The best data broker removal services in 2026
California’s Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, DROP, opened to consumers on January 1, 2026. Registered data brokers in the state were due to start processing those requests on August 1, 2026. The California Privacy Protection Agency’s DROP page explains how it works, and it is free. It also only covers California residents. I’m in Singapore, so it does nothing for me, and it probably does nothing for a fair number of you.
That gap is why paid removal services still exist. They file opt-out requests with people-search sites and marketing data brokers for you, then re-check, because listings come back once a broker re-scrapes public records. This list is for anyone who has typed their own name into Google, found a home address, a phone number and a list of relatives on a site they never signed up for, and would rather pay someone else to do the tedious part. If you want the background on how those profiles get built, I wrote up how data brokers profile you. And if you’re not sure removal is worth paying for at all, start with a threat model for normal people.
One limit before the picks. I haven’t run a controlled test of all six on a single identity, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Prices and coverage claims below are list prices and vendor claims as I have them, they change often, and several vendors run near-permanent discounts, so confirm the live price before you pay. Most of these services are built around US records. This is not legal advice.
How I picked
I scored each service on six things.
- proof of removal: does it show what it found and what it took down, through reports or before and after screenshots, or only a dashboard that says “in progress”
- coverage that matters. The broker count on a marketing page tells you little. What matters is whether the big people-search sites, the ones that publish your address to anyone with a browser, are on the list
- relisting. Brokers re-scrape public records, so I favoured services that re-scan on a schedule and re-file without being asked
- yearly cost for one person in dollars, because monthly prices hide the billing terms
- what you hand over. Every service needs your name, address and usually a phone and email, so who owns the company and how it has behaved counts
- fit outside the US. Most of these work best on US records, so I noted where that limits things for someone in Singapore
The picks
DeleteMe
DeleteMe is made by Abine, a US privacy company, and it’s the one I’d hand to someone who wants it done and doesn’t want to think about it. You fill in a profile, their team files opt-outs with the sites they cover, and you get a report about once a quarter listing what they found and what came down. There are individual, two-person and family plans, and there’s a route to request removal from sites outside the default list.
The quarterly report is what sets it apart for people who want evidence rather than reassurance. The tradeoff is price and pace. It costs more than most rivals here, and a new listing can sit online for weeks before it shows up in a report.
- humans handle the fiddly sites that use captchas or email confirmation
- the report gives you a record to check against
- family plans, and a longer track record than the newer automated entrants
Cons:
- among the pricier options on this list
- coverage is centred on the US
Pricing: around $129 a year for one person on annual billing, more for two-person and family plans.
Link: DeleteMe
Incogni
Incogni comes from the Surfshark VPN group and is the mostly automated option. You give it your details and sign an authorisation, it sends removal requests to brokers under the privacy laws that apply to you, such as GDPR in Europe and state laws like CCPA in the US, and a dashboard shows the status per broker. Regional support is wider than the US-only tools, though I’d check the current list for your country before paying.
Price is the draw. It’s cheaper than DeleteMe by a fair margin, and the Surfshark group discounts often. What you give up is proof. You see status labels, not screenshots of a profile before and after, and some requests sit at “in progress” for a long time. There’s also a higher tier that, as I understand it, adds custom removal requests for sites outside its list, so read the plan page.
- costs noticeably less than DeleteMe
- a per-broker status view you can check whenever you like
- covers more regions than the US-focused tools
Cons:
- status labels only, so you verify by searching your own name
- automated requests can stall on brokers that insist on a manual form
Pricing: around $8 a month on annual billing at list (about $96 a year), often discounted. The higher tier costs more.
Link: Incogni
Optery
Optery is where I’d start if you don’t know how exposed you are. The free tier scans and shows you the profiles it found, with screenshots, so you can see your listed address before spending anything. Paid plans then submit the removals and show before and after screenshots of each profile, which is the closest thing to proof any service here offers.
Plans are tiered by how many brokers they cover, from a cheap entry tier up to broader ones. That structure is where it gets fiddly, because the cheapest plan skips sites the higher ones handle, and you have to read the coverage list for the tier you’re actually buying. Screenshots also mean you read more than you would with a hands-off service.
- a free scan with screenshots, so you see the problem before you pay
- before and after screenshots for each removal
- the entry paid tier costs less than Incogni or DeleteMe
Cons:
- coverage depends on your tier, and the cheap one covers fewer sites
- more reading and checking on your side than a hands-off service
Pricing: free scan. Paid plans start at roughly $4 a month on annual billing (about $48 a year) and rise with coverage tier.
Link: Optery
Privacy Bee
Privacy Bee goes wider than the rest. DeleteMe and Incogni concentrate on people-search sites, the lookup pages that show your address and relatives. Privacy Bee also goes after marketing and list brokers, the companies that sell audience segments for ad targeting and rarely have a public page where you could see your entry. That’s a real gap in the others, and it’s the reason to consider it.
The catch is that it’s hard to check. Privacy Bee advertises a much larger broker count than its competitors, and I can’t verify that number. It’s also the most expensive on this list, so you’re paying the most for the claim you can test the least.
- covers marketing and list brokers, not only people-search sites
- ongoing re-checking, so relistings get handled again
- suits someone who wants the broadest sweep and doesn’t mind the cost
Cons:
- the highest price on this list, by a clear margin
- the broker count is a vendor claim, and marketing brokers rarely show a public page to verify against
Pricing: roughly $200 a year for one person at list, less with promotions.
Link: Privacy Bee
EasyOptOuts
EasyOptOuts is the budget pick. It sticks to people-search sites, around a hundred of them by its own coverage list, files the opt-outs on a schedule, and costs about $20 a year. There’s no human review and no polished reporting. If your exposure is the standard US people-search problem and you don’t want to spend $100 or more a year, that’s a reasonable trade.
I have less to go on here than for the others, so treat this pick as provisional. Check the coverage list against the sites where you found your own listing before you pay.
- about $20 a year, a fraction of the full-service prices
- automated on a schedule, so relistings get re-submitted
- a narrow focus on the people-search sites where most home-address exposure sits
Cons:
- the list is narrower than the paid rivals and leaves marketing brokers alone
- built around US sites, so of limited use elsewhere
Pricing: roughly $20 a year at list.
Link: EasyOptOuts
The DIY opt-out list
Yael Grauer’s Big-Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List on GitHub is a free, curated list of brokers with opt-out instructions for each. It’s the pick I’d argue for over the paid ones if you have an afternoon. You work through the biggest people-search sites first, and every confirmation email and captcha lands in front of you, so you know exactly what happened.
It has a cost the paid services hide. Listings come back, so you’d repeat the round every few months, and a few sites want ID or a phone call, which is where most people quit. Still, nobody outside your own inbox holds your name, address and phone on your behalf.
- free
- no third party holds your details
- you see each confirmation, so you know what really happened
Cons:
- takes hours and needs repeating because listings return
- a few sites ask for ID or a call, and those are the ones that stall people
Pricing: free. The cost is your time.
Link: Big-Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
Comparison table
| Service | Price for one person (list) | Primary strength | Primary weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeleteMe | around $129 a year | human-handled removals with quarterly reports | priciest of the mainstream options, US-centred |
| Incogni | around $96 a year, often discounted | cheaper and mostly automated, wider regions | status labels instead of proof |
| Optery | free scan, paid from about $48 a year | before and after screenshots | coverage depends on tier |
| Privacy Bee | roughly $200 a year | widest claimed coverage, includes marketing brokers | highest price, count can’t be verified |
| EasyOptOuts | roughly $20 a year | lowest cost | narrow, US people-search only |
| DIY opt-out list | free | free, and no third party holds your data | your time, and it needs repeating |
How to choose
Start by working out what you’re protecting against, because it changes the answer. If the worry is junk mail and cold calls, a cheap automated service or an afternoon of manual opt-outs is enough. If the worry is a specific person, an ex or someone who has harassed you, I’d want screenshot evidence and human review, which points at Optery or DeleteMe, and I’d search my own name by hand every month anyway. Removal also has edges. It mostly doesn’t touch what cars, apps and loyalty cards feed into the market, which is a separate problem I covered in what your car knows about you, and it does nothing about new collection. For that, a tracker blocker cuts down what gets gathered in the first place.
Next, treat ownership as a buying criterion. A removal service needs your full identity, which is the same data you’re trying to shrink, so you’re trusting a provider with it, the same trade I wrote about in self-hosting vs trusting a provider. In 2024, KrebsOnSecurity reported that the founder and CEO of Onerep, a removal service Mozilla had used for its Monitor Plus product, had also founded people-search sites. Mozilla then said it would end the partnership. That’s no reason to distrust every vendor here. It’s a reason to read who owns the company and what its privacy policy says it keeps.
Location matters more than most review sites admit. If you’re in California, do the free DROP sign-up first. If you’re in Singapore like me, the picture is different. There’s no direct equivalent, most of these services are working from US records, and the closest lever I know of is the consent side of the PDPA, where you can withdraw consent for an organisation to use your personal data. The PDPC explains how that works, and again, this is not legal advice. Before paying anyone, search your own name and see whether your real exposure sits on US sites at all.
Then think about cost against time. The best prices need annual billing, so you’re committing for a year, and stop paying and the listings tend to drift back. A year of a service that finds nothing on your name is a year of nothing, which is an argument for Optery’s free scan first. People-search pages also rank in Google for names, which is why they’re such a nuisance to live with. If you want the mechanics of why they rank so well, theseodesk.com covers search from the SEO side. And I’d argue against paying for the top tier of anything on the strength of a broker count. I can’t verify those numbers, and neither can you.
Verdict / top pick
Top pick: Optery. The free scan shows you the actual profiles with screenshots before you spend anything, the paid plans give before and after proof, and the entry price is low. Its weak spot is that coverage depends on your tier, so read the list of sites for the plan you pick.
If you’d rather pay more and hear less about it, DeleteMe is the one with people behind it, at around $129 a year. Incogni is the cheaper hands-off route if you accept status labels in place of proof. EasyOptOuts suits a tight budget and a US-only problem. I wouldn’t buy Privacy Bee unless the marketing-broker angle matters to you and the price doesn’t.
Do the free DIY list on the biggest people-search sites first. It takes an afternoon, it costs nothing, and it tells you how much a subscription would actually be buying you.
More privacy pieces are in the blog index.
Written by Xavier Fok
disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-09-19.