By: Cristina | Last updated October 21, 2019 
Instant Checkmate is one of the highly rated background check services available on the market today and one of our top choices as well. Best Review Guide has placed Instant Checkmate on the second position in the lineup, after TruthFinder.
Instant Checkmate enjoys its good reputation because it had time to grow. The service has been developed 10 years ago and it is still among the most renowned ones in the industry. Around 1.4 billion searches have been made using Instant Checkmate until now and the number keeps on growing.
This online background check service offers various types of searches including people searches, search by location, search by phone number, search by e-mail.
Instant Checkmate provides two types of reports: the standard report which includes all the basic information about a person and the premium report, which is more complex and requires you to pay an extra fee in order to access it.
Because it is not FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) compliant, the service offered by Instant Checkmate can’t be used for anything other than informative purposes. You can’t use the information in the report in the employment process, to screen candidates. You can’t use the information to screen tenants, to harass someone or to blackmail them. It is also forbidden to use the service to determine a person’s eligibility to obtain a loan, a credit and so on.
What can you use this background check service for?
Instant Checkmate can still be very useful in various scenarios, because information means power. Here are some examples in which background check services can be really helpful:
- To run a background check on a work colleague
- To run a background check on a potential boss when you are interviewing for a job
- To run a background check on a new neighbor that just moved in to your neighborhood
- To run a background check on a potential date, to see whether they are safe to date
- To track down a childhood friend or a class mate
- To do a reverse phone lookup (find out who called you from a certain phone number that you don’t have in your phone agenda)
- To check out the parents of a new friend of your child
- In case you have reasons to believe your identity has been stolen, you can find out if your personal data appears on any websites on the Dark Web (most online background check services also check the Dark Web for information)
- To run a background check on yourself to see what information turns up
What is the price of Instant Checkmate?
Instant Checkmate offers subscriptions to its customers and those subscriptions give you access to unlimited background check reports. The reports offered by default with the subscriptions are standard. If you want to upgrade to the premium report, you have to pay an additional fee, regardless of the type of subscription you opt for.
There are two subscriptions offered by Instant Checkmate: a one-month subscription and a 3-month subscription.
The one-month subscription has a price of $34.78.
The three-month subscription has a price of $83.47.
You can also test the service for up to 5 days almost free of charge. Instant Checkmate has a trial that costs just $1 per day, but you can only use it for up to 5 days.
Standard reports
The standard report offered by Instant Checkmate includes basic information about the searched person. You can find the following info:
- Date of birth
- Phone number/s
- Address (current and past)
- Social media profiles
- Nearby sex offenders
- Arrest records
- Government license information
Premium reports
The premium reports offered by Instant Checkmate require you to pay an extra $19.99. A premium report includes all the information above and more:
- Email addresses
- Old phone numbers
- Voter registration
- Neighbors
- Business associates
- Civil judgements
- Tax liens
- Properties owned
- Corporate affiliations
- Foreclosures
- UCC filings
- Weapon permits
- Hunting/fishing permits and more
Instant Checkmate gathers its information from millions of public records provided by local and state governments.
The sign-up process for the service is really quick and simple and has to be done over the internet. Reports are provided in an electronic format and can be downloaded on printed on paper. The reports are easy to read and the information in them is accurate.
Instant Checkmate is mobile friendly and can easily be accessed from your smartphone, with the help of their mobile app. The Instant Checkmate mobile app is now available for both iOS and Android devices, which is a useful improvement, because Instant Checkmate used to only be compatible with Android.
