An influencer search tool for TikTok, free forever

What is an influencer search tool?

An influencer search tool is a database of creator profiles with filters on top, so you can find people who fit a brief without scrolling the app by hand. You describe the niche, the audience size and the market, and it returns a list of creators with their stats and, usually, a way to contact them.

The tools differ on three things: which networks they index, how fresh the numbers are, and what they meter. Most charge per profile you open or per email you reveal, which is why the free tiers below look generous on searches and tight everywhere else.

Is there a free influencer search tool?

Yes, but every free option caps the part you need. Heepsy, GRIN, Collabstr and Tokfluence have permanent free plans; Modash, Influencity and Favikon offer trials. Heepsy's free plan shows 500 results a month, GRIN's gives you 50 credits, ours gives 50 searches and 5 credits, and Collabstr only searches creators who signed up to its marketplace.

Read from each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026 (Modash's paid allowance in September 2026). Where a vendor does not publish a limit, the table says so rather than guessing. The last column is the one that decides the bill: what you can actually open and export each month once the free part is over.

Tool	Free option	What it gives you	Monthly allowance after the free part
Tokfluence	Permanent free plan	50 searches and 5 credits a month, and 1 Ultra Search a month that shows its 10 best creators. No card.	Stays free at the same caps. Pro $99: 10,000 credits and 20,000 searches a month. Agency $199: 20,000 credits and unlimited searches.
Heepsy	Permanent free plan	500 search results and 10 advanced profiles a month, 1 project.	Stays free at the same caps: 500 results and 10 advanced profiles a month.
GRIN	Permanent free plan	50 usage credits, no top-ups. The page does not say whether creator search is included.	Stays free at 50 credits, with no top-ups.
Collabstr	Permanent free plan	Search and hire creators who listed themselves on the marketplace. 10% fee on each hire.	Stays free to search; 10% fee on each hire.
Modash	14-day trial	20 profiles opened, 6 email unlocks, 10 tracked creators.	Paid plan. Essentials is $199 a month for 300 opened profiles and 150 email unlocks.
HypeAuditor	Free account	Media plans, campaign management and demo versions of the other features.	Free account stays as it is. Paid plans not compared here.
Influencity	7-day trial	Trial on all plans. Limits not published.	Paid plan after the trial. Allowance not compared here.
Favikon	7-day trial	Trial on brand plans. Limits not published.	Paid plan after the trial. Allowance not compared here.
Upfluence	Trial after a sales call	Set up after an initial call. No public pricing.	Paid plan. No public pricing or allowances.

So which is the best free influencer search tool? Heepsy and Tokfluence both stay free, with different caps. Heepsy is a real search tool with a real database, and 500 results a month is enough to run a first small campaign. Ours, 50 searches, 5 credits and 1 Ultra Search a month with no card, fits if your campaigns run on TikTok and you want to test a real brief. GRIN is built for managing creators you already have rather than finding new ones. Collabstr is the right free pick if you would rather book a creator than contact one.

Our free plan is capped too, so read it for what it is. The one thing a buyer needs to know is whether the tool finds their creators. A free account runs your real brief on the same index, and its Ultra Search shows the 10 best creators it finds; it will not open 22,000 matching profiles (see below) for you to work through. If it finds your people, Pro opens the rest. You add a card only then, at checkout.

What can you search for on Tokfluence?

Any combination of who the creator is, how big they are and how they perform. All of it is on both Pro and Agency; Ultra Search is the one with a monthly allowance.

• Keyword searchMatches bios, hashtags and captions, so "sourdough" finds the bakers who never put the word in their name.
• Plain-language searchWrite the brief as a sentence and it is turned into filters for you.
• Audience size and performanceFollower range, engagement rate, average views per video and posts per week.
• MarketCountry, plus gender as an estimate from the profile picture.
• ContactabilityOnly creators with an email, a phone number or a management contact listed.
• Brand historyCreators who already mention a brand, through mention and brand lookup filters.
• LookalikesStart from one creator you like and find others whose content resembles theirs.
• Ultra SearchDescribe a niche and it reads TikTok live, for briefs the index does not cover yet.

Tokfluence

If you are coming from the filter side rather than the tool side, the guide to finding TikTok influencers walks through each filter with examples, and the influencer database page shows what each creator record holds and how many have an email.

What does one search return?

More than a free plan will show you. We ran two ordinary briefs against the live index on 14 October 2026:

Read those as supply, not as a finished list. The counts are raw matches: shops and brand accounts are in there too (Obagi's own account came up on page one of the skincare search), and you will discard a share of every page. The point is that a broad niche in one country runs to tens of thousands of creators, and a narrow one to hundreds. A tool that caps you at a few hundred results is showing you the top of the pile, ranked by its own guess. These are counts from our index, not from TikTok as a whole.

How much does Tokfluence cost when you upgrade?

$99 a month for Pro, $199 for Agency, both monthly and cancellable. The volume is the point: Pro includes 10,000 credits (one credit is one profile) and 20,000 searches a month; Agency doubles the credits to 20,000 and removes the search limit. Read from our pricing page in October 2026.

Building search into your own product instead? API-only plans start at $49 a month. See the TikTok API page. And if you would rather not run the searches at all, the Discovery Service ($499 a month) has our team run them and filter the lists by hand.

Who should use a different influencer search tool?

Anyone whose campaigns do not live on TikTok. We go deep on one network rather than broad across four; if your creators are elsewhere, another tool fits better. Saying so costs us a few signups.

For a side-by-side of the paid tools, see the Modash alternatives comparison or the full list on our comparisons hub.

How do you get the most out of the free plan?

Bring a real brief, not a test one. The free plan is enough to find out whether the index covers your niche, which is the only thing it needs to prove before you pay.

1. Search: run the brief you are actually working on, wide first, then add country and follower filters until the list looks like one you would send.
2. Reveal: spend the 5 credits on the creators you would contact first, to see the contact data you would get.
3. Ultra Search: describe the niche the index covers worst and read the 10 best creators it returns. Then decide: if it found your people, Pro opens the rest.

Frequently asked questions