SurveillanceIn Progress
Garage follow-up
Houston · Today
Truth Should NeverBe Hard To Find
Hire elite private investigators, process servers and polygraph examiners around the world. Ready to take your case, work it discreetly, and bring back real answers.
7 Years
Helping clients hire the right PI
2,400+
Licensed investigators you can verify
100%
Private until you choose otherwise
50 States
Investigators, process servers, examiners
Search. Verify. Hire.
Check the license, read the reviews, then hire the one who fits.
No cold-calling a stranger from a Google ad. Pull up the licensed investigators near you, open each profile, and confirm they are real before you say a single word about your case. Once you hire, every message, photo, and update lives in one private case file that only you control.
Why people choose NearbySpy
The difference between hiring a real PI
and hoping you got lucky.
Most people hire a private investigator exactly once, in the worst week of their life, with no real way to tell a licensed pro from a fast-talking stranger off a Google ad. Here is what changes when the license, the reviews, and the evidence are all checked for you before you pay a cent.
You will never wire money to a fake PI
We pull the state license number from the issuing board before a profile is ever shown to you, confirm the investigator is in good standing, and check their insurance. The day that standing lapses, the listing disappears. The badge you see was earned this week, not seven years ago.
The stars come from paid cases, not favors
A review can only be written by someone who booked and paid for a case here. There is no way to buy one, trade one, or post one as a friend. When you read four and a half stars, real clients put their own money down first.
Look first, give up your name later
Read profiles, ask questions, and weigh your options while you stay completely anonymous. Your spouse, your business partner, your employer, none of them see a thing. The investigator learns who you are at the exact moment you decide to tell them, and not a second sooner.
A real person answers, usually the same day
Most investigators reply within four hours during business hours, not in a week, and not with a canned auto-response. When the clock is the whole problem, mark the case urgent and it goes straight to every qualified PI in your metro who is on call right now.
Proof that still holds up months from now
The moment a photo, video, or document lands on your case, it is sealed with a digital fingerprint and a timestamp. If your situation ends up in front of a judge, the file you hand your attorney is provably the same one your investigator collected in the field.
A specialist for your exact problem, down the road from you
Filter by infidelity, custody, background checks, process serving, corporate fraud, a polygraph exam, or a missing person, then narrow to your ZIP code. Open three profiles side by side, compare rates and real cases, and decide in an afternoon instead of a month.
Whatever you're facing
Whatever brought you here, someone nearby has handled it a hundred times.
Tap the situation that sounds like yours. In plain English, here is what a licensed investigator can actually do about it, and the kinds of cases that tend to show up right alongside it.
Infidelity
Child custody
Background checks
Locate a person
Corporate & fraud
Process serving
Polygraph
Missing persons
How it works
Hired by tonight, not chasing quotes all week.
Three steps, start to finish. No phone tag with a dispatcher. No surprise markup on top of your PI's rate. No contact form that vanishes into a black hole for a week.
[01]
Say what's going on, in your own words
Ninety seconds, no jargon, no forms that read like a court filing. Stay anonymous if you are not ready to give your name. No account, no card, and no spam chasing you if you decide to walk away.
[02]
Meet the licensed PIs near you
Within minutes you are looking at three to five investigators who actually work cases like yours in your area. Real names, active state licenses you can check yourself, and reviews from real clients on every profile.
[03]
Compare them, message them, then decide
Read the reviews, see the rates in plain numbers, and message the investigator directly with no middleman listening in. Hire the one who feels right, and move when you are ready, not when a salesperson is.
No more wondering what you're paying for. Watch the work as it happens.
Every photo, every interview, and every hour billed lands in one place you open from your phone. Nothing sits in your personal inbox where the wrong person could stumble on it. When the case closes, export the whole file in one click and walk it straight into your attorney's office.
See who you hired, eye to eye, without handing over your number.
Your investigator never needs your personal number, your home email, or your video account. The call opens inside your case file, the recording stays there too, and nothing about the meeting ever surfaces in a thread someone could open on a shared computer at home.
Locked end to end, with an optional recording your attorney can actually use
Whatever gets said is saved to your case file, not lost the second you hang up
Joins from any browser in one tap. No app to install, no account, no download
See evidence on screen together without it ever touching a public cloud
Your case runs on real tools, not a manila folder in a glovebox.
You only hire a private investigator when something serious is on the line. So these are the tools waiting the moment your case opens, the same ones a Fortune 500 legal team takes for granted, aimed at your one situation.
Messages that stay where they belong
A private workspace built for an investigation, not the chat app you use for dinner plans. Everything you say sits on the case file, never in a text thread someone could read over your shoulder on a shared laptop.
Evidence you can prove was never touched
The second your PI uploads a photo, video, or document, it gets a digital fingerprint. If your attorney ever has to show a court nothing was altered afterward, the receipt is already sitting on the file.
Every move logged the day it happens
Surveillance, interviews, records pulled. Each one lands in your case timeline, timestamped and labeled, so you are never left guessing what the billable hour last Tuesday was actually for.
A bill you can read without a lawyer
Line-item invoices, your retainer balance always in view, and every charge approved by you before it touches your card. No padded hours, no surprise add-ons waved through at the end.
What it costs, agreed before a dollar moves
Before any work begins, you and your investigator sign off on exactly what they will do and what it will cost. No scope creep, no 'I assumed that was included' surfacing three weeks later.
The person who replies is the person on your case
No call center, no junior subcontractor sounding out your name, no sales rep shuffling your file around the office. The investigator who answers you is the one actually doing the work.
Three promises in writing
What every client gets, put in writing.
Three rules we do not bend, written down so you can hold us to them. They are why this marketplace exists, and why people who got burned somewhere else keep coming back.
You pay your PI direct. We take nothing.
Investigators set their own rates and you pay them straight, with no platform cut skimmed off your retainer, your hourly, or your final invoice. The number you agree on is the number, start to finish.
If the fit is wrong, you're not stuck with it
Hired someone and it isn't working out? Message our support team and we will surface other licensed PIs in your area who handle your kind of case. We don't run the investigation for them, but we will never leave you holding a dead end.
Your secrets never become someone's product
Your intake answers, your messages, your evidence. None of it is sold to data brokers, fed to advertisers, or used to train an AI model. Export every file and wipe your account in one click, any time you want.
From real cases
Quiet wins.
Honest reviews.
Real clients, writing about the licensed investigators they actually hired here. Every review is tied to a booked case, so the stars on a profile are the cases other people paid for.
"We needed a Texas-licensed PI for a sensitive internal matter, and fast. I was not about to gamble on whoever paid for the top spot on Google. NearbySpy put three real options in front of me, licenses and recent work right there. We hired the next morning."
Sarah M.
General Counsel, Dallas Fort Worth
"I sent the first message without my name on it, because honestly I was not ready to say it out loud yet. Took me a couple days to get comfortable. Once I did, the investigator put everything straight onto my case. I finally stopped refreshing my email every twenty minutes."
David L.
Private client, California
"Tracking down a process server in a county I don't practice in used to kill half my day. Now I filter by county, read the reviews, and usually have someone confirmed by that afternoon."
Michael R.
Litigation attorney, Illinois
"The two times before this, I called a number off a Google ad and got a call center three states away. This was the first time the person who picked up was the same person who actually worked my case."
Jessica P.
Divorce client, Atlanta
"The anonymous inquiry is the only reason I clicked anything at all. I was scared my husband would see an email on the shared iPad. I got to size up three investigators before I gave up a single detail about myself."
Anonymous client
Suburban Chicago
"I run background checks for a 40-person company. The license badge flagged a guy I had already half-hired off another site. That one catch probably saved me a board complaint."
Marcus T.
HR Director, Denver
When does hiring a private investigator make sense?
A licensed investigator gathers proof under real rules of evidence. A late-night Google search can't do that, and a friend with a free afternoon definitely can't. The three situations below are the ones where calling a PI early tends to save you weeks of spinning and a small fortune in legal cleanup later.
Personal and family
An affair you can't stop thinking about. A custody fight. A family member who vanished. A new partner whose story keeps shifting. These investigators understand confidentiality from the first hello, and by the end you hold documentation a family court will actually accept.
Legal and litigation
Process serving, witness locates, asset checks, and evidence packets built the way your attorney wants to receive them. Many of these PIs already work hand in hand with firms in your county, so they speak your lawyer's language.
Corporate and business
Internal fraud, insider risk, stolen IP, M&A due diligence, executive background checks, even a polygraph when the situation calls for it. Investigators with the credentials, the NDAs, and the report formats a board signs off on without redoing the work.
Background-checked. License-verified.
Insured where the state requires it.
The list below is what every profile on NearbySpy has to clear before it goes live. The same list is what we re-check on a schedule afterward.
2,400+ licensed private investigators, process servers, and polygraph examiners you can filter by location, specialty, and license number
Every profile re-checked against the state licensing board on a set schedule, not just once at signup
Every photo and document fingerprinted and timestamped on upload, court-ready the day you need it
Anonymous inquiries, so you can weigh three investigators before your name ever leaves your hands
Rates shown up front in plain numbers, with court-ready report exports when your case calls for them
Zero platform commission on your retainer. You pay your investigator direct, every dollar
Featured investigators
Real investigators.
Not directory spam.
Browse 2,400+ verified profiles side by side. Filter by metro, specialty, and recent client reviews, then reach out to whoever you want directly. Not one dollar gets added on top of what your PI charges.
Bell & Associates Investigations
New York, NY
5
Corporate FraudVerified
Reyes Investigative Group
Los Angeles, CA
4.9
Infidelity & DivorceVerified
Vanguard Investigations
Chicago, IL
4.8
Background ChecksVerified
The biggest verified PI network
in the country.
Seven years of license checks, real reviews, and zero tolerance for fake profiles. The numbers below are pulled from the live marketplace today.
0+
Licensed investigators on the network
0
States with a PI you can hire today
0%
Of listings checked against the state board
< 0min
Time to your first match
What people quietly want to know
before they hire a PI.
Ten honest answers on cost, confidentiality, the law, and what happens once you click hire.
The same infrastructure law firms use,
for a single family case.
Encrypted storage. Signed documents. Secure video. Real payment rails. The names below are the ones working quietly in the background the entire time your case is open.
Dropbox
Google Drive
Zoom
Gmail
Authorize.net
LexisNexis
Mapbox
DocuSeal
For investigators
Run your whole practice from one tab.
Cases, evidence, client messaging, billing, e-signature, and Scout AI in one place, so less of your week goes to admin and more of it to the cases that pay. 2,400+ investigators, process servers, and polygraph examiners already run their cases here. Free to start. Elite is $39 a month.
Stop Googling.
Start Finding.
Put three licensed PIs in your metro side by side and message them tonight. Free to browse, free to message, and no account needed to start.