IPQualityScore competitors and alternatives

The alternatives, briefly

Kaidn compared with IPQualityScore (IPQS)

Breadth of lookup data across IP, email, phone and URLs, sold self-serve in monthly lookup buckets.

IPQS sells breadth of data, and it is good at it. IP reputation, email validation, phone validation and URL scanning all sit behind one self-serve account, and their proxy detection has a strong reputation we are not going to talk you out of.

People go looking for alternatives for one of two reasons: how little volume you get for the money at the low end, or the fact that a lookup gives you data rather than a decision.

Volume at the entry level#

IPQS's free tier is 1,000 lookups a month with a 35 per day cap. The Startup plan is $99 or more for 5,000 lookups a month.

Ours is 10,000 events a month free with no daily cap, and $39 for 50,000.

That is roughly ten times, and it is worth being precise about why. We are not selling you more data per lookup. We are selling you a decision across several surfaces, and pricing it per decision.

The device fingerprinting gap#

On IPQS, device fingerprinting unlocks on higher tiers. On ours it is in the box.

@kaidn/fp is a browser library you drop in. It produces a device id plus signals for automation and anti-detect tooling, and collecting it is free, because you are billed per scored decision rather than per fingerprint.

That matters more than it sounds. Device reuse is usually the strongest duplicate-account signal available, and a plan that puts your best signal behind an upgrade is worth noticing.

Three lookups, or one event#

The clearest way to see the difference is to put the two integrations side by side. With a data API you fetch each surface and combine them yourself:

const [ip, email, phone] = await Promise.all([
  fetch(`https://ipqualityscore.com/api/json/ip/${KEY}/${userIp}`).then((r) => r.json()),
  fetch(`https://ipqualityscore.com/api/json/email/${KEY}/${userEmail}`).then((r) => r.json()),
  fetch(`https://ipqualityscore.com/api/json/phone/${KEY}/${userPhone}`).then((r) => r.json()),
]);

// three lookups billed, and now the actual work: what does this MEAN together?
const risky =
  ip.fraud_score > 85 ||
  email.disposable ||
  (phone.VOIP && ip.proxy) ||
  /* the rule you will add next month, and the one after that */ false;

That last expression is the product you are building. It is also the part you have to re-tune every time the abuse changes shape.

const { verdict, reasons, checks } = await kaidn.score({
  event: "signup",
  user_id: user.id,
  ip: userIp,
  email: userEmail,
  phone: userPhone,
  device_id: deviceId,
});

if (verdict === "block") return deny(reasons);
if (verdict === "review") await queueForReview(user, checks);

One event billed, and how the surfaces are weighed against each other is the thing being sold rather than the thing you write.

Whether that is a good trade depends on whether you want to own the rules. Some teams genuinely do, and for them the first version is the right answer.

Run both before you switch#

The honest way to settle a comparison is to run both against your own traffic and check them against outcomes you already know. Scoring in parallel costs one extra call and risks nothing for the user:

const [ours, theirs] = await Promise.allSettled([
  kaidn.score({ event: "signup", user_id: user.id, ip, email, device_id }),
  ipqs.lookup(ip, email),
]);

await db.shadow.insert({ user_id: user.id, ours, theirs, at: new Date() });
// two weeks later, join this table against chargebacks, bans and reversed payouts

Two weeks of that will tell you more than any comparison page, including this one.

Where we would send you elsewhere#

If you need URL and phishing scanning, address verification or reverse identity lookup, IPQS has all three and we have none of them. And if IP reputation is genuinely the only thing you need, minFraud or Scamalytics will be cheaper than either of us.