’ve found and reviewed the top 5 employment background check sites based on criteria such as pricing, database, search parameters, the accuracy of reports, and others. Read on to see how giants like US Search and Checkmate stand against others on the list.

Top 5 Best Employment Background Check Sites in 2024 | Quick Answer

In our research and testing, we found US Search to be the best employment background check site on the market right now, mainly because of its accurate criminal and traffic records check, extensive database, detailed reports, and excellent customer service. Is it truly the best? See for yourself:

1. US Search — Overall, The Best Employment Background Check Site | Put it to the Test with a Five-Day Trial for Only $1.99.
2. Checkmate — The Best Employment Background Check Service for Automatic Referee Checks | Take a 7-Day Trial for Just $1.
3. Intelius — Leading Check Service with 256-bit AES Encryption & Unlimited Searches on All Plans | Try it Now with a Six-Day Trial At Only $0.95.
4. TruthFinder — A Beginner-Friendly Background Check Site for Neatly Organized Reports | Starts at $4.99/Month.
5. Certn — The Best Criminal Background Check for Employers | Test its Features with a Demo on Request.

Top 5 Employment Background Check Services for 2024| Reviewed

Let’s talk about each of our handpicked employment background check services in detail, including discussions about their best features, pricing, pros, and cons so that you can make an informed decision. Ready?

1. US Search —  The Best Overall Employment Background Check Site

US Search, with one of the largest databases of US citizens in the last 25 years, is our top pick for its access to billions of public records from the local, state, and federal authorities.

Expect 100% accurate information with US Search, plus it’ll pull out any information you want about your candidate, be it their family history, criminal history, social media accounts, contact details, or anything else.

This way, you won’t have to hop from one platform to another to investigate your candidates — save time and resources and dig out any dirt your employee might be hiding all in one place.

If you’re hiring for a job that requires the candidate to drive around, US Search will give you a detailed look into their driving records and tickets, if any, so that you can decide whether they’re a good fit for the role or not.

US Search is also easy to use. There are three ways you can look up a candidate:

So even if you forget any one of these details, you can always use the other two options to carry on with the search.

This is also a great way to cross-check a candidate’s personal information and see if the name, number, and address they’ve given matches or not.

A unique feature of US Search is that along with all sorts of details on the candidate, it’ll also fetch you information on their family members or relatives. You’ll know if your candidate has ties with any one of your competitor companies or any other infamous personality.

Conversely, if they’ve mentioned their relationship with any affluent personality in your industry, US Search will help you validate that claim.

What makes US Search such a popular option is its completely free version, which is perfect for small businesses that hire only a handful of individuals per month or quarter.

Obviously, if you want the benefit of unlimited searches, you’ll have to pay the monthly or yearly subscription fee but for a couple of searches here and there, US Search won’t cost you a dime.

Pricing

US Search will cost you just $2.45 for a single report — a lot less than some of the other background check software that costs upwards of $30 for just one report.

While the monthly subscription, with unlimited phone and people searches, is priced at $19.95/month, the quarterly plan at $49.85 will give you the best bang for your buck.

Unsure? Take a 5-day trial for just $1.95 and find out if US Search is for you.

2. Checkmate — The Best Employment Background Check Service for Automatic Referee Checks

Checkmate, trusted by brands such as Samsung and Ubisoft, is one of the most advanced employment background check apps that not only gathers information from a number of sources but also analyzes and then presents it in a way that even beginners can understand.

While US Search can also be used to look up old friends or find out information about your new neighbors, Checkmate is specifically designed for running background checks on job candidates.

Its pre-screening employment tool scans for data across 190+ countries and territories — even if a potential candidate has a clean record in the USA but a criminal history somewhere else, you’ll know about it.

Checkmate also has access to the databases of around 44,000 universities and tertiary training organizations. Checking your candidate’s educational qualifications and academic claims will be a breeze.

For jobs that require additional licensing for the candidate to be legally allowed to work, Checkmate will run a quick check on the license validity too.

For example, if you need to hire a certified therapist for court-mandated therapy, Checkmate will tell you whether a candidate is legally permissible to take up the job or not.

Speaking of job legalities, Checkmate is a godsend for companies working with immigrant workers who require an additional work permit on top of all their professional licenses to work in the USA.

Did you know that if you accidentally hire an employee without a work permit, you could land in serious legal trouble and be heavily fined? Checkmate will ensure none of that happens by digging up the entire work permit information of a potential employee.

To simplify reference checks, Checkmate provides an automated reference check tool. It’ll help you create a template for all the questions you want answered by an applicant and use the information entered to automatically check references, send you fraud alerts and consolidated reports, and more.

In addition to that, Checkmate also provides a detailed dashboard with real-time updates on the references — you won’t have to repeatedly email them for an update.

Pricing

At just $5.99/month, the “Phone Reports” plan will get you unlimited phone reports.

For person reports, location reports, and report monitoring, go with Checkmate’s “Person Reports” plan priced at $35.12 for a single month or $28.09/month for a 3-month plan. You’ll save $21.08 if you go for the latter.

Although not the cheapest background check software, Checkmate does well to provide a 7-day free trial at just $1. Try it risk-free and see if it does you justice.

3. Intelius — Leading Check Service with 256-bit AES Encryption & Unlimited Searches on All Plans

Intelius is a great employment background check app for companies that are rapidly expanding and adding more members to their team because it’s one of the few platforms to provide unlimited searches regardless of the plan you pick.

We love Intelius because it doesn’t force you to go through an entire employee report if all that you need is a single piece of information.

For this purpose, it has separate search categories, including criminal records, public records, background checks, and more. Such arrangement of information in different categories will help you focus on criteria that matter to you.

Wait. Do you need detailed reports? It doesn’t get more detailed than Intelius:

What makes Intelius’s information and reports 100% accurate is that along with scanning millions of public records, it also has specialized sources to dig out information that no other employment background check platform can.

Also, no matter what you look up about a candidate and how many times, Intelius will never alert them that you’re snooping around. Your search history remains completely private and protected by a 256-bit AES encryption.

The only thing we don’t like about Intelius is its limited customer support features. For most of your concerns, you’ll have to resort to their help center, which is basically a collection of FAQs. Even the live chat feature is simply a bot referring you to help articles for your queries.

The only silver lining here is its FAQs are pretty detailed and there’s hardly anything that’s not covered in the website’s resources. Also, since you won’t have to deal with human executives to handle your issues, you save time that you’d have otherwise spent waiting for a response.

Pricing

We love how Intelius has dirt cheap, week-long trials for two of its 3 plans. Check them out:

• The “Reverse Phone Lookup + People Search” plan comes with a 6-day trial at $0.95 and costs $34.95/month thereafter.
• The “Address Lookup + People Search” plan comes with a 7-day trial at $0.95 and costs $29.78/month thereafter.
• The “People Search” plan does not come with a trial and is priced at $21.13/month for a 2-month plan.

As you can see, you get People Search in every plan, so obviously, one of the first two plans will give you the best value for your money. Take a trial and see if Intelius is the one for you.

4. TruthFinder — A Beginner-Friendly Background Check Site for Neatly Organized Reports

TruthFinder is the best platform for those looking for neatly organized downloadable reports.

This fabulous background check service provides unlimited reports based on the plan you’ve chosen.

For example, if you use its People Search plan, you’ll get unlimited person reports, location reports, and report monitoring.

On the other hand, the Reverse Phone Lookup plan will fetch you unlimited phone reports.

The only downside to TruthFinder is that you have to pay extra to download the reports. To make up for it, TruthFinder has kept the downloadable report add-on price very nominal, plus it’s only a one-time payment to unlock unlimited report downloads throughout the membership duration.

Even if you’re not ready to invest yet, the online version of TruthFinder reports works just fine, especially if your only aim is to cross-check information. They’re just as equally detailed and easy to navigate.

What’s more, TruthFinder also offers the reverse email lookup feature — it comes in extremely handy when you forget a candidate’s name or they’ve sent an email without their name on it.

Despite being an advanced employee background check software, TruthFinder is surprisingly beginner-friendly.

It has a dedicated “Help Articles” section with an exhaustive FAQs list, covering almost all issues new users face. For additional assistance, you can also reach out to them via email — something lacking in Intelius.

While its other features are pretty basic and the same as our top three employment background check platforms, TruthFinder provides a unique Dark Web Scanner.

The Dark Web Scanner will notify you if any of your personal data leaks into the dark web so that you can take the necessary actions on time.

Pricing

TruthFinder’s Reverse Phone Lookup plan will cost you a mere $4.99/month and is the lowest this background check software goes.

Sadly, you’ll have to get separate plans for email, phone, and person reports. Unlimited person reports with the People Search plan at $28.05/month and unlimited email reports with the Reverse Email Lookup plan are priced at $29.73/month.

Although there are no cheaply priced trials, TruthFinder provides a sample report to show you what it’s capable of.

5. Certn — The Best Criminal Background Check for Employers

Certn will simplify your hiring process and save up to 80% of your time by automatically running background checks on potential employees.

What makes Certn stand out is that it’s perhaps the only employee background check platform that has an API to integrate with your existing ATS system.

An ATS is basically an application tracking system that keeps a record of all resumes and applications. Integrating Certn with your ATS system will let you get background information on every candidate without leaving the ATS’s interface. It’s a much faster way to check if a candidate meets your requirements or not.

Certn will also help you build a trusted team by running fast and comprehensive criminal record checks on your candidates. However, this feature is only available for US and Canada-based workers.

That said, Certn will run detailed nationwide checks to see if any of your applicants have a criminal history, no matter how trivial the matter might have been.

Need an internal criminal record check? Certn can launch an investigation across 200 countries and extract data from country offenses, federal crimes, and state crimes.

Along with that, Certn will also look for your applicants in sex offender registers and national watchlists. If your candidate has any criminal record whatsoever, it’ll certainly not dodge Certn’s radar.

Certn also offers a unique identity verification tool — OneID, to ensure that your candidates are who they claim to be and not posing as someone else.

OneID supports 3,300+ government-issued IDs from over 200 countries, such as passports, driver’s licenses, ID cards, and more. It also includes documents and IDs issued in non-Latin characters. Such an extensive database will further assure you of your potential employees’ identities.

Plus, ID verification with Certn can be streamlined. All you’ve to do is send a three-step ID verification link to your candidates. Most of the fields would be pre-filled to save time. All they’ve to do is consent and upload their ID with a selfie — the results will be back to you along with the rest of the report shortly.

Pricing

Although Certn is not as affordably priced as some of the other background check tools on our list, it provides a comprehensive list of features with each of its three plans, which makes its price worth it.

For $24.99/month, you’ll get basic EID verification and searches across the National Criminal database, Global Sanctions and Terrorist watchlists, and more with Certn’s “USA — Basic Criminal Check” plan.

Would you like a country and statewide criminal search for the last 7 years of the candidate’s address history? Get Certn’s premium plans — either the “USA — Single Country Criminal Check” or the “USA — Unlimited Country Criminal Check” plan priced at $29.99/month and $44.99/month, respectively.

Best Employment Background Check Comparison Table

If you’re running late, this crisp table highlighting the key differences between the top employment background check sites will be your friend.

Why You Need an Employment Background Check Service 

Employee background check is a must. It’s ill-advised to hire someone without first checking his background and verifying his claims. We’ll give you four reasons why:

Better Experience for Your Customers 

Whether the selected candidate is working on the front end or the back end, they do contribute to the overall experience your customer has. So you obviously want to pick someone capable of handling the responsibility, proficient at work, and self-driven. After all, a quality candidate ensures quality service.

Safe & Healthy Working Environment 

As the employer, you’re responsible for creating and maintaining a safe working environment for your team. Now, suppose you accidentally hire a convict on the run. In that case, you’re not only exposing your company to endless legal hassle but also risking the safety of your employees and company.

Who knows what they’re capable of? They could be embezzling company funds, stealing confidential information, blackmailing your team, or worse— physically threatening your team. If anything goes wrong, you, as an employer, would be under fire from all directions.

Profitable Investment 

Employees are an important investment for your company. Now it’s up to you to choose whether this investment turns out to be an asset in the future or a liability. A good employee should bring in higher revenue than your investment in their salary and training. And, if the candidate fails to bring in much profit for the company despite all training and facilities, it’s nothing but a failed investment.

Avoiding Legal Complications

Legal complications do not just arise from employees with criminal records. One of the most important things to check when hiring a non-native is whether they have the necessary work permits to work in the US or not. If one of your employees is caught working without a permit, you could be charged with heavy fines ranging from $250 to $3200 per illegal employee.

How We Chose the Best Employment Background Check Sites for 2024

Ready to learn about our 4-step checklist to handpick the best employment background check sites?

Information-rich Database

What’s the use of having a background check platform if it doesn’t have access to the necessary records and networks to extract information about your candidate? For example, US Search has access to local, state, and federal records. No matter where your candidate is from, it’ll only take you a few minutes to know them inside out. A good employment background check service is one with countless connections and inside knowledge.

Accurate Information

An employment background check is no joke; that’s why you need a service that knows what they’re doing. For starters, only go for services like CheckMate or TruthFinder that use data from public records in their checks. This way, you can be sure that the information source is legit and accurate.

Automated Data Management 

Background checks on potential candidates are run across various parameters, such as employment history, academic qualification, criminal record, nationality, etc. Now, if you’re running the background check for 10 candidates, you’ll be handling an insane amount of data which, quite frankly, is impossible to manage manually unless you’re okay with losing important details.

That’s why we recommend using background check software that generates organized reports for each employee with all the criteria you need.

Customer Support

An employment background check is a responsible job, and you certainly don’t want to be left without any support from the service provider. Whether you’re stuck on a report or need a little help making your way around the platform, we’ve picked services with responsive customer support available with a click.

Employment Background Check FAQs