Too Cheap to Be Real? Inside a $5 Background Check

August 29, 2026

A $5 background check from a company you've never heard of sounds too good to be true. So here's exactly what's inside one.

VolunteerBadge searches 3,241 individual data sources across 58 U.S. jurisdictions — all 50 states, D.C., and the territories. More than 1,600 of those are court sources, which is where the substance of a criminal record actually lives.

The detail that matters most for anyone placing adults with children: 189 of our 200 sex-offender registry sources refresh WEEKLY. Not monthly, not quarterly. If someone is added to a registry on a Tuesday, a monthly refresh cycle can leave them invisible to a background check for weeks — and those weeks are the entire risk.

We publish the full source list publicly. No form, no NDA. You can filter it by state and see every source we search there: → https://www.volunteerbadge.com/sources

Read the full breakdown — breadth, refresh cadence, identity resolution, and human review of every record: → https://www.volunteerbadge.com/blog/what-is-inside-a-5-dollar-background-check-3241-sources

Security and compliance posture: → https://www.volunteerbadge.com/trust

ABOUT VOLUNTEERBADGE $5 FCRA-compliant volunteer background checks for nonprofits, churches, camps and youth programs. No monthly fees, no minimums, no contracts, unlimited admin seats. Credits never expire. ScreenForge Labs, LLC has obtained its FCRA Certificate from the Consumer Data Industry Association.

An honest limitation, stated up front: no single government database contains every U.S. criminal record, and county submission to state and federal repositories is largely voluntary. That's true of every multi-source search, ours included. We publish our source list so you can judge the breadth yourself instead of taking our word for it.

Questions: support@screenforgelabs.com · (239) 219-0929