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.
Deeper coverage on the subjects that decide a file.
Both platforms start from the premium wholesale files beneath this entire category — credit header from the nationwide bureaus, utility and telecom records, property and vehicle registries, court and public records. On a common subject with a stable address history, results will look similar. That is not where matters are won or lost.
We layer alternative credit bureaus on top of the big three. IRBsearch is built for the licensed-investigator market and does that job well, but its locate depth rests heavily on the nationwide bureaus. Alternative bureaus capture the people those files cover thinly — thin-file and no-file subjects, recent immigrants, young debtors, anyone living largely in cash. Those are the files that come back empty elsewhere, and they are the ones you are actually paying to resolve.
We also refuse to merge identities silently. Every material field carries source attribution, and results are marked single or corroborated by how many independent sources agree. A confident wrong answer costs more than a no-hit — it sends a writ to the wrong person — and a merged record with no provenance is how that happens.
Test it rather than trust it: run twenty subjects whose answers you already know through both, and count the wrong answers as well as the hits.
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 seat, no search minimum
$5 per user per month, then you pay for searches that run. Nothing else. Give every investigator, paralegal and clerk their own login for the price of a coffee each — cheap enough that nobody shares a seat, which is what keeps the audit trail meaningful. In a slow month your bill is small; 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.
IRBsearch does not publish a price. Anywhere.
Their pricing page describes three models and attaches a number to none of them. In their own words, flat-rate packages are “available ranging from 500 to 100,000+ minimum transactions per month,” and the transactional plan carries a monthly minimum fee whose amount is not stated. Every route ends at contact sales.
| IRBsearch | Lodestone | |
|---|---|---|
| Rates published | No — contact sales | Every rate, on the site |
| Entry commitment | From 500 transactions/month | None |
| Monthly minimum | Yes, amount undisclosed | $5 per seat |
| Price before you talk to anyone | Unavailable | Rate card |
Source: IRBsearch published pricing page, retrieved August 2026.
500 searches a month is not a small firm
That is roughly 25 a working day, every day. A solo investigator or a two-partner firm does not run that, which means the entry package is not priced for them — they are quoted into the transactional plan and its undisclosed minimum instead. We do not know what that minimum is. Neither will you, until you are on a call.
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.
Common questions
What does IRBsearch cost?
IRBsearch does not publish rates. Its own pricing page describes flat-rate packages ranging from 500 to 100,000+ minimum transactions per month, and a transactional plan with a monthly minimum fee whose amount is not stated.
Is there an IRBsearch alternative without a minimum?
Lodestone Data has no search minimum. Pricing is $5 per user seat per month plus published per-search rates, with every rate on the website.
Compare it on your own matters.
$5 plus whatever you actually run — a trial month costs almost nothing.