Fees & scoping
Detective agency fees in India — how pricing actually works
No investigator can quote a real price before hearing the case, and a fixed rate card advertised online is usually a hook rather than a price. This page explains the variables that set a fee, the ranges we typically work within, and what should make you walk away.
Six variables that decide what a case costs
Every honest quote in this industry is built from these. If someone prices without asking about them, they are guessing.
How many questions
Confirming one employment claim is a different job from verifying identity, job, finances, family, prior marriage and conduct. Each added question adds field time.
How many cities
A single-city enquiry is the cheapest case we run. Every additional city adds an investigator, travel and coordination.
How many field days
Surveillance is priced in observation days. Establishing a repeating pattern genuinely needs more days than catching a single event, and we will say so.
How much you already know
A full name, age, locality and workplace can halve a case. A first name and a city means we spend the first days just establishing who we are looking at.
How fast you need it
Compressing two weeks of fieldwork into five days means more people working in parallel. That costs more, and we will tell you when urgency is not actually buying you anything.
What the output must be
A verbal briefing and a summary is one thing. A documented report structured for your advocate, with exhibit referencing, takes additional work.
What to budget
Indicative ranges
These are honest working ranges for a straightforward case of each type, not a price list. Your written quote comes after the scoping call and is fixed.
| Enquiry | Typical range (INR) | At the low end | At the high end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-matrimonial verification | ₹20,000 – ₹55,000 | One city, strong identifiers, standard checks | Multi-city, NRI groom, financial and asset checks |
| NRI groom or bride verification | ₹35,000 – ₹80,000 + overseas work | India side, one city, strong identifiers | Several cities in India; overseas checks quoted after scoping |
| Post-matrimonial investigation | ₹35,000 – ₹1,20,000 | Short observation window, single city | Several weeks of surveillance, documentation for court |
| Background / employment verification | ₹8,000 – ₹25,000 | Single candidate, standard checks | Senior hire, multiple employers and cities |
| Surveillance (per field day) | ₹8,000 – ₹18,000 | Daytime, one subject, one location | Extended hours, mobile subject, two operatives |
| Corporate investigation / due diligence | ₹45,000 – ₹3,00,000+ | Single-entity check | Internal fraud across sites, forensic scope |
| Asset verification | ₹18,000 – ₹60,000 | One property, digitised records | Multiple holdings, benami indicators, several districts |
| Missing person tracing | ₹25,000 – ₹90,000 | Recent trail, good last-known details | Cold trail, several years old, interstate |
| Process serving | ₹5,000 – ₹20,000 | Known address, cooperative service | Evasive respondent requiring tracing first |
| Online identity verification | ₹15,000 – ₹60,000 | One person, one address, one city | Several claims checked across cities |
Ranges reflect our own recent casework and are indicative only. Travel, government record fees and any specialist input are itemised separately in your quote rather than hidden in the headline number.
Warning signs
Five pricing practices that should end the conversation
If you take nothing else from this page, take this list.
- A firm price quoted before anyone has asked what you actually need verified.
- Payment demanded entirely upfront, in cash, with no written scope.
- Any guarantee of a specific finding — "we will get you proof" is a promise about facts nobody has seen yet.
- A fee that rises if the result is the one you wanted. Success-based pricing gives an investigator a financial interest in telling you what you hope to hear.
- Offers to obtain call records, bank statements or account access. The price being quoted includes committing not something we offer in your name.
FAQs
Fee questions
No, and you should be wary of anyone who does. If an investigator earns more when the finding goes one way, they have a direct financial interest in the conclusion. Our fee is fixed at the scoping stage and does not change based on what we find.
Typically a part payment to commence and the balance before the report is released. The exact split is stated in your written scope. We do not ask for the full fee upfront on first engagement.
Travel outside the scoped cities, government record fees, and any specialist input such as a forensic document examiner are billed at cost and only with your prior approval. They are listed as possible line items in the quote, so there are no surprises.
You still pay the fee, because you are paying for the work and the verification, not for a particular outcome. A properly run enquiry that establishes nothing adverse is a real result — it is often exactly what a family needed to know. This is also why we tell you during scoping if we think the case is unlikely to produce anything useful.
Yes. Overseas clients pay by international bank transfer, and the quote is given in INR with the equivalent noted. We do not ask overseas clients to route payment through personal accounts or informal channels.
Sometimes, for a simple single-city check. But in this industry an unusually low quote usually means one of three things: the work will be subcontracted to whoever is cheapest that week, the field time quoted is not enough to answer your question, or the method is not professional. Ask what is actually included before comparing numbers.
Get a real quote, not a rate card
Twenty minutes on the phone and you will have a written scope and a fixed price — or an honest explanation of why the case should not be run.