TinEye is great at one job: finding exact and edited copies of a specific image, oldest first. It doesn't do faces, and free use stops at 100 searches a day. For broad matches and products, use Google Lens or Bing Visual Search. For lookalikes and edited variants, try Yandex. To run all four at once from one image link, use our free reverse image search.
TinEye builds a fingerprint of your image and matches it against its own index of tens of billions of crawled images. Crops, resizes, color changes and light edits still match, which makes it the go-to tool for tracking where one particular photo has spread.
Its sorting is the real standout. You can sort results by Best Match, Most Changed, Biggest Image, Newest or Oldest. Oldest is the one photographers love, because the earliest copy TinEye has seen is often the closest you'll get to the original source. You can also filter by domain, stock photo sites or collections like Flickr.
It's also unusually clear about privacy. TinEye says uploaded images aren't saved or added to its index, and they're deleted right after the search runs.
There are three common reasons.
Its index is also its own. A copy that Google crawled last week might not be in TinEye yet, and the reverse happens too.
No single engine sees the whole web. Here's what each one is best at and where it falls down.
| Engine | Best at | Matches faces? | Cost | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TinEye | Exact and edited copies, oldest-first sorting | No | Free for non-commercial use, 100 a day | Small index next to Google's |
| Google Lens | Broad web matches, objects, products, text | No biometric matching, but may name public figures | Free | Results lean toward shopping and "similar" images |
| Bing Visual Search | Products and near-duplicates | Weak | Free | Fewer unique finds than Lens |
| Yandex Images | Lookalikes and edited variants | Historically the strongest free option | Free | Results are strongest for Russian and Eastern European sites and vary by region |
| PimEyes | Finding a face across the open web | Yes, face-first | Paid for full results | Costs money, and you're handing a face photo to a third party |
The practical pattern is to run the same image through at least two engines. A match on Yandex that Lens misses, or the other way round, is common.
| What you're trying to do | Start with | Then try |
|---|---|---|
| Find where your photo or artwork was reposted | TinEye, sorted by Newest | Google Lens |
| Find the original source of a viral image | TinEye, sorted by Oldest | Google Lens, then Yandex |
| Check whether a dating or social profile photo is stolen | Google Lens | Yandex, then TinEye |
| Identify a product, plant, landmark or piece of text | Google Lens | Bing Visual Search |
| Find other photos of your own face online | Yandex | A face search engine like PimEyes |
| Find a higher-resolution version | TinEye, sorted by Biggest Image | Google Lens |
Paste one public image link and open Google Lens, Bing, TinEye and Yandex results in separate tabs.
Open Reverse Image SearchThat's what our reverse image search tool does. Paste the public URL of an image and it builds the right search link for Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, TinEye and Yandex, then opens each one in its own tab. Your browser talks to the engines directly, so nothing goes through us.
One limit to know: it needs an image that's already online at a public link. For a photo that only lives on your phone or computer, open each engine and use its own upload button. Your browser may also block some of the tabs as pop-ups the first time. If it does, allow pop-ups for the site, or just click each engine's card on the page to open it yourself.
Not a fully equivalent one. Google deliberately doesn't run facial recognition in Lens, though it may show results for well-known public figures. TinEye doesn't match faces at all. Yandex has been the strongest free option for faces, but users report its results have become patchier outside Russian and Eastern European sites.
So a free face check today means Yandex plus Lens, run by hand and repeated now and then. Our roundup of PimEyes alternatives and the face recognition search guide go deeper on how these engines work and what their results do and don't prove.
It depends on the engine. TinEye says it deletes uploads straight after the search. Google, Bing and Yandex handle uploads under their own privacy policies, and those differ. For a photo of your face or your kids, read the policy before you upload, or search with a link to an image that's already public.
The photo you share can give things away too. Original phone photos often carry GPS coordinates and the time they were taken. Check with our EXIF viewer before you post a picture, and strip location data with the image metadata remover. Our guide on removing location from photos covers every phone and computer.
Take a screenshot of the page with the URL and date visible, and save the image link. Then use the site's own reporting form. Most platforms have a copyright or impersonation option, and a DMCA notice to the host works for many websites. Keep your original files with their timestamps, since they're the easiest proof that the photo is yours.
Copies tend to come back, so repeat your searches every month or two for any image that matters to you.
Yes, for non-commercial use, with a limit of 100 searches per day and 300 per week. Commercial use and API access are paid. You don't need an account to run a search.
No. TinEye matches images, not faces. It finds copies of the exact image you search, including crops, resizes and edits, but it won't find a different photo of the same person.
They do different jobs. TinEye is better for tracking copies of one specific image and finding the oldest version. Google Lens searches a much bigger index and also identifies objects, products and text. For a thorough search, use both.
TinEye says it doesn't. Uploaded images are fingerprinted for the search, aren't added to its index, and are deleted right after the results appear. Other engines handle uploads under their own privacy policies.
Yes. Google Lens, Bing, TinEye and Yandex all accept uploads from your device. Our multi-engine tool needs a public image link, so for a local photo, open each engine and use its upload button instead.