| Guide | GDE-051 |
| Topic | Maigret OSINT |
| Domain | Username and identity correlation |
| Last updated | September 2026 |
Short answer: Run Sherlock for a fast existence check, then run Maigret against the same username to extract profile details and follow recursive pivots. Manually verify any single-source hit before it goes into a report.
What is Maigret OSINT?
Maigret OSINT is the practice of using the open-source Maigret tool to check a single username against thousands of sites at once and compile a dossier of confirmed profiles, extracted personal details and recursively discovered usernames, rather than checking each platform by hand.
Maigret takes one or more usernames and checks them against a large, auto-updated site database, parsing each confirmed profile page for personal details such as a display name, bio, location, avatar and follower counts. Where a profile links to another username or platform, Maigret's recursive mode follows the pivot automatically. It ships as a Python package, a Docker image, standalone Windows binaries and an official Telegram bot.
It is the natural next step after Sherlock, which answers the faster question of where a username exists across a broad site list; Maigret answers the deeper question of what each confirmed profile actually contains, and turns the result into a shareable HTML, PDF, JSON or graph report.
| • | Building a consolidated dossier of every account tied to a known username |
| • | Extracting personal details, such as a display name, location or bio, that a platform's profile page shows publicly |
| • | Pivoting recursively from a discovered username into a wider set of connected accounts |
| • | Cross-checking a Sherlock existence hit against Maigret's deeper page-parsing for corroboration |
| • | Producing a shareable HTML, PDF or graph report for an investigation file |
How do you run a Maigret username investigation?
Six steps from a fast existence check through to a corroborated, exportable dossier.
The following tools are used across the steps below.
Sherlock: Free, open-source. A faster existence-only check across a broad site list, useful as a first pass before a deeper Maigret run.
Maigret: Free, open-source (MIT licence). Installed via pip, Docker, or run from the cloned repository; standalone Windows binaries are also available. Checks thousands of sites, parses profile pages for personal data, and follows recursive pivots by default.
Maigret Telegram bot (@osint_maigret_bot): Free, no installation. The official bot for running a quick Maigret search without setting up a local Python environment.