SEON alternatives in 2026, matched to what you use it for
SEON is a fraud and AML platform: email and phone footprint, device intelligence, rules plus machine learning and, on its Premium plan, AML screening and case management. Starter costs $699 a month for 2,500 fraud checks, and there is no free API tier. The right replacement depends on the part you rely on. For email, phone and IP data at a lower published price, look at IPQS or MaxMind minFraud. For device identification, Fingerprint or Castle. For AML and KYC, Sardine. For chargeback cover on a store, a guarantee vendor such as Signifyd or Riskified. For a free check on the live visit, Maskbreak.
Why teams look for a SEON alternative
The entry price and the process. SEON's Starter plan is $699 a month for 2,500 fraud checks, 10 users and 50 custom rules, and both of its plans end in a “Speak with an expert” button. The free trial (2 seats, 500 manual checks a month) is granted once SEON has decided you are a fit. For a team that wants to protect one signup form next week, that is a sales conversation before the first line of code.
Paying for breadth you do not use. One SEON fraud check can bundle email and phone footprint, IP data, device intelligence and the Scoring Engine. If the rules that actually fire in your account lean on one of those, a narrower tool with a published per-lookup price may cover the same decisions for less.
Wanting a different model. Some teams want a score trained on their own event history and a large cross-customer network (Sift). Others want a vendor that approves orders and takes on the chargeback when it gets one wrong (the guarantee vendors further down). Those are different products, not better versions of SEON.
One reason that no longer holds: SEON is not only an email lookup. Its JavaScript agent detects residential and mobile proxies from browser data plus TCP/IP and TLS fingerprints, and its device-flag reference lists canvas and user-agent spoofing, emulators, device farms and named AI agents such as openai_agent and devin_agent. A comparison that says SEON cannot see proxies or fake browsers is out of date, and that includes an earlier version of this page.
SEON competitors, matched to the job you gave SEON
Start from the module, not the vendor. Pull a month of SEON decisions, look at which applied_rules fire most, and replace that part first.
| If you use SEON for… | Look at | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Email and phone footprint | IPQS (email and phone validation on every plan; its Dark Data™ set is listed on Enterprise only); MaxMind minFraud Insights (disposable and free-webmail flags, email domain risk); Kount’s new Signal Score for Email | None of them documents SEON’s registration lookups across online platforms (SEON counts 290+). If that footprint drives your reviews, keep SEON for it. |
| Device intelligence | Fingerprint; Castle; the minFraud Device Tracking Add-On; Maskbreak | Platforms. Fingerprint, Castle and minFraud cover web, iOS and Android. Maskbreak covers web browsers only. |
| IP, VPN and proxy data | IPQS proxy API; minFraud Insights and Factors (the provider is named); Castle IP Intelligence API; Maskbreak on a live visit | Lists of bare IPs suit Castle’s IP API, IPQS or MaxMind’s GeoIP Anonymous IP database. Maskbreak’s bare-IP lookup covers Tor exits and cloud ranges only; its VPN and proxy verdicts need a live visit. |
| Scoring Engine and rules | Sift (models plus Workflows); Castle Policies (defaults, backtesting, log-only mode); minFraud custom rules (accept, reject, manual review) | Sift is quote-only. Castle and minFraud publish their prices. |
| AML, KYC and case management | Sardine; Kount 360 (Identity Proofing, AML Compliance Solutions) | Neither publishes a price. Maskbreak does none of this. |
| Orders and cards at an online store | Signifyd, Riskified, ClearSale, Wyllo (formerly NoFraud), Forter | Most can cover chargebacks on the orders they approve; at Forter it is one contract option. Maskbreak scores no orders and offers no guarantee. |
| A self-serve API you can wire up today | Maskbreak; the free plans of IPQS, Fingerprint and Castle; a minFraud trial | How the free allowance runs out: 35 lookups a day (IPQS), 1,000 API calls a month (Fingerprint), $5 of usage a month (Castle), 10,000 visitor checks a month, up to 1,000 an hour (Maskbreak). |
SEON pricing vs its competitors, September 2026
SEON publishes one number. Starter is $699 a month and includes platform and API access, 2,500 fraud checks, 10 users, 50 custom rules and implementation help by ticket and email. Premium is “Custom pricing for your needs” and is the plan with unlimited API calls, Case Management and AML Compliance, a dedicated implementation team and 24/7 support. There is no per-check rate, overage fee or annual price on the page. Trial accounts can call the API, at 2 requests a second according to SEON’s API reference. Here is what the rest of the field publishes.
| Vendor | Published entry price | Free way to try |
|---|---|---|
| SEON | Starter $699/month (2,500 fraud checks); Premium custom | Free trial on application: 2 seats, 500 manual checks a month |
| IPQS | Startup from $99/month (5,000 lookups); SMB Basic $499; SMB+ $999; Enterprise custom | Free plan: 1,000 lookups a month, 35 a day |
| MaxMind minFraud | $0.005 (Score), $0.015 (Insights), $0.020 (Factors) per query; no minimums | Free trial of up to 1,000 queries, on request |
| Fingerprint | Pro Plus from $99/month for 20,000 API calls, then $4 per 1,000 | Free plan: 1,000 web and iOS API calls a month |
| Castle | Pro $200/month including $200 of usage; Enterprise from $4,000/month | Free plan: $5 of usage a month, meant for evaluation |
| ClearSale | Growth plans with chargeback guarantee from $250/month | Not stated |
| Wyllo (formerly NoFraud), Shopify | Guarantee plans from 1% of revenue, minimum $250/month, for stores under $50K a month | Screening Only: 14-day trial, then up to 100 orders a month free |
| Kount (Equifax) | Not published; demo request | Shopify app “Free to install. Additional charges may apply.” |
| Sift | Not published. Vendr buyer data (February 2026, 50 purchases): median $150,000 a year | None found |
| Sardine, Signifyd, Riskified, Forter | Not published. Signifyd and Riskified publish the model: a percentage of the value of the orders they approve | Sardine, Riskified, Forter: quote or demo. Signifyd also sells through a Shopify app; check the listing for trial terms |
| Maskbreak | Free plan; Starter €29 a month for 50,000 visitor checks; Enterprise from €990 a month | Free plan: 10,000 visitor checks a month, every signal included, no card |
Read the units before the prices, because the vendors do not count the same thing.
SEON. One fraud check can return email, phone, IP and device data in a single response.
IPQS. A lookup is one call to one API, and the free plan’s 1,000 monthly credits appear to be shared across its APIs. The cheap tiers leave things out: residential proxy detection is listed from SMB+ ($999 a month) and device fingerprinting only on Enterprise.
minFraud. One query takes the IP, email, card, address and device inputs together. At 2,500 checks a month, Insights at list price comes to $37.50 and Factors to $50 (our arithmetic, not a quote), but neither returns SEON’s online-platform footprint.
Castle and Maskbreak. Castle’s free budget is for trying it; Castle itself says to upgrade to Pro before production. A Maskbreak visitor check covers the visit and nothing else. Price the decisions you actually make, at your real volume.
Six questions to answer before you replace SEON
- Which enrichment carries your decisions? The
applied_rulesin SEON’s responses tell you which data your rules lean on. - Are you regulated? Sanctions, PEP screening and transaction monitoring need an AML vendor, not a fraud API.
- Web only, or native apps too? SEON ships web, iOS and Android SDKs. Check every candidate’s platform list.
- Who should hold the chargeback? A guarantee vendor can take it on, for a percentage of the value of the orders it approves; the rest of this list leaves it with you.
- Rules or a default? SEON, Castle and Maskbreak all return a decision before you write a rule. Find out what each default does with a VPN.
- Can you watch before you block? Castle has log-only policies; Maskbreak’s integration guide starts in watch mode. Run a week on real traffic first.
SEON alternatives compared, vendor by vendor
Maskbreak does one part of SEON’s job: it checks how a visitor arrives, not who they claim to be. A browser snippet collects two tokens when a form is submitted; your server sends them to POST /v1/evaluate with its API key and gets allow, review or block, a risk score and the reasons. Maskbreak’s network intelligence flags VPNs (with the service named when known), proxies including residential ones, and Tor. A cloud-server address is reported as the reason datacenter_asn but on its own stays allow. Its device check flags fake browsers (antidetect browsers that spoof their fingerprint), automation and emulators. Send your own accountId and it also tells you when one device has been used for several of your accounts. Example response for a signup through a VPN, from a device already linked to four accounts on your site:
{
"decision": "review",
"risk_score": 35,
"reasons": ["vpn_detected", "multi_account_device"],
"network": {
"vpn": true, "proxy": false, "datacenter": false, "tor": false,
"residential": true, "service": "<VPN service, when known>"
},
"device": {
"antidetect": false, "automation": false, "tampering_score": 0,
"linked_accounts": 4, "multi_account": true
}
}
The VPN on its own makes it review, because plenty of honest people use one. multi_account_device is listed but changes nothing until you give multi-account devices an action on the console’s Rules tab (see multi-accounting). That rule speaks only for the shared device: it can raise this answer or leave it, and a block from another signal, such as a proxy on the same visit, stays a block. What Maskbreak does not do: email or phone footprint (the email check is a disposable-domain signal only), AML, identity verification, a case queue, cross-customer data or native mobile SDKs. The full head-to-head is in Maskbreak vs SEON.
If you mostly used SEON’s email and phone checks, IPQS keeps them under one account at a far lower published entry price. Its proxy API scores an IP from 0 to 100 and flags VPN, proxy, Tor and recent abuse; email validation reports disposable, deliverability and leak status; phone validation reports line type, VOIP, prepaid and SMS-pumping risk. Email and phone validation are on every plan, the free one included. The catch is plan gating: residential proxy detection is listed from SMB+, and device fingerprinting (with its mobile SDK) and the Dark Data™ set only on Enterprise. IPQS also has a Dark Web Leak API that checks emails, usernames and passwords against breaches; confirm which plan it needs before you count on it. The documented proxy response has no field that names the VPN or proxy operator. More in our IPQS alternatives guide and Maskbreak vs IPQS.
minFraud scores signups, logins, password resets, payout changes and purchases from one request that can carry the IP, email, card, billing address, phone and a device token. Insights and Factors return an anonymizer object that flags VPNs, public and residential proxies and Tor exits, and names the provider. Email checks cover disposable and free-webmail addresses and the domain’s risk; custom rules set accept, reject or manual review on every tier; a Device Tracking Add-On for web, Android and iOS links devices independently of the IP. There is no online-platform footprint, and we found no documented fake-browser or bot detection. Compare it in Maskbreak vs minFraud or the minFraud alternatives guide.
If the part of SEON you valued was its device intelligence, Fingerprint is the specialist. It returns a visitor ID for web, iOS and Android, plus Smart Signals: VPN, residential and data-center proxy, Tor, bots, browser tampering with an antidetect-browser flag, incognito, virtual machines and velocity, rolled into a Suspect Score. A Rules Engine that returns allow or block actions is in beta. It does no email or phone enrichment. Fingerprint’s own pages disagree on which Smart Signals the Free plan includes, so check before you plan around it. See the Fingerprint alternatives guide.
Castle is built around account abuse: fake signups, account takeover, multi-accounting, SMS pumping. Castle.js creates a request token in the browser; your server sends it to the Filter API for anonymous signup and login attempts, or to the Risk API for signed-in users, and gets bot, account-takeover and account-abuse scores, named signals and an allow, challenge or deny action from Policies. Castle ships default policies you tune. Its email signals go past disposable domains to generated, fraudulent and unreachable addresses, and a standalone IP Intelligence API reports VPN and proxy tunnels with the operator when known. No signal in its reference is named for antidetect browsers; spoofed_device and tamper checks cover that ground. See Maskbreak vs Castle.
Kount now sells under Equifax as Kount 360: Payments Fraud with its Omniscore, Account Protection for signups, logins and account changes, Identity Proofing, and chargeback prevention and recovery tools. On 23 September 2026 Equifax added two APIs that sit close to SEON’s territory: Signal Score for Email (domain risk, first-seen history, an identity footprint) and Signal Score for Device (proxy piercing, Tor, hosting, human-versus-machine and device-integrity flags). Equifax says its identity network spans 20,000+ brands. Kount sells chargeback tools, not a guarantee; it pitches itself as the cheaper alternative to one. See Kount alternatives and Maskbreak vs Kount.
SEON already mixes rules with a machine-learning score. Sift leans further toward models: you send events from your backend and its JavaScript or mobile SDKs, and it scores each abuse type separately (payments, account takeover, fake accounts, promotion abuse, content abuse) with reason codes, a Decisioning Engine, Workflows and a console on top. Sift says its network sees more than a trillion events a year. It publishes no price and offers no free tier or self-serve trial; Vendr’s buyer data (February 2026, 50 purchases) puts the median contract at $150,000 a year. Sift holds no chargeback liability. See Sift alternatives and Maskbreak vs Sift.
If you chose SEON for its AML side, Sardine belongs on the shortlist. It calls itself an “Agentic Financial Crime Platform for Fraud Prevention & AML” and covers KYC and KYB, device intelligence and behaviour biometrics, payment and card-issuing fraud, transaction monitoring, sanctions and PEP screening, and case management. Customers it names include FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit and Nubank. It raised a $70M Series C in February 2025, and fintech.global reports a $25M extension in May 2026. Maskbreak vs SEON has a short SEON vs Sardine section.
Sometimes the real question is who pays for a fraud chargeback. These vendors approve or decline orders and can cover chargebacks on the ones they approve. Signifyd charges a percentage of the approved order total and nothing on declines, with cover that ranges from fraud-only to a total chargeback liability shift. Riskified prices its Chargeback Guarantee as a risk-adjusted share of approved order value. Forter offers covered and uncovered contracts. ClearSale, part of Experian since April 2025, includes a guarantee in Growth plans from $250 a month. Wyllo (formerly NoFraud) publishes Shopify tiers from 1% of revenue and pays its guarantee as account credits, not cash, for card-not-present fraud chargebacks only. See Signifyd alternatives and Forter alternatives.
Test the free option on your own traffic
Free plan: 10,000 visitor checks a month, no card. Paid plans from €29 a month. Start in watch mode, read the reasons for a week, then decide what to block.
How we checked this guide
We re-checked every competitor claim on this page against the pages below on 24 September 2026. The Sift price range comes from Vendr’s buyer data, not from Sift. We build Maskbreak, so our own entry is not a neutral recommendation; verify current limits and prices with each vendor.
- SEON pricing and free trial
- SEON API reference: trial rate limits
- SEON residential proxy and VPN detection
- SEON suspicious-flag reference
- SEON Email API
- IPQS plans and proxy API fields
- MaxMind minFraud pricing and responses
- Fingerprint pricing and Smart Signals
- Castle pricing and signals reference
- Equifax: Signal Score launch and Kount on Shopify
- Sift platform and Vendr buyer data
- Sardine and fintech.global report
- Signifyd pricing and Riskified FY2025 20-F
- ClearSale pricing, Wyllo on Shopify and Forter’s contract FAQ
SEON alternatives: frequently asked questions
What are the best SEON alternatives?
It depends on the part of SEON you use. For email, phone and IP data at a lower published price, IPQS or MaxMind minFraud. For device identification, Fingerprint or Castle. For machine-learning scores across payments and account abuse, Sift. For AML and KYC, Sardine or Kount 360. For chargeback cover on an online store, Signifyd, Riskified, ClearSale, Wyllo (formerly NoFraud) or Forter. For a free check on the live visit, Maskbreak. None of them documents SEON’s registration lookups across online platforms.
How much does SEON cost?
As of September 2026, SEON’s Starter plan is $699 a month for 2,500 fraud checks, 10 users and 50 custom rules, with platform and API access. Premium has custom pricing and adds unlimited API calls, Case Management and AML Compliance. SEON lists no per-check, overage or annual price. There is no free API tier; a free trial (2 seats, 500 manual checks a month) is available on application.
Is there a free alternative to SEON?
Maskbreak’s Free plan includes 10,000 visitor checks a month with no credit card; paid plans start at €29 a month. It checks the visit, not the email or phone number. IPQS has a free plan of 1,000 lookups a month (35 a day), Fingerprint a free plan of 1,000 web and iOS API calls a month, and Castle a $5 monthly usage budget meant for evaluation. MaxMind offers a minFraud trial of up to 1,000 queries on request.
Which SEON competitors check email addresses and phone numbers?
IPQS validates both: disposable, deliverability and leak status for emails; line type, VOIP, prepaid and SMS-pumping risk for phones. MaxMind minFraud checks emails for disposable and free-webmail addresses and domain risk, and takes phone and address inputs. Castle flags disposable, generated, fraudulent and unreachable emails. Kount’s Signal Score for Email adds domain risk and history. None documents SEON’s registration lookups across online platforms. Maskbreak only flags disposable email domains.
SEON vs Sift: what is the difference?
Both combine rules with machine learning; the difference is emphasis and how you buy. SEON starts from email, phone, IP and device enrichment, adds AML and identity verification, and publishes a $699 Starter plan. Sift trains models on your events and its network, scoring payments, account takeover, fake accounts, promotion abuse and content abuse separately, and sells only through sales. Vendr’s buyer data (February 2026) puts the median Sift contract at $150,000 a year.
Can Maskbreak replace SEON?
Only if the part of SEON you rely on is the check on how visitors arrive: VPNs, proxies, Tor, fake browsers, automation, and one device behind several of your accounts. Maskbreak does not do email or phone footprint, AML, identity verification, case management or native mobile apps. If you need those, keep SEON for them or pick a platform that has them; Maskbreak can run next to it as a free check on the visit.