You registered an account on a forum in 2011, used the same handle on six other platforms, and forgot about all of them. They're still out there. maigret finds them.

What It Is

maigret is a Python CLI tool that searches for a username across 3,000+ websites and assembles whatever public information it finds into a report. No API keys required. No accounts to create. Just a username and a few minutes.

By default it checks the top 500 highest-traffic sites. Pass -a and it scans everything in the database. The output includes confirmed accounts with profile links, any scraped metadata (bios, names, locations), and connections to other usernames it discovers along the way — which feeds back into another round of searching.

Why It's Worth Your Time

Most people reuse one or two usernames across their entire online life. That's convenience turned into a privacy liability — and it's invisible unless you go looking for it.

maigret makes that footprint visible. Not for stalking strangers, but for auditing yourself. Every forgotten account is a password you haven't changed in years, sitting on a platform that may have been breached since you last logged in.

The recursive search is what separates it from simpler alternatives like Sherlock. When maigret finds an account, it extracts linked usernames or IDs from that profile and searches for those too. One username becomes a graph.

Hands On

Install:

pip install maigret

Run a default scan (top 500 sites by traffic):

maigret yourusername

You'll see results roll in as it scans — confirmed hits with links, likely false positives flagged differently.

Full scan across all 3,000+ sites:

maigret yourusername -a

Generate an HTML report with a browsable, interactive results graph:

maigret yourusername --html

Open that file in a browser. It renders a D3 visualization of every found account and how they connect. Useful when a username is tied to multiple personas or linked platforms.

Filter by category — only check photo and dating platforms:

maigret yourusername --tags photo,dating

Launch the built-in web UI:

maigret --web 5000

That spins up a local server at http://127.0.0.1:5000 where you can run searches and pull any report format from a single page. If you want this on a home server, Docker makes it cleaner:

docker run -p 5000:5000 soxoj/maigret:web

What's rough:

False positives are real. Common usernames hit dozens of sites where a completely different person registered. You'll need to click through and verify — don't assume every result is yours.

A growing slice of sites hide behind Cloudflare JS challenges. Bypassing those requires a separate FlareSolverr container running alongside maigret. It works, but it's extra setup most people won't bother with.

PDF export on Linux needs additional system graphics libraries. The HTML report is the easier path and honestly more useful anyway.

Speed on a full -a scan depends on your connection and how aggressively sites block datacenter IPs. Running from a VPS? Expect more blocks than from a residential connection.

Honest Verdict

maigret does one thing well: it shows you exactly where a username has been, and what public information is attached to it. For self-auditing, it's the most capable free tool in this space.

It's not a magic investigation machine. The results require human judgment. The database drifts as platforms change their detection behavior. And you should read their note on lawful use seriously — this is a tool with obvious dual-use potential.

But for a pip install and a five-minute scan? Run it on your own handle. The result will either be boring (good) or alarming (also useful). Either way you'll know something you didn't before.

If you run a home lab and use the same handle across GitHub, forums, Discord servers, and random dev platforms from a decade ago — start there.

Go Try It

pip install maigret
maigret yourusername --html

Open the HTML file. See where you live on the internet.