No, DolphinRadar does not tell the person you track. It reads public Instagram data from its own servers, so the tracked account gets no alert, and you never appear in their story viewer list. That part of the marketing holds up. The harder questions are about what you pay for, who runs the service, and what its own terms say you may not do with it.

This review rests on what dolphinradar.com published on 29 October 2026: the pricing page, the free story viewer, the Help Center, the terms and the privacy policy. We did not buy a plan, so we cannot grade a real report.

Who runs DolphinRadar

DolphinRadar is operated by SESHAT LAB PTE. LTD., a private company registered in Singapore. The Terms of Use (last updated May 20, 2026) name the company and give a registered office at 10 Anson Road, International Plaza, Singapore. A public mirror of the Singapore ACRA register lists the same company name with UEN 202525165K, status “Live,” registered on 10 June 2025, under software development.

Two details stand out. The domain is older than the company: WHOIS shows dolphinradar.com was registered on 9 January 2024 through Namecheap, behind a privacy service, about 17 months before the Singapore company existed. And support runs through a Gmail address (info.dolphinradar@gmail.com) and a Google Form, with no phone line. That does not make DolphinRadar a scam. It does mean a young, small operator, so keep your Stripe receipt.

Does DolphinRadar notify the person you track?

DolphinRadar sends nothing to the tracked account. The Help Center answer to “Will the person I’m monitoring know about it?” is a flat no, and the mechanics back that up: your Instagram account is never connected, so Instagram has nothing to log against your name.

This is the same principle that makes any server-side viewer anonymous, which we explain in how anonymous story viewers work. Instagram shows a story owner the accounts that watched a story (Instagram Help Center). A request from DolphinRadar’s servers is not one of those accounts.

Two limits apply. First, “anonymous to the target” is not “anonymous to DolphinRadar.” The Privacy Policy says the service records your IP address, browser and device details, plus every username you ask it to track. Second, the tracked person cannot opt out. The privacy policy lists deletion rights for subscribers, but we found no process for someone who wants to stop being tracked.

What DolphinRadar actually tracks

DolphinRadar is an activity tracker first and a story viewer second. You add one public username and wait about a week for the first report, according to the Help Center. Reports then arrive weekly, and Stories and Highlights update daily. A report covers:

public likes, new follows and unfollows
tagged users, hashtags and an interest tag cloud
a “Ties & Trails” panel with a social map and a “geographic map of visited locations sorted by country”
“suspicious accounts” on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat that DolphinRadar thinks are linked
AI Insights (quarterly and annual plans only)

The AI part goes further than most people expect. The Help Center says it includes “MBTI profiling, psychological analysis, relationship mapping, and predicted encounter locations.” The Privacy Policy calls these outputs “approximate” and “informational use only.” We agree: a personality type inferred from someone’s likes is a guess.

Private accounts are out of reach, as DolphinRadar’s terms admit. No outside tool can see one, as we cover in can you view private Instagram stories.

DolphinRadar pricing in October 2026

The tracker costs $2.75 to $4.49 a month, and each subscription covers exactly one Instagram account. The story viewer is a separate product with its own prices. These are the prices on the pricing page and the story viewer page on 29 October 2026:

Plan	Price	Accounts	What it adds
Story viewer, Free	$0	none tracked	Unlimited views and downloads of public stories and Highlights; no login
Story viewer, Monthly	$6.99/month	1	Continuous tracking, story mentions and links, bulk download, alerts
Story viewer, Annual	$69.99/year	1	Same as monthly
Tracker, Monthly	$4.49/month	1	Weekly reports, email alerts, follow/follower changes; no AI Insights
Tracker, Quarterly	$10.99/quarter	1	Adds 4 AI modules (MBTI, Persona Snapshot, Lifestyle, Location)
Tracker, Annual	$32.99/year	1	Adds all 9 AI modules

Three rules from the Help Center change the real cost:

One account per subscription. To track a second person, you buy a second subscription.
You cannot swap the tracked account. The Help Center says the tracked account “cannot be changed or removed during an active subscription.” A typo in the username costs you the whole billing period.
History costs extra. “Buy past reports” goes back up to 36 weeks before your start date, but Stories and Highlights are never retroactive.

Is there a free trial, and can you get a refund?

There is no free trial of the tracker. The Help Center says DolphinRadar “does not currently offer a free trial for its standard tracking subscription plans.” The “Exclusive Free Trial” on the pricing page is a time-limited Stories and Highlights add-on for people who already pay quarterly or annually.

Refunds are narrow, and the two official pages do not agree. The Help Center allows a refund in two cases (five or more failed deliveries, or a product that does not match the description), with a written request within 7 days of purchase. The Terms of Use say plans are non-refundable, list different cases (an outage of 7 or more days, a charge after a documented cancellation, a consumer-law breach), and mention a 14-day window for accidental renewals. To cancel, go to Dashboard, then Settings, then Manage Subscription; access lasts to the end of the paid period.

What signing up asks for

DolphinRadar asks for an email and password, or a Google or Apple sign-in, and never for your Instagram login. Payment goes through Stripe. That is the right setup: a tracker that wants your Instagram password is a phishing risk.

The free story viewer is where we hit friction. A search opened a Cloudflare “Verify you are human” check that our test browser could not pass in two tries, so we cannot say whether it returned live stories that day. Before you search, the page shows a demo profile with a small “All data below are samples” note that is easy to miss.

Where DolphinRadar will not serve you

DolphinRadar’s terms exclude users in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Illinois, Texas and several other regions. Section B.2 lists the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland, Russia, Belarus, mainland China, sanctioned countries, and Illinois and Texas (citing their biometric privacy laws). DolphinRadar does not check where you live, but it can close an account in an excluded region without a refund.

The terms also forbid uses the marketing invites. Section C.2 bans tracking “a current or former intimate partner” where local law prohibits it, monitoring minors, and using AI insights “to physically locate or approach a person.” Yet the homepage carries a testimonial from someone who signed up “due to trust issues” with a partner, and the DolphinRadar blog has posts on checking a girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s likes. Under Section G, if a tracked person sues, you cover DolphinRadar’s costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does DolphinRadar tell the person you are tracking them?

No. DolphinRadar collects public Instagram data from its own servers and never uses your Instagram account, so the tracked person gets no notification and your name never appears in their story viewer list. DolphinRadar itself still sees your email, IP address and the usernames you track, and its Privacy Policy says it keeps tracked data for the life of your subscription plus 30 days.

Is DolphinRadar legit?

DolphinRadar is a real, paid service run by SESHAT LAB PTE. LTD., a Singapore company registered in June 2025. It takes payment through Stripe and never asks for your Instagram password. The weak points are a Gmail-only support channel, refund rules that differ between its Help Center and its terms, and no free trial for the tracker.

How much does DolphinRadar cost?

On 29 October 2026, the tracker cost $4.49 per month, $10.99 per quarter or $32.99 per year, for one Instagram account each. The separate story viewer plan cost $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, also for one profile. A free story viewer tier allowed public story views and downloads without tracking. Each extra account needs its own subscription.

Can DolphinRadar see private Instagram accounts?

No. DolphinRadar’s terms say it does not access private accounts, private messages or private stories, and no third-party tool can. If a private account becomes public, DolphinRadar says results usually appear within about 10 minutes. Any service that promises to show a private profile’s activity is not telling the truth.

Should you pay for DolphinRadar?

DolphinRadar is a real, anonymous, cheap tracker of public Instagram activity, and a poor fit for most people who search for it. For weekly reports on a brand’s or creator’s public likes and follows, $32.99 a year is fair, as long as you treat the AI modules as guesses. To watch one story without being seen, you need no subscription, one-week wait or account lock. A free no-login viewer does that; see the best anonymous Instagram story viewers, or compare paid and free picks in DolphinRadar alternatives. For what other users report, read DolphinRadar on Reddit.

Before you subscribe, read Sections B.2 and C.2 of the terms. If you live in an excluded region or plan to track a partner, DolphinRadar’s own rules already say no.