Comparison
LayerCall vs MaxMind
Both answer questions about whether a signup is real. MaxMind is an IP geolocation provider; LayerCall returns IP, email, phone, domain and device from one request. Which is the better buy depends on how many of those you need to ask about.
What each one is
The long-established IP geolocation provider, offered both as a hosted lookup and as databases you download and query inside your own infrastructure.
Their current pricing →One request returns IP, email, phone, domain and device together, on one key and one quota — because the signal that catches a fake signup is usually the relationship between them, and that relationship does not exist inside any single check.
Our pricing →We never quote MaxMind’s prices. Where the table below states a fact about them, it is read from their own public page, linked beside the claim with the date we read it, and dropped if it goes sixty days unchecked. Their pricing is linked above and is always current.
About MaxMind’s side of this page: we describe what kind of product it is, and where we state a fact about it we quote their own public page, link to it, and show the date we read it — and we never quote their prices, which change without notice. Where their pages do not say, we say that rather than guess. Anything current comes from them: MaxMind’s own pricing page. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners; LayerCall is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with MaxMind.
Point by point
Every row is a point we set out to meet. Ours is checkable on this site; theirs is read from MaxMind’s own public pages, each claim linked to the page it came from and dated. A dash means their pages do not say — which is not a no.
| Point | LayerCall | MaxMind | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers scored in one request | Yes | IP, email, phone, domain and device — one call, one key, one quota. | No | IP, by category (IP geolocation provider). Not email, phone, domain and device. |
| Cross-signal linkage | Yes | A device that reappears on a new email and IP is linked, and the link is in the score. | No | Not possible from a single-identifier check: there is no second signal to link IP to. |
| A free tier that needs no card | Yes | 1,000 lookups a month, every endpoint, no card, no daily cap. At the limit it stops rather than billing. | Not stated | GeoLite (free): 1,000 web-service queries per day and 30 database downloads per day, via a free account. their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| Device fingerprinting on every plan | Yes | Included on every plan, the free one too. | Yes | Device tracking add-on runs at no extra cost on all minFraud tiers; detailed device risk data is Insights/Factors only. their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| The signals come back with the score | Yes | The signals behind it, and an allow / review / block verdict you tune with strictness. A number alone is unappealable. | No | minFraud Score returns only a risk score; risk data and risk-score reasons are added on Insights and Factors tiers. their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| A test mode that never bills | Yes | Synthetic data, labelled as such in every response, never billed, never written to the shared network. How it works | Yes | Sandbox uses separate keys and fixed test IPs with synthetic scores; sandbox APIs never run out of service credit. their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| Repeat lookups are not charged | Yes | Cached repeat lookups are free, every response carries billable_lookups, and you set your own spend cap. | Not stated | Responses carry funds_remaining and queries_remaining, an account balance rather than the cost of the query just made. their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| Accuracy published with sample size and method | Yes | Published with the sample size, the method and the corpus. The figures | No | GeoIP City Database: 99.8% accurate at country level, 80% at state, 68% at city level (US, within 50km). their page → Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
| Verifies an AI agent's signature | Yes | Verifies an agent’s Web Bot Auth signature and decides what a verified agent may do. Agent endpoints | Not stated | Not stated on their public pages. Checked 3 Sept 2026. |
When MaxMind is the better buy
You want the lookup to happen on your own machines. A downloadable database has no per-request latency, no third party in the request path, and no dependency on our uptime — none of which an API can offer.
Weighing more than one option? Every MaxMind alternative we know of, ranked — including the ones that are a closer swap than we are.