About

A toolkit for open source researchers

Welcome to Bellingcat’s Online Open Source Investigation Toolkit!

Illustration by Ann Kiernan for Bellingcat.

This is your place to discover tools! Our toolkit includes satellite and mapping services, tools for verifying photos and videos, websites to archive web pages, and much more. Most of the tools that we include can be used for free.

On the left hand side, you can see all available categories (for instance, Maps & Satellites or Geolocation). Click on these category names to enter the tool lists.

Click on the name of the tool to view an in-depth description of the tool (if available).

On the right hand side of each entry in the tool list is a direct link to the tool website.

You can also download the tool lists for each category in csv format.

This toolkit is still a work-in-progress and the number of available tool descriptions will grow over time. You can read more about the toolkit here.

Our Toolkit Maintainers and Guardians

Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit has a long tradition but our newest version is special: It is offered in collaboration with the Bellingcat volunteer community.

Bellingcat volunteers, staff and the wider open source researcher community contribute to writing and updating toolkit descriptions. Bellingcat staff checks each toolkit entry before it goes online.

If our Toolkit Maintainers choose to be publicly mentioned, you can find their names on individual tool pages under "page maintainer".

Our Toolkit Guardians have a special role: They help us further develop this toolkit to make sure it meets the needs of open source researchers.

Our Toolkit Guardians:

Afton is a volunteer open-source investigator with training in digital investigations for use in human rights and criminal accountability. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the category Transport.

Anisa Shabir is a volunteer open-source researcher at Bellingcat's Global Authentication Project and holds an MA in investigative journalism from the Arizona State University's Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Anisa is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the category Image/Video.

Fraser Crichton is a researcher and technologist with experience in 3D modelling, satellite imagery and data visualisation and an interest in online ideologies. Fraser is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian responsible for the Geolocation category, he is also contributing to the Maps and Satellites tool collection.

Lora is a linguist by education, media and corporate intel analyst by trade, and an occasional due diligence investigator. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the Companies & Finance category.

Sophie Tedling has worked with Bellingcat as a volunteer, Tech Fellow & contributor. Her background is engineering, AI & risk, and she runs PeakVisorforOSINV on X which collects input from the research community with the goal to communicate the needs of open source researchers to the PeakVisor developer team. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the Maps & Satellites category.

Contribute to this Toolkit

You can contribute to Bellingcat's toolkit by submitting toolkit descriptions via this form. Not all submissions will be accepted, please review our guidelines and tips on how to write and submit a good toolkit description. Only descriptions that fulfil all requirements will be considered.

Bellingcat Team and Contact

This collaborative toolkit has been designed by Bellingcat staff member Johanna Wild during her 2024 Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellowship in Journalism Innovation at Harvard University.

Viktorija Ignatavičiūtė and Galen Reich contributed to defining the volunteer involvement for this project, with Viktorija Ignatavičiūtė supporting our toolkit volunteer community also on a daily basis.

If you have any feedback or questions, please get in touch with Johanna Wild via toolkit@bellingcat.com. Please do not suggest tools that you would like to see added to the toolkit via this e-mail address.

About Bellingcat

Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research.

You can follow Bellingcat's work here:

Bellingcat website, BlueSky, Discord, Facebook,Github, Instagram, Mastodon, Patreon, Reddit, Soundcloud, Twitch, X,Youtube.

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can so here.

We also provide workshops on open source investigative methods and tools. For those of you interested in becoming a Bellingcat volunteer, have a look at our volunteer community page.

Last updated