Check Your Exposure

SpyCloud vs. Have I Been Pwned:

Which is Right for You?

SpyCloud’s automated identity threat protection vs Have I Been Pwned’s (HIBP) breach notifications.
This comparison will help you decide which cybersecurity solution best fits your team’s needs.

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SpyCloud vs. Have I Been Pwned: Solution comparison

When choosing between SpyCloud and Have I Been Pwned, it’s important to understand the difference in focus and where each vendor excels.
SpyCloud Logo

SpyCloud specializes in holistic identity threat protection with automated remediation. SpyCloud protects employees and consumers from account takeover (ATO), ransomware, and other attacks with out-of-the-box workflow integrations to fit across your security stack.

SpyCloud also offers a free darknet exposure tool to check for compromise, but our solutions extend further to help enterprises act quickly to prevent targeted identity attacks and fraud.

HAVE I BEEN PWNED
Have I Been Pwned was created as a free service for consumers to check if they were ‘pwned’ and compromised. HIBP is helpful for checking if your email appeared in a known breach and for maintaining basic password hygiene, but it isn’t designed for enterprise-scale identity threat prevention or automated remediation.
Different problems, different strengths

SpyCloud vs. Have I Been Pwned for solving your security threat pain points

Have I Been Pwned tells you if an email or password appears in a breach, but stops short of addressing the most exploited gap today: stolen identity data that criminals are using today for targeted attacks. That’s where SpyCloud leads.

Instead of just surfacing if an employee or consumer credential is “pwned,” SpyCloud shows the extent of what was stolen – credentials, session cookies, PII, and everything else that makes up their online identity – with automated remediation your teams doesn’t have to build.

HIBP helps individuals. SpyCloud helps 8 of the Fortune 10 and hundreds of global enterprises plus public sector agencies protect their workforce, consumers, and citizens from identity-based attacks.

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SpyCloud

Check your breach exposure & darknet footprint

Free email lookup across breaches, malware infections, phishing attacks, and ULP combolists

Stop account takeover at scale

Continuous monitoring of nearly a trillion recaptured identity assets with automated credential/cookie resets

Remediate phished identities automatically

Detect identity data stolen via phishing kits and phishing target lists to remediate exposures at scale

See what EDR missed

Surface exact stolen credentials & session artifacts and automate post-infection steps (reset app credentials and invalidate cookies/tokens)

Prevent MFA bypass / session hijacking

Detect risky, stolen session cookies and trigger invalidation/re-authentication flows

Improve password hygiene and directory health

Schedule scans with sub-5-minute resets

Have I Been Pwned

Check breach exposure

Free email/username lookups across public breach sources

Verify password hygiene
Detect compromised passwords with hashed lookups via API calls
Monitor domains
Limited email notifications for watched domains

Who is SpyCloud for?

Security operations, IAM teams, fraud and consumer protection teams, trust and safety teams, and CTI analysts who need actionable breach and darknet intelligence paired with fast remediation.

See which teams frequently use SpyCloud

SpyCloud vs Have I Been Pwned comparison guide

Both SpyCloud and Have I Been Pwned publish recovered data from breaches, but that’s where the similarities stop.

SpyCloud is a comprehensive identity threat protection solution that also recaptures stolen data from infostealer malware infections, successful phishing attacks, and combolists in addition to third-party breaches, with continuous near-real-time insights. SpyCloud enables automates remediation of exposed identities to prevent account takeover, session hijacking, fraud and even ransomware; whereas Have I Been Pwned is a lookup and notification service for known breaches and leaked passwords – great for personal awareness and education, but not equipped to protect your employees from targeted identity attacks.

Choose the right solution for your business.
SPYCLOUD HAVE I BEEN PWNED
OVERVIEW SpyCloud’s main offering is identity threat protection: preventing account takeover, session hijacking, fraud, and ransomware, as well as accelerating cybercrime investigations.

SpyCloud’s comprehensive identity threat protection solutions give your teams the upper hand of cybercriminals by cutting off unauthorized access before it’s used against you. 		HIBP is designed to help individuals understand if their data has been exposed in public breaches. Free email/username breach checking, Pwned Passwords API, and basic domain monitoring.
FREE OFFERING SpyCloud’s free Check Your Exposure tool delivers an instant exposure report identifying malware-infected employees, stolen session cookies, and recent breach exposures – plus a consumer exposure view and personal email lookup. HIBP offers a free lookup tool that lists breaches where an email address was compromised.
CORE DATA SOURCES Nearly a trillion recaptured identity records from third-party breaches, malware‑exfiltrated data, phished data assets, with continuous real-time data publishing

SpyCloud continuously collects and analyzes exposure data, and applies rigorous data science to correlate exposures across identities. 		Publicly-sourced breach data; extremely limited malware exfiltrated data, and no phished data. HIBP has about 900 breach sources, less than 2% of what SpyCloud has
PLAINTEXT PASSWORDS SpyCloud is the only vendor that cracks passwords at scale to enable exact matches without false positives. We  have 35+ billion passwords and counting.

With 90% of our passwords delivered in plaintext, this ensures you only spend time acting on true evidence of compromise. 		Passwords are not available in plaintext
SOLUTION OUTCOMES Fewer ATOs, session hijacks, proactive resets & session invalidation, reduced fraud losses, and faster malware infection remediation Awareness if an email/password appeared in a breach; improved password hygiene
VALUE Identity‑level signals (cookies/tokens) that preempt logins; automation into IdP/SIEM/SOAR Simplicity, price, and individual breach awareness
INTEGRATIONS Integrate with IdPs, EDRs, SOARs, SIEMs, ITSMs, and TIPs to detect and prevent targeted cyberattacks

SpyCloud Connect delivers custom automation workflows that integrate identity exposure data into your existing or new workflows 		No native integrations

Rate-limited API can be used for password checks, but not at scale
EMPLOYEES SpyCloud has over 200+ global employees who are passionate cybersecurity experts.

SpyCloud’s leadership team has deep experience from Fortune 500 companies, threat intelligence vendors, federal agencies, and the U.S. Department of Defense. 		Fewer than 10 people
SUPPORT SpyCloud offers daily live support via portal and phone; 24/7/365 for critical items. Dedicated account manager, with available training, credits, and onboarding teams. None
Request SpyCloud pricing
USE CASE SPYCLOUD RECORDED FUTURE
Darknet exposure insights SpyCloud’s Check Your Exposure lookup tool offers an instant report to identify threats to your organization like malware-infected employees, stolen session cookies, and recency of breach exposures

A summary of each data source gives an understanding of how it was compromised and what may be included 		Free email breach lookup with optional notifications for when your address appears in future breaches
Account takeover prevention Employee ATO Prevention for continuous monitoring with automated credential blocking and password resets through native IDP integrations Not positioned for automated ATO prevention; notifications only, no automation, no plaintext passwords
Post-infection identity remediation (including cookies/tokens) Compass Malware Remediation and playbooks; unmanaged endpoints supported

SpyCloud shows exactly which credentials and session tokens were stolen so you can reset them fast 		Not a dedicated post-infection identity remediation tool
Phishing exposure remediation Phishing Exposure Remediation to recapture stolen data from phishing victims (emails, plaintext passwords, cookies, IPs, and more) and extracts phishing targeting lists to prevent targets from becoming a victim Not positioned for phishing exposure remediation
MFA bypass / session hijacking prevention Session Identity Protection to detect/invalidate stolen sessions Doesn’t track session cookies
Third-party risk Third Party Insight with vendor portal, including exposed usernames and plaintext passwords Not positioned for supply chain exposure
Workforce credential hygiene (Active Directory / Entra ID / Okta Workforce) Identity Guardians to schedule scans and automate reset of passwords and sessions No native integrations with identity providers
Holistic identity coverage IDLink™ identity matching analytics automatically links disparate records across 65,000+ sources, analyzing shared passwords, usernames, emails, phone numbers, IP addresses, and more to recreate the holistic digital identity

Reveals up to 12x more exposures than email-only matching 		Only exact match username or password

5.0

“SpyCloud is the best service in their industry and I really don’t know why you would use another vendor or competitor.”

– Gartner Peer Insights

See more customer reviews on Gartner

Where SpyCloud outperforms Have I Been Pwned

SpyCloud is the right fit if:

You need prevention, not just awareness

SpyCloud prevents ATO by detecting exposures and automatically remediating credentials and session cookies with native integrations with top directory stores, whereas HIBP only offers manual breach exposure.

You worry about session hijacking and malware infections

SpyCloud monitors 80+ infostealer malware families, recapturing millions of infected devices' data monthly for definitive evidence that credentials were stolen, what session cookies were exfiltrated, for post-infection remediation: HIBP doesn’t track malware-sourced exposures or stolen session cookies, leaving organizations blind to this growing attack vector.

You want an automated response

SpyCloud automates remediation through native integrations with Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, SIEM/SOAR/EDR/TIPs, eliminating the need for manual analyst intervention, but HIBP requires you to develop and maintain your own response workflows with limited API password offerings.

You know every minute counts

SpyCloud drastically cuts incident response times to minutes by providing actionable identity data, often within hours of collection from criminal marketplace, for proactive approach to reset passwords and invalidate sessions to prevent attacks; Unlike HIBP which offers raw data reliance on publicly disclosed breaches

You care about hidden exposures

SpyCloud's IDLink technology analyzes shared passwords, usernames, emails, phone numbers, and IP addresses from over 65,000 sources, including successfully phished data. This approach reveals up to 12x more records than email-only searches, providing a holistic view of online identity that uncovers hidden exposures, beyond what HIBP offers with its email-only searches.

The bottom line:

Have I Been Pwned is great for checking your personal exposure, but when it comes to protecting your business, SpyCloud is the stronger option. Choose SpyCloud for a purpose-built solution to protect against account takeover, session hijacking, ransomware, and evolving identity threats.

SpyCloud solutions

Trusted by 8 of the Fortune 10
Account Takeover Prevention
Detect exposed employees and consumers (including credentials and session artifacts) and trigger step‑up, password reset, or session invalidation.
Identity Guardians

Schedule scans across Active Directory / Microsoft Entra ID / Okta with automated resets of passwords and session cookies.

Compass Malware Remediation
Enable post-infection remediation and see exactly what infostealer malware took (accounts, cookies, tokens) and guide resets/invalidation – even for unmanaged/contractor machines.
Investigations
Start from one of 18 selectors (email, username, domain, infected machine ID, etc.); automatically correlate breach, phishing, and malware data to build the full identity and produce finished intelligence.
Fraud Prevention
Pipe compromised credentials, cookies, and PII into your application and risk models, letting you cut down false positives and stop account takeover, session hijacking, synthetic identities, and fraud – without extra friction.
Insider Threat Detection

Uncover hidden insider risks – malicious or negligent – before it’s too late, using evidence of compromised identities.

Third Party Insight
Leverage continuous third‑party/vendor identity exposure monitoring with a vendor portal and plaintext credential sharing to drive action.
SpyCloud Connect
SpyCloud builds, supports and maintains custom automation workflows integrated across your preferred tooling – IdP, EDR, SOAR, SIEM, ITSM, and TIPs.

See SpyCloud in action

Do a data match rate test and see the breach, malware, and phishing exposures we’ve recaptured for your domain today.
FAQs

Content based on publicly available information; last updated on October 10, 2025.

🪐 New research: The 2025 Identity Threat Report is here →

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FAQs

Yes, they can. Many organizations leverage HIBP for general awareness while relying on SpyCloud for robust employee identity threat protection. HIBP is excellent for personal use or small-scale monitoring, and its Pwned Passwords API can strengthen user sign-ups. SpyCloud, however, addresses the gaps HIBP doesn’t. It uncovers exposures beyond public breaches, including malware-stealer data and successful phishing attacks, and automatically mitigates these threats. While using HIBP alongside SpyCloud is acceptable, if you have SpyCloud, you’re likely already covering everything HIBP would alert on, and much more.

Yes, significantly more. SpyCloud monitors over 65,000 breach sources compared to HIBP’s approximately 900. SpyCloud boasts 53.3 billion distinct identity records and nearly a trillion total recaptured assets. More importantly, SpyCloud tracks fundamentally different data types, including:

  • Malware-exfiltrated credentials from over 80 infostealer families
  • Session cookies and authentication tokens
  • Phishing campaign data – successful phishes and targeted domains
  • Private darknet sources, often before public disclosure

SpyCloud recaptures data within days of compromise, contrasting with the typical 18-24 month lag for public breaches. Additionally, SpyCloud cracks 90% of passwords to plaintext, eliminating false positives, whereas HIBP uses a hashed-only approach.

While HIBP’s basic services are free (or low-cost for certain enterprise features), providing valuable awareness of problems, its scope is limited as it doesn’t solve them.

SpyCloud offers a more robust free exposure lookup tool that extends beyond just breaches to malware infections and phished data, and our fully managed solutions not only alert you to exposed accounts but also let you take action to secure them. This saves your team substantial time and prevents potential breaches. The value SpyCloud delivers – in preventing account takeovers, automating tedious tasks, and providing enriched intelligence – typically far exceeds the cost. Many SpyCloud customers experience a fast return on investment (an average payback of approximately 3.5 months), often by avoiding just a single incident or by reclaiming thousands of analyst hours that would have been spent on manual checks and resets. Think of it this way: HIBP might tell you there’s a fire, but SpyCloud is the fire brigade that puts it out and fireproofs the building.

SpyCloud detects exposures within 1-2 hours of data ingestion from criminal sources, often days to weeks before public disclosure. For Active Directory Guardian deployments, password scanning happens every 5 minutes, with automated resets triggered immediately upon match detection. The complete cycle – including detection, IDLink correlation, policy evaluation, automated password reset through AD/Entra ID/Okta, notification, and logging – completes in 5-15 minutes, depending on configuration. Compare this to HIBP’s workflow: public breach disclosure (18-24 months after compromise) → email notification → manual investigation → coordinating with users → password changes (days to weeks).