Search4Faces
Upload the picture of a face and find pictures of similar looking people on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, TikTok and Clubhouse.
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Description
Search4Faces is a reverse face search engine that allows users to find the profile photos of individuals across various online platforms. The tool is implemented in Python and is accessible via a web interface or as a Python library. As of June 2025, the tool has (partial) collections of the following four databases:
Avatars of the social network Vkontakte and main photos of the social network Odnoklassniki,
Profile photos of the social network Vkontakte (VK),
Avatars of TikTok users,
Avatars of ClubHouse users.
The tool also has a search feature for recognizing celebrities which - according to the tool provider - is based on Wikipedia and IMDb data.
Key features of Search4Faces include:
Face Recognition Search:
Searches through multiple databases, including those of social networks to find similar faces.
Users can specify which database to search in, and results include links to the relevant social media profiles.
Customization and API Integration:
Search4Faces offers an API that can be integrated into applications for automated and scalable facial recognition searches.
The API supports asynchronous operations and provides customizable search parameters, such as limiting the number of results.
The tool can also be configured for more targeted searches, depending on the databases and permissions set by the user.
The site is available in Russian and English. To start a search, users first need to choose a database. They can then upload the picture of a person of interest.
For instance, after uploading a Donald Trump picture and selecting the VK and Odnoassniki avatars collection, we received various pictures of Donald Trump that are currently being used (or have been used) as avatars by VK users:
By clicking on any photo in the results list, users are taken directly to the social media profile where the picture appears. Keep in mind that the Search4Faces database is not updated on a regular basis. Social media account owners might have changed their avatars or their accounts might even have been deleted in the meantime.
Cost
Search features on the site itself are free, but API access is paid with multiple plans ranging from 15000 calls for 40 USD to 135000 calls for 320 USD.
Level of difficulty
Requirements
No requirements for using the search features on the site. It is not necessary to create an account.
API can be accessed after purchasing a plan or contacting their team for trial access. The API uses JSON-RPC 2.0 protocol over HTTPS, and you can interact with it using client libraries available for Python and PHP.
Limitations
Since the Search4Faces database contains only a limited selection of the social media platform’s content rather than a complete archive, the tool is often unable to provide results for an uploaded picture. Our own tests suggest that in those cases, the search engine appears to compare general characteristics of the provided face (hair, eye or skin color) which does not tend to be helpful for open source researchers.
Image data for each social networking site is not updated in real-time, most datasets end in 2022 or earlier. The Russian language version of the tool website states that the VK profile photo database was last updated in 2025.
Certain user profiles can evade detection by changing their details. If you click on an image in the results list, you may be taken to a social media account whose name, avatar, or posts have been changed or deleted.
You cannot search multiple databases at once.
Ethical Considerations
Persons with similar faces can be misidentified without accounting for other contextual information.
Results can leak personally identifiable information such as general location, home address or the same of associated persons.
Make sure to carefully assess whether the use of facial recognition tools is required for your type of research. Josephine Lulamae reflects on ethical questions around the use of facial recognition tools in the AlgorithmWatch article: War Crimes OSINT, Harassment, Doxxing Police and Protesters: Face Recognition for Everyone (2022).
Guide
An example of how Search4Faces was used to reveal a TikTok profile can be found here.
Search4Faces was used by Bellingcat in the following investigation to find a Odnoklassniki profile of a person of interest: Tracking the Faceless Killers who Mutilated and Executed a Ukrainian POW, 2022.
Tool provider
The tool provider is currently unknown. The website is offered in Russian and in English. Its domain registrar is the Bahamas based Whois Privacy Corp.
Similar Tools
While open source researcher may want to decide to test Search4Faces during investigations that involve people of interest from Russian speaking countries, other facial recognition tools may often work better for people based in other countries.
Similar tools are Pimeyes or FaceCheck.Id. Unlike Search4Faces, both of those tools are paid tools and their websites don’t list social media photos as sources. Search4Faces is currently able to identify some older TikTok or ClubHouse accounts which may be useful for some research cases even if the people of interest are not based in a Russian speaking country.
It is recommended to be cautious when using any of those tools since it the tool providers' identities are often unknown.
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