Lodestone as an IRBsearch alternative.
IRBsearch has served licensed investigators for a long time and is a credible product. If you are comparing it against us, here is a straight account of where the two differ — and where they do not.
The underlying data is broadly the same.
Both platforms are built on the wholesale files that sit beneath this entire category — credit header, utility and telecom records, property and vehicle registries, court and public records. We are not going to tell you our person search finds people theirs cannot. On common subjects, results will look similar, because the sources are similar.
If data coverage is the deciding factor for you, run the same twenty subjects through both and compare. That is a better test than any vendor's claim, ours included.
Pricing model, minimums, and how purpose is recorded.
Published rates instead of a quote
Our full rate card is on the website. You can work out what a month costs before you speak to anyone. Platforms that quote per customer are not doing anything improper, but it does mean the price depends on how the negotiation went.
Five dollars a month, no search minimum, no seat licence
You pay for searches that run. Nothing else. Add every investigator, paralegal and clerk in the office at no cost — we bill for work, not for headcount. In a slow month your bill is small, and in a busy one volume tiers apply automatically.
Permissible purpose on every search
This is the substantive difference. On this platform a permissible-purpose code and matter reference travel with each individual search, not with the account and not with the session. If the account is not credentialed for that purpose against that data class, the search does not run, is not billed, and is still written to the log.
That matters the day a subject complains or opposing counsel asks why a search happened. You answer with a per-search record rather than a policy document.
Bank and brokerage location is not offered
We do not sell deposit or securities account location at any price, and no product code on the platform returns it. It is investigative work rather than a lookup. Some platforms in this category do sell it self-serve — if that is what you need, we are not the right vendor, and you should say so early rather than discover it mid-matter.
Reasons to stay where you are.
If your firm already runs on IRBsearch, your investigators know its report formats, and your workflow is built around them, that familiarity has real value. Switching costs are not zero.
We are also newer. We do not have decades of institutional history, and if a long operating record is what your risk committee needs, that is a legitimate reason to choose otherwise. What we offer instead is published pricing, no lock-in, and a compliance model you can inspect before committing. Run us alongside what you have and compare on your own matters.
Compare it on your own matters.
$5 plus whatever you actually run — a trial month costs almost nothing.