Maigret is an open-source tool designed for online investigations and OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) purposes, enabling users to collect a comprehensive dossier on a person based solely on their username. The core functionality revolves around searching for accounts associated with a given username across more than 3,000 websites, including social networks, forums, blogs, and niche platforms. Maigret retrieves publicly available information from these sites, extracting profile details, links to other accounts, and any additional data found on profile pages or through site APIs. This process does not require API keys, making it accessible and straightforward for users.
The tool is implemented in Python and requires version 3.10 or higher. It can be installed via pip, run as a standalone executable on Windows, or deployed using Docker, with variants for both command-line and web interface modes. Maigret also offers cloud-based usage through platforms like Google Cloud Shell, Replit, Google Colab, and Binder, allowing users to run searches without local installation.
Maigret’s main features include support for filtering searches by site category or country using tags, recursive searching based on discovered usernames and IDs, and the ability to bypass certain blocks, censorship, and CAPTCHA challenges. The site database is auto-updated from GitHub every 24 hours, ensuring searches are performed against the latest available information, with a fallback to a built-in database if offline. The tool is compatible with Tor and I2P networks, enabling searches on .onion and .i2p domains, and can be routed through proxies for privacy or to circumvent restrictions.
Results can be exported in various formats, including HTML, PDF, XMind, CSV, TXT, JSON, and interactive graphs. Maigret features a built-in web interface that visualizes search results as a graph and allows users to download reports in multiple formats from a single page. For advanced analysis, Maigret offers an AI-assisted investigation summary mode, which leverages OpenAI-compatible APIs to generate concise summaries of findings, including likely real names, locations, occupations, interests, languages, confidence levels, and follow-up leads.
The tool is embeddable as a Python library, enabling integration into custom workflows or larger OSINT pipelines. The CLI provides numerous options for customizing searches, such as parsing profile URLs, generating username permutations, and performing self-checks for database maintenance. Maigret is used by professional OSINT and social media analysis tools, demonstrating its reliability and versatility in investigative contexts.
Maigret is MIT-licensed, free for commercial use, and actively maintained. For organizations requiring more robust solutions, such as a daily-updated private site database or a username-check API, commercial offerings are available. The repository encourages contributions, providing detailed guides for adding new sites and maintaining the database. Maigret is intended for lawful and educational purposes, with users responsible for compliance with relevant privacy laws. Overall, Maigret stands out as a powerful, flexible, and user-friendly tool for username-based online investigations.
