Is Checkr legit? Yes, and here is the whole picture
By Jean Luc · The short answer is yes. The useful answer includes the lawsuits too
The company, verified
Checkr, Inc. is a San Francisco background check company founded in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathan Perichon, two engineers who went through Y Combinator's summer 2014 batch. It has raised roughly $680 million (T. Rowe Price, Accel, Y Combinator) at a last-reported valuation around $5 billion, acquired GoodHire's parent Inflection for about $400 million in 2022, and says more than 140,000 businesses run on its platform. Lyft is a named long-term customer. It has been named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list of top private cloud companies eight consecutive years and holds G2 Leader placements in its category.
Regulation and accreditation
Background checks are regulated products. Checkr operates as a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which obligates it to reasonable accuracy procedures, dispute investigation within 30 days, and the adverse-action process that protects candidates. It is BBB-accredited with an A+ business rating (since December 2022). Read that carefully though: BBB's A+ scores complaint handling, while its separate customer review average for Checkr is 2.76 of 5, because the people motivated to review there are usually disputing something. Both numbers are real, and we show both on our BBB source page.
The lawsuits, stated plainly
Checkr has faced substantial FCRA litigation: legal-industry trackers count more than 80 lawsuits since 2015, including active class actions alleging reports included criminal records that belonged to someone else. That pattern matches the accuracy complaints in our review corpus, where candidates describe charges shown without dispositions or records that required disputes to fix. Context matters: FCRA suits are endemic to automated screening as a category, and the incumbents face them too. But if you are screened by Checkr and something looks wrong, use your dispute rights immediately; the law is on your side and the clock is 30 days.
What 650+ reviews actually say
Our aggregated corpus splits cleanly by audience. Employers rate Checkr highly (4.5 on G2 across 457 reviews, 4.5 on Capterra across 303) for speed, integrations, and ease of use. Candidates are more mixed (4.1 on Trustpilot across 996; 2.76 on BBB), with the critical tail describing county-court delays, chatbot-only support, and disputed records. That is the honest shape of the product: read the reviews yourself before you decide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Checkr a real, regulated company?+
Yes. Checkr, Inc. is a consumer reporting agency regulated under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, founded in 2014 in San Francisco by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathan Perichon (Y Combinator, summer 2014). It has raised about $680 million from investors including T. Rowe Price, Accel, and Y Combinator, and reports over 140,000 business customers, including Lyft.
Is Checkr BBB accredited?+
Yes, since December 2022, with an A+ business rating. Note the distinction BBB itself makes: the A+ reflects how the business handles complaints, while its separate customer review average is 2.76 of 5, mostly from candidates disputing reports or stuck in delayed checks.
Has Checkr been sued over background check errors?+
Yes. Checkr has faced dozens of FCRA lawsuits since 2015 (legal-industry trackers count 80+), including class actions alleging reports contained records belonging to other people. FCRA litigation is endemic to the whole industry, and the law gives you the right to dispute errors, which Checkr must investigate within 30 days.
Is it safe to give Checkr my Social Security number?+
Checkr requires an SSN to run a background check because it identifies court and database records. It is a regulated CRA handling that data for millions of checks, primarily on behalf of employers you applied to. No large data broker is risk-free, but providing an SSN to Checkr for a check you consented to is normal practice, not a scam signal.