Is PimEyes Safe? How to Opt Your Face Out and What It Won’t Fix

PimEyes is a real face search engine, and its own policies describe safeguards, but “safe” depends on which side of the search you’re on. For you as a searcher, the main risks are what you upload and what you pay for. For you as someone who might be in its index, the risk is that a stranger can upload your photo and find other pictures of you online. The most useful thing most people can do is check whether their face appears and, if they want, use PimEyes’ opt-out form to be excluded from its results. As of September 2026, the form doesn’t ask for payment or a subscription.

This guide starts with that privacy side: how to find and opt out your own face, and what opting out does and doesn’t do. Then it covers who runs PimEyes, what its policies say, what’s free, and one regulator’s action. Facts are as of September 2026 and come from PimEyes’ own pages, Apple’s App Store and a German data protection authority’s press releases. Check PimEyes’ current terms before you rely on any detail.

What PimEyes is

PimEyes calls itself a face search engine. You upload a photo of a face, and it shows other images from the web where a similar face appears. According to its privacy policy, it indexes “fingerprints” of faces found on publicly available websites, and it “does not undertake any action to confirm the identities” of the people in those photos.

Two points from its own pages shape what it can find:

• No social media, by its account. PimEyes’ pricing FAQ says it “does not search or index content from social media platforms,” and that social media and professional networks are intentionally excluded. Its privacy policy says the same.
• It doesn’t identify people, by its account. Its FAQ says PimEyes “does not identify individuals or verify identities.” In practice, a result links to a page, and that page may carry a name, a caption or other details.

That second point is the privacy concern. If a result page names you, a stranger who started with only your face may end up with your name.

How to check whether your face is on PimEyes

1. Pick a few clear photos of yourself, face forward, well lit and unobstructed. Include an older one if your appearance has changed.
2. Go to pimeyes.com directly. Type the address yourself. PimEyes says it’s “available exclusively through this website” and doesn’t offer mobile apps or Telegram bots.
3. Run a free search. Its terms give people without an account 3 free searches. The free tier shows matches, but its pricing table reserves blur-free images and access to the source websites for paid plans. That’s usually enough to see whether something is there.
4. Note what you can. Record the date and describe what appears. If a match looks like it could be an intimate image or an image of a child, don’t download or share it. Go to the resources further down instead.

You don’t need to pay to opt out. To find where a photo is hosted, try the free reverse image search tools in our guide to finding where your photos appear first.

PimEyes opt out: how to remove your face

PimEyes’ opt-out request form, at pimeyes.com/en/opt-out-request-form as of September 2026, asks for three things:

1. A clear photo of your face. It suggests uploading more than one, with different angles. You’ll confirm you agree to the photo being used to block images of you, and that you’re over 18.
2. An anonymized scan of your ID or passport, for identity confirmation. It asks you to cover everything except your photo, following its instructions, and to confirm the scan contains no sensitive data.
3. Your email address, so it can tell you the result. Its privacy policy also lists a telephone number among the details the opt-out process uses.

The form says it needs your photo because it holds no names or emails, only face fingerprints, so a photo is the only way to find your data. It also says the photo you submit “will not be included in future search results” and won’t be used beyond your opt-out request and its legal obligations. PimEyes’ About page says that once an opt-out is processed, your face “will be removed from the PimEyes index and excluded from future searches permanently.”

As of September 2026, the form doesn’t ask for payment, an account or a subscription. Sending an ID scan to a company you don’t know can feel uncomfortable. Anonymize it properly: cover your name, number, date of birth, address and signature, and leave only your photo visible.

What opting out does and doesn’t do

Opting out is worth doing, but it’s narrower than many people expect.

• It only affects PimEyes. Other face search engines keep their own indexes and have their own removal routes. See our guide to whether FaceCheck.ID is safe for another one, and our overview of reverse face search for the wider picture.
• It doesn’t delete the photo from the website that published it. The form says PimEyes is “not liable for the origin of the photo, nor able to take it down from the website it was posted on.” The picture stays online, and other search engines can still find it.
• It depends on matching. PimEyes finds your images by comparing faces, so very different photos, such as ones from years ago, may not all be caught. Checking again later is sensible.
• It doesn’t stop new photos being published. Anything new that appears on a public page is a fresh problem, and it needs the same care.

To remove the source image, you’ll need to contact the site hosting it or use a legal route. Our guide on filing a DMCA takedown notice covers photos you took yourself, and removing images from Google covers search results.

If an intimate image or an image of a child turns up

Don’t share it with anyone. For intimate images of adults shared without consent, our guide to removing intimate images shared without consent explains how to record what you need and covers each removal route, including StopNCII. If someone is threatening to share images unless you pay, read our sextortion help guide before you reply. If the image shows anyone under 18, report the link to NCMEC’s CyberTipline and use NCMEC’s Take It Down. Note the address of the page and report it. Don’t save the image.

Is PimEyes legit? Who runs it

PimEyes is a legit business in the sense that it’s an operating company with published terms. Here’s what its pages said in September 2026:

• Operator: PimEyes’ terms of service (updated July 31, 2026) name the owner of the site as EMEA Robotics LTD. Its privacy policy (updated April 23, 2026) gives an address in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and a data protection officer contact.
• Where data goes: the privacy policy says personal data may be transferred to, stored and processed “in Belize and other countries outside of where you live.”
• Apps: PimEyes says it offers no mobile apps. Even so, a search of Apple’s App Store in September 2026 returned two apps with “PimEyes” in their names, sold by individual developers, neither of them EMEA Robotics LTD. If you want PimEyes, use its website.
• Illinois: its privacy policy says it doesn’t offer services in Illinois or to Illinois residents, and that it tries to block data linked to Illinois. It refers to Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
• Not for screening: we didn’t find an FCRA statement on the PimEyes pages we read. Face search results aren’t consumer reports, so don’t use them to decide on anyone’s employment, housing, credit or insurance.
• Minors: its privacy policy says it doesn’t “collect, search, or permit the searching of data pertaining to minors,” and its services aren’t meant for anyone under 18.

What PimEyes does with the photos you upload

PimEyes’ pages describe this in slightly different ways, so read them together:

• The homepage says uploaded images are “never stored, never shared, and never used to train models.”
• The privacy policy’s summary says: “We do not store user-uploaded photos beyond the time required to perform the search,” and that face fingerprints come only from public web sources, “never from your uploads.”
• The privacy policy also says PimEyes collects and stores photos you choose to upload “in order to provide our services to you, in the manner and timeframe as described in this Privacy Policy.”
• Images from other websites shown in results are fetched through a proxy and, it says, stored “for a temporary period not exceeding 30 calendar days.”

The safest assumption with any face search is that whatever you upload is processed by a company in another country. Only upload photos of yourself.

Is PimEyes free?

Partly. As of September 2026, its terms give people without an account 3 free searches, and its pricing page shows a free tier alongside paid plans called Open Plus, PROtect and Advanced. The pricing table reserves access to the source websites of results for paid plans, and lists takedown requests on the PROtect and Advanced plans. Its terms describe the PROtect feature as excluding matching results from public searches. Prices didn’t display on the page we checked, so we can’t quote them. Check current prices, billing period and renewal terms at checkout before you pay.

You don’t need a paid plan to opt out. The opt-out form is separate from the subscriptions.

The German regulator’s proceedings against PimEyes

The data protection authority of the German state of Baden-Württemberg (LfDI) has published press releases about PimEyes. The two below announce proceedings against it:

• May 26, 2021: the LfDI announced it had opened proceedings (Verfahren) against PimEyes and asked it to account for its data processing, with a list of questions about the legal basis for storing, processing and sharing the data and about its security measures. The release noted that the GDPR prohibits using biometric data to uniquely identify people.
• December 21, 2022: after receiving PimEyes’ response on November 1, 2022, the LfDI announced it was opening administrative fine proceedings (Bußgeldverfahren). It cited a lack of data protection compliance and what it described as significant shortcomings in PimEyes’ technical and organizational measures. The release also said PimEyes had stated that it only processes publicly available images.

Those releases announce proceedings. The outcome isn’t reported in them, and we didn’t find one on the LfDI’s site as of September 2026. Opening proceedings is not a finding that the law was broken.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client.

Leila, a yoga teacher, runs a PimEyes free search after a student mentions finding “other photos” of her. She sees blurred matches, including what looks like an old event photo and her face on a site she doesn’t recognize.

1. She doesn’t subscribe straight away. She first runs the same photos through the free reverse image search tools mentioned earlier, and finds the unfamiliar site: a studio using her headshot without permission.
2. She sends the studio a polite removal request. She took the photo herself, so she has a DMCA notice ready if they don’t reply.
3. She submits PimEyes’ opt-out form with two clear photos and an ID scan with everything but her photo covered.
4. She sets a reminder to repeat her checks in a few months, since new photos can appear.

Common mistakes

• Searching other people. Only search your own face. PimEyes’ terms forbid invasive uses such as stalking and spying, and a lookalike can point at the wrong person.
• Assuming an opt-out deletes the photo. It hides you from PimEyes. The source page still needs its own removal.
• Sending an unredacted ID. Cover everything except your photo.
• Downloading a lookalike app. PimEyes says it has no mobile apps.
• Stopping at one face search engine. Each has its own index and opt-out.

You’re probably listed elsewhere too

If your face is findable, your name, address and phone number probably are too, on people-search sites. Our guide to removing yourself from people-search sites and the data broker opt-out list cover the main ones, and our guide to a free data removal service compares ways to automate it. We don’t sell people searches, face searches or background checks. Our free Reputation Scanner, launching soon, is a self-search tool for yourself (or your child, if you’re their parent or guardian), not a people-search tool. It will find harmful results about you, show the top 10 negative results ranked by how serious they are and how likely they are to be about you, and draft removal requests you review, edit and send yourself, with no account and no billing. If misused photos are part of a bigger problem, our personal reputation management team can help through a free audit.

Frequently asked questions

Is PimEyes safe to use?

It’s an operating company, EMEA Robotics LTD, with published terms and an opt-out process. Use it only on your own face, go to pimeyes.com directly rather than any app, and read the privacy policy and checkout terms before you pay.

Is PimEyes legit?

It’s a real, operating service with terms, a privacy policy and paid plans, run by EMEA Robotics LTD according to its terms. On December 21, 2022, a German state data protection authority (the LfDI in Baden-Württemberg) announced it was opening fine proceedings against it. The outcome isn’t reported in its releases. Being a real company doesn’t make every use of it lawful or respectful.

How do I opt out of PimEyes?

Use the opt-out request form on PimEyes’ website. It asks for clear photos of your face, an anonymized ID or passport scan showing only your photo, and your email. As of September 2026, the form doesn’t ask for payment or a subscription.

Does the PimEyes opt out remove my photos from the internet?

No. It excludes your face from PimEyes’ search results. The photo stays on the website that published it, so contact that site or use a legal route such as a DMCA notice to remove it.

Does PimEyes search social media?

PimEyes says it doesn’t index social media platforms or professional networks. Photos that appear only on those sites shouldn’t show up in its results, according to its FAQ.