As you probably realize, nothing in life is really free – including on the net. When you use a free reverse cell directory online, you won’t have to pay anything but the website is still going to profit from you. Usually, they profit through advertisements on the site (though be wary because a lot of the free cell lookup sites have malware). Still, the allure of something “free” is always appealing, but just be aware that you probably aren’t going to get very accurate results.

How Reverse Cell Directories Work

If you want to understand the difference between a paid and a free reverse cell directory, you first have to understand the basics of how they work. These websites compile vast amounts of data on millions of people nationwide or (less frequently) worldwide. To get all this information, the website owners must buy data lists from various sources: credit bureaus, banking agencies, insurers, marketing groups… All of this information costs a lot of money. No reverse cell directory is going to spend a lot of money building up their database and then let you access it without profiting themselves! Unfortunately, ad revenue alone isn’t usually enough to compensate for the costs of these data lists so the thorough directories will make you pay a subscription.

Some of the free reverse cell lookup services do have vast amounts of data since they may have invested a lot at the launch of their website. However, the data must be constantly updated if it is going to be accurate. Of course, it costs money to get updated data lists from all these different sources. A lot of the free reverse cell lookup sites don’t even bother updating their data whereas the paid ones usually will update at least yearly (the better ones will make some updates on at least a weekly basis).

The second aspect of how reverse cell phone directories work is their search algorithm. This is the mathematical system which analyzes all of the vast amounts of data from different sources and finds correlations between them. A powerful search algorithm will be able to analyze the facts from an insurance claim, a court date, and a rental lease to construe an accurate address history (along with a lot of other information in the case of people search websites!). It takes a lot of effort to run a search engine this powerful and you can bet that the free reverse cell lookup sites aren’t going to waste efforts without getting a payout!

Can you look up cell phone numbers for free? In short, yes – but you probably aren’t going to get accurate results!