As a private investigator I work everyday to help people catch their cheating spouses. One tool that I often use, and that I recommend to my clients as well, is a reverse phone detective. These simple systems allow you to find a name (and often an address) by simply typing in a cell phone or home phone number. 

When you begin to look at these services there is one thing you will find: There is a huge range in quality when it comes to the reverse phone detective market. 

Some systems have the most up-to-date databases, with huge lists that include millions of cell phone numbers. Other's won't even be able to find a number that's been listed for the past five years. With that, let's just start by talking about what a reverse phone detective is and is not. 

First, a  reverse phone detective is NOT the definitive solution to finding people. Although the good systems will have a huge database, they only work by phone number so they will only work to find people whose number you already have.

Second, NOT everyone will need a reverse phone detective. If the number you're searching for is a land line, you can likely find the name by using your phone companies web site (at least try it first). 

Third, a Reverse Phone Detective is an excellent way to find out who has been calling. They can help you find out that cheating spouse, catch that prank caller, or simply find out who someone is before you answer.

Fourth, if you don't take the time to choose the best phone detective, not only are you wasting your money, but you might end up with bad information. An old database can give you the wrong name, the wrong address, and suddenly you're worse off than when you started!

Since I recommend them to my clients on a regular basis, along with some friends, I took the time to evaluate the top reverse phone detectives available today. We based our evaluations on the following criteria. 

• Ability to Find Numbers - Obviously our main criteria was on how many numbers the phone detective could recognize overall. 
• Cell Phone Numbers - How many cellular numbers could the detective find? These generally aren't listed so only the best databases will find all of them. 
• Toll Free Numbers -  Could the system give us information on 1-800 numbers that called us?
• Land Line Numbers -  Was it able to provide information on land lines? Even those that weren't listed?
• Amount of Information -  How much information could we get with a single search?
• Up to Date - How current was the data gathered from all the above searches?
• Overall Rating - Based on all of the other criteria we gave each system an overall rating.