When evaluating face recognition tools, one of the most important distinctions to understand is between a developer API platform and a complete consumer product. Face++, the flagship computer vision platform from Megvii, is a powerful API that developers use to build face recognition features into their own applications. Facesearching, by contrast, is a complete reverse face search engine that anyone can use to find someone by photo, verify identities, and investigate suspicious online activity without any technical knowledge. While both tools involve face recognition technology, they serve entirely different user groups and solve different problems. Face++ is a component that developers integrate into larger systems. Facesearching is a finished product that delivers actionable results to end users. This comparison breaks down the key differences between these two approaches, helping you understand which one matches your needs and capabilities.
What Is Face++?
Face++ is a cloud-based computer vision API platform developed by Megvii, one of China's leading AI companies. The platform provides a comprehensive set of face-related APIs including face detection, face comparison, face search, liveness detection, and facial attribute analysis. Developers use these APIs to add face recognition capabilities to their own applications without building the underlying machine learning models from scratch. Common use cases include identity verification for financial services, access control for secure facilities, customer analytics for retail stores, and photo organization for social apps. Face++ is a developer tool: you need programming skills to integrate the APIs, you need to manage your own image database, and you need to build the user-facing parts of the application yourself. The platform is powerful and flexible, but it is not a product that an end user can pick up and use directly. It is a set of building blocks for developers who want to create face recognition applications.
What Is facesearching?
Facesearching is a complete, consumer-ready reverse face search engine designed for end users who need identity verification capabilities without technical expertise. Unlike Face++, which is a set of APIs for developers, facesearching is a fully operational web platform with a user interface, search infrastructure, and result delivery system. Users simply upload a photo, and the engine searches the public web to find where the same face appears, returning results with URLs, context, and relevance scores. The platform is built for practical verification scenarios: hiring managers checking candidate identities, journalists investigating sources, online daters verifying matches, and individuals monitoring their personal digital footprint. Facesearching handles the entire workflow from photo upload to search to result delivery, with no setup, no coding, and no database management required. The platform's open-web search capability is its key differentiator: it searches publicly available images from across the entire internet, not just from a user-defined database. For more on practical verification, see our guide on how to verify a remote employee's identity with face search.
Key Differences at a Glance
- Product type: Face++ is a developer API platform. facesearching is a complete consumer web product.
- Target user: Face++ is for developers and enterprises building custom applications. facesearching is for anyone who needs to verify an identity.
- Search scope: Face++ searches within a customer-provided image database. facesearching searches the open public web.
- Technical barrier: Face++ requires programming, API integration, and database management. facesearching requires only a web browser.
- Pricing model: Face++ charges per API call with volume-based pricing. facesearching provides a consumer-friendly access model for individual searches.
Face++ gives you the engine and the parts. facesearching gives you the keys to a fully built car. The question is whether you want to build a vehicle or drive one.
When to Choose Face++
Face++ is the right choice when you are a developer or enterprise building a custom application that requires face recognition capabilities. If you are creating a banking app that needs to verify customer identities during account opening, a security system that needs to control access to a facility, or a retail analytics platform that needs to understand customer demographics, Face++ provides the APIs you need to add these capabilities to your product. The platform gives you granular control over the recognition process, allows you to choose which features to use, and integrates into your existing technology stack. Face++ is also appropriate when you need to search within a private database of images that you control, such as an employee photo database or a customer identity verification system. It is a powerful, flexible tool for developers who have the technical resources to build around it.
When to Choose facesearching
Facesearching is the right choice when you need to verify an identity right now, without building anything, and when you need to search the open web rather than a private database. It is the appropriate tool for hiring managers who need to verify a candidate's identity before an interview, journalists who need to investigate a source's background, online daters who want to confirm that a match is using real photos, and individuals who want to monitor where their own photos appear online. Facesearching is also the right choice when you need to discover where a face appears across the broader internet, something that a database-bounded API like Face++ cannot do. The platform's open-web search capability is essential for detecting fraud, impersonation, and photo theft because these activities typically involve photos taken from public sources across the web. For more on how open-web search enables effective verification, see our guide on how to use face search for reputation management.
The Complete Product Advantage
The advantage of a complete product like facesearching over an API platform like Face++ is not about the quality of the underlying technology; it is about the time and expertise required to get results. Face++ has excellent face recognition technology, but turning that technology into a usable identity verification tool requires significant development work, including building a user interface, managing image databases, handling search result presentation, and ensuring privacy compliance. Most people who need to verify an identity do not have the time, budget, or expertise to build a complete verification application from scratch. They need a tool that works right now. Facesearching provides that complete solution. The platform's web crawler continuously indexes publicly available images, its search infrastructure can match a face against billions of images in seconds, and its user interface presents results in a clear, actionable format. This end-to-end capability is what makes facesearching a practical tool for everyday verification tasks. For businesses looking to build a comprehensive security strategy, see our guide on how to create a face search security checklist for your business.
The choice between Face++ and facesearching is fundamentally a choice between building a solution and using one. If you have the development resources to build a custom face recognition application, Face++ provides powerful, flexible APIs. If you need to verify identities today, without writing code, facesearching provides the complete, ready-to-use solution. Ready to verify an identity right now? Run a face search on facesearching now and get results in seconds.