Plenty of Fish has removed the anonymous search permanently. If you would like to search for a specific person, you will need to sign up. That’s bad news for many, as you can find lots of cases in the lively discussion online where people without a POF profile wanted to check if someone was on this app, or people who met someone on POF wanted to detect the person’s suspicious account activities without being noticed1.
However, people search websites have made it quite easy for you to run a Plenty of Fish search without registering.
Best way to search a POF profiles without registering
Searching for a POF profile without registering is the most ideal way. You can keep your search private and skip the lengthy signing up.
Among these third-party websites, Spokeo is one of few services that offer Plenty of Fish searches, as well as other dating platforms like Tinder and Match.com.
Since email is required when signing up for POF, you can run an email reverse lookup and find all profiles associated with this email address.
| Company | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Spokeo | Great prices Easy to use Can search up to 120+ Social Networks Offers $1 trial $13.95 per month | Not the best crime reports Hidden fees for court records |
| PeopleFinders | Offers accurate data from above 6000 data sources Quick results Detailed self background check Offers individual reports options | $24.95 per month No free trial |
Why is it different from a manual search?
You can search for a POF profile without registering for free if you want, but there are certain things that make it quite different when you use a people search service.
- You can run a comprehensive background check on anyone if you know their name, phone number, or email address, etc.
- It saves you a lot of time by providing instant and accurate search results. They pay tons of money for collecting information from public records and publickly available profiles on social media and dating platforms. But there’s always a trial membership, and money-bck guarantee.
How to search POF without registering for free?
Still, if you want to try searching for a Plenty of Fish profile for free, it can be done in the following ways:
1. Sign up with their email address
Chances are, you’re like this lady and want to search POF only to check if your significant other is on it2. And her trick is pretty smart: Try setting up a new profile using their email address. In the process of signing up, you’ll be notified if the email is already registered.
This way won’t take up too much effort or time. But there’s one thing you need to figure out: Have you had a command of every email address that your “suspect” uses?
2. Click “Forget your password?”
Now if the person you’re doubting to have a POF account is near you and it’s easy for you to check their email box, you can click “Forget your password?” on the sign-in page and reset the passwords with their email address. They will receive an email if they have a POF account associated with this email address.
Don’t try to log in with a username or email, POF won’t tell you if the account name/email address exists.
However, this method may not work if they haven’t turned on email notifications. What’s more, it is far too obvious and they might become suspicious.
2. Use Google search engine
Anyone can use a search engine to look for a POF profile, and it’s absolutely free. However, most dating websites provide privacy setting that allows their users to hide their accounts from Google search.
But some people forget to take a look at their dating profile visibility, so it’s still worth a shot.
1) Make a list of all popular dating sites.
- pof.com
- tinder.com
- bumble.com
- okcupid.com
- hinge.com
- match.com
2) In the Google search box, type in “CITY NAME” site:pof.com and start searching. Plenty of Fish has hidden their users’ names so you won’t be able to find anything using a name. Instead, you can find related images of singles in a city.
3) You can replace pof.com with other dating sites to find profiles related to a specific name on other sites. 
4) If you want to narrow down the results by filtering the country, location, or language, use Advanced search.
What can I find if I register?
The free version has way more limits now that some user said that they could only send 1 message to a user per day unless they pay to upgrade3. And even for upgraded users, it was not as handy as before. Once there was a ‘Username Search‘ function for upgraded members on POF. However, this feature has also been removed for good. The POF search function only allows you to search based on specifications such as age, location, height, ethnicity, or hair color, etc. It always takes tons of time to get matched for who you’re looking for.
Therefore, there’s no need to sign up for a POF account when you already have a targeted person to find specifically.
But if you do have an account and want to locate the profile of the user who liked you on POF directly, you could count on the many third-party tools on Google. A POF user has tried one of them and it actually worked, but that only led him to find that most of the likes came from fake profiles4.
Or maybe like this guy on a forum, you want to view the POF profile details, like when it’s last active, who liked you back specifically and so on but don’t want to pay for it nor to be seen by the users you checked5. Then you may try to find and install the old version of the app in which all these features were still on. In the same discussion there is actually a user confirmed that to be working as they could use the old version on their pad smoothly.
Above are tips on how to run a Plenty of Fish search without registering. Feel free to drop us a line if you have any suggestions or questions.
- Relationships [Anonymous #1]. (2017 Apr. 19th). Met online on POF, dating for 5-months – his profile shows as online today [Online forum post]. The Student Room. https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4664438. ↩︎
- [Ela Mur]. (2021). How can I find out if someone has a POF profile without creating an account? [Online forum post]. Quora. https://qr.ae/pKzHpp. ↩︎
- r/PlentyofFish [OppositionMemorialCe]. (2023 Jun. 18th). POF useless now. now you can’t even search to see who’s online or local. its just a useless swipe app. [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/PlentyofFish/comments/14bytjv/pof_useless_now_now_you_cant_even_search_to_see/. ↩︎
- r/PlentyofFish [N-ight-mare]. (2019 Mar. 14th). Here’s a link to search by a POF username so you can see who likes you without paying for premium subscription. [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/PlentyofFish/comments/b0vze2/heres_a_link_to_search_by_a_pof_username_so_you/. ↩︎
- r/PlentyofFish [hisfavoritesnail]. (2023 Sep. 1st). POF Account Questions [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/PlentyofFish/comments/1678e0k/pof_account_questions/. ↩︎
There’s no guarantee you’ll find the information you’re looking for with the tools discussed in this article. They all source their information from publicly available data sources, such as county, state and federal courts, government departments, and police records, and those sources may contain incorrect or incomplete data. It’s illegal to use these tools to make decisions about employment, admission, consumer credit, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. Read the Fair Credit Reporting Act to learn more....About this article
26 Revisions
Reviewed by BeenVerified
Contributors
