Find a GitHub account from an email or username

What we check on GitHub

Instant tier for email address and username lookups - answered in well under a second

GitHub can be checked from an email address or a username. Send either as query and the response says whether a GitHub account exists for it - registered: true or registered: false - with the moment that was established in checkedAt.

GitHub is in the instant tier: with ?instant=true it is among the first platforms answered, in well under a second. On a full lookup it is checked alongside every other platform and streamed as it lands.

If GitHub blocks the check, times out, or answers ambiguously, it is omitted from results[] entirely rather than returned as registered: false. Absence from the response means "unconfirmed", never "no account".

Who checks GitHub accounts

Developer accounts are checked by SaaS, cloud and API businesses that give away free trials, credits or compute. A real developer usually has years of history on code hosting and developer communities; an address that exists nowhere in that world, signing up for free GPU hours, is a classic trial-abuse pattern.

More on this: Signup fraud prevention.

Inputs GitHub accepts

• Email address: send it as email. GitHub is checked from the address itself, the most common way teams look up an account at signup.
• Username: send the handle as query. GitHub is checked for that exact handle - useful when a person reuses the same name across platforms.

One request

curl -X POST "https://api.digifootprint.dev/v2/lookup?wait=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer dfp_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email": "someone@example.com"}'

What a GitHub result looks like

{
  "platform": "github",
  "registered": true,
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-15T09:53:15.605Z",
  "identity": "email"
}

The full response shape - breaches, web mentions, matches versus socialMatches, and what method means - is in running a lookup.

Related platforms

Every one of these is checked in the same request as GitHub.

More developer platforms: Pastebin, CodePen, GitLab, Codecademy, Kaggle, Hacker News · all developer

GitHub lookup FAQ

Can I check a phone number on GitHub?

Not directly. GitHub can be reached from email address or username. Phone numbers are checked on the messaging and social apps that sign people up by phone.

How fast is a GitHub check?

Fast: GitHub is in the instant tier, so with ?instant=true it is answered in well under a second. A full lookup streams it as soon as it lands.

Is this a GitHub email checker?

It checks whether an email address is registered on GitHub, which is the question most people mean by an email checker. It is not a password or credential checker, and not a deliverability test - it never signs in, never sends mail, and returns only whether a GitHub account exists for the address, with the time that was established.

What happens if GitHub blocks the check?

GitHub is left out of the response. We never report a platform we could not confirm as "not registered" - a missing platform means unconfirmed, not absent.

Does the API return the GitHub account details?

No. You get whether an account exists for the input you sent, and when that was established. No profile contents, photos, followers or private data are collected or returned.