The pitch from both DeleteMe and Incogni is variations on the same idea. For a recurring monthly fee, the company submits opt-out requests on your behalf to data brokers (the people-search sites and aggregators that have collected your name, address, phone number, family relationships, and other public-records data and made it freely searchable on the internet). After a few months of running, the company says, your information should be substantially less findable.
We signed up to both services in mid-spring with an identical profile (a single test identity built from one of our editorial team’s actual public records, with their explicit consent for this experiment). We tracked what each company actually did over 90 days. This is what we found.
Methodology
The same identity was registered with DeleteMe and Incogni on the same day. Both services received exactly the same input data (name, age, current address, two prior addresses, three relatives’ names, two phone numbers, two email addresses).
Before the services started running, we manually checked the test identity’s presence on a list of 28 well-known data broker sites (Spokeo, BeenVerified, Whitepages, MyLife, TruePeopleSearch, Intelius, Radaris, FamilyTreeNow, USA-People-Search, FastPeopleSearch, PeopleFinder, AnyWho, ZabaSearch, ThatsThem, NumberGuru, BumbleBee, Pipl, USSearch, PublicRecordsNow, PeekYou, ClassRecords, FastBackgroundCheck, AdvancedBackgroundChecks, BackgroundReport360, AddressSearch, AddressSearchUSA, NetDetective, Nuwber). Of the 28, 22 had records for the test identity. This is the baseline.
We then waited and tracked. At day 30, day 60, and day 90, we re-checked the same 28 sites for both services in parallel.
We also tracked: number of removal requests reported per service, number of confirmations received, time from sign-up to first removal, customer support response time when we sent a non-trivial inquiry, and the readability of the periodic reports.
The same caveats apply that we have written about elsewhere. Data brokers can re-add information from public sources at any time. A successful opt-out today does not mean a permanent removal. The services we are evaluating are about ongoing maintenance of opt-outs, not one-time removals. 90 days is not enough to see the full long-term cycle.
What DeleteMe did
By day 30, DeleteMe reported having submitted opt-out requests to 31 data broker sites. Of the 22 baseline records, 8 had been removed when we re-checked.
By day 60, DeleteMe reported 45 sites contacted (some are repeats; some are subsidiaries of the same parent company). Of the original 22 records, 14 had been removed. Two new records had appeared (data brokers re-syndicating from a source we did not know about).
By day 90, DeleteMe reported 51 sites contacted total. Of the 22 baseline plus 2 new records (24 total), 17 had been removed. One additional new record had appeared.
The DeleteMe quarterly report (the first one arrived at day 90) was detailed. It listed each broker, the action taken, the response received, and the current status. The dashboard that showed real-time progress was less polished but functional.
DeleteMe customer support responded to our inquiry (asking about a specific site that had a unique opt-out process) within 36 hours, with a substantive answer. The agent appeared to have genuine product knowledge.
What Incogni did
By day 30, Incogni reported having sent opt-out requests to 47 data brokers. Of the 22 baseline records, 9 had been removed.
By day 60, Incogni reported 84 brokers contacted. Of the original 22, 16 had been removed. Three new records had appeared.
By day 90, Incogni reported 132 brokers contacted total. Of the 22 baseline plus 3 new records (25 total), 18 had been removed. One additional new record had appeared.
Incogni’s reporting was more visually polished but less detailed. The dashboard showed a steadily-rising count of “data brokers contacted” but did not always make it clear which records had actually been removed versus simply asked. The categorization of which brokers were people-search sites versus marketing data brokers versus credit-adjacent data brokers was explained in their FAQ but not surfaced clearly in the dashboard.
Incogni customer support responded in 18 hours with a polished but more scripted answer. We had to follow up to get the specific information we wanted.
What the numbers actually show
Both services worked. Both removed roughly 75 to 80 percent of baseline records by day 90. Both surfaced a few new records that the other service did not catch. The removal counts are roughly comparable.
Incogni claims more brokers contacted (132 vs DeleteMe’s 51), but the higher number does not translate to dramatically better removal results. Incogni includes in their broker list a number of marketing-data and lead-gen brokers that do not maintain consumer-facing search sites; the opt-outs from these brokers may be valuable for the data ecosystem but do not show up in our user-facing 28-site test.
DeleteMe focuses more narrowly on the people-search sites that are publicly searchable, which is what most consumers care about (the “I Googled my name and saw my home address” problem).
For a user whose primary concern is “remove me from people-search sites,” DeleteMe and Incogni produce similar results. For a user concerned about the broader data-broker ecosystem (including marketing, lead-gen, and adjacent categories), Incogni’s wider coverage may matter, although the visibility of those removals is harder to verify.
What both services failed to do
Both services missed approximately 20 to 25 percent of the baseline records, even after 90 days. Some of these were on smaller broker sites that neither service appears to handle. Some were on sites that had ignored the opt-out request and re-syndicated the data.
Both services have no power over upstream data sources. The county property records, voter registration databases, and marketing data flows that brokers re-aggregate continue to operate. Removal is symptomatic, not curative.
Both services produced new records during the 90-day window that we had to manually opt out of (because the services either did not catch them or had not yet reached them in their cycle). For a perfectionist, neither service is a complete solution.
Neither service handled internationally-distributed data brokers well. We did not test heavily here, but for users whose data is exposed primarily on European or other non-US broker networks, both services have limited coverage.
Pricing reality
DeleteMe Individual: $129 per year (about $10.75 per month).
Incogni Individual: $77.88 per year for the annual plan (about $6.49 per month), or $13.99 per month if you pay monthly.
Both have family plans. DeleteMe Couples is $229 per year. Incogni Family is $231 per year for up to four members.
Per-removal cost works out to roughly $7.60 per record removed per year for DeleteMe, and roughly $4.30 per record removed per year for Incogni. Incogni is cheaper per removal, although the difference partly reflects the broader broker count rather than greater consumer-facing impact.
The customer experience differences
DeleteMe’s interface is dated. The aesthetic looks like a 2018 SaaS product. The dashboard takes a few seconds to load. The interactions feel slightly unfinished. Reports come quarterly via email, in a format that is genuinely substantive (you can read it and understand what was done).
Incogni’s interface is significantly more polished. The dashboard loads quickly, has charts and visualizations, and conveys a sense of activity. Reports are real-time on the dashboard. The visual design is closer to current consumer SaaS norms.
This polish gap matters less than it sounds. The actual product (the opt-out submissions) is what matters. The interface is window dressing on the same underlying activity.
What you are actually paying for
Both services are providing automation and recurring effort. The opt-out processes themselves are publicly documented; you could do the same work yourself in 20 to 40 hours per quarter, indefinitely. The services’ value proposition is converting that recurring time burden into a recurring monthly fee.
For someone whose hourly rate is even modestly above minimum wage, paying $77 to $129 per year to avoid 80 to 160 hours of tedious manual work is an obvious good deal. For someone whose hourly rate is high, the math is even more favorable.
The argument against paying for either service: you can do the work yourself, you can use Michael Bazzell’s Inteltechniques workbook (free), and you maintain full visibility into exactly what is being done in your name.
The argument for paying for either service: most people will not actually maintain the manual workflow consistently. Paying for it ensures it actually happens.
Which service to pick
Pick Incogni if you value the more polished interface, want broader coverage of the data broker ecosystem (including marketing and lead-gen brokers), and the cheaper price.
Pick DeleteMe if you value detailed quarterly reports, the longer-track-record company, and you do not mind the older interface.
For most users, the practical difference between the two is small. Either is a reasonable choice. The marketing pitch suggests one is dramatically better than the other; the data shows they are roughly comparable for the user-facing problem.
What we would do differently
In retrospect, our test methodology had a gap. We did not specifically test the response of major data brokers when both services submitted requests for the same identity. There may be a “first request wins” effect we did not measure, or a “duplicate requests get rejected” effect that artificially favored one service over the other.
A future, more rigorous test would split-test by registering different identities to each service and checking removal rates on completely independent baselines.
Annual cost in context
| Service | Annual cost | Per removal cost (rough) | Coverage focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeleteMe Individual | $129 | $7.60 | People-search sites |
| Incogni Individual | $78 | $4.30 | Broader broker ecosystem |
| Manual via Inteltechniques workbook | $0 | $0 | Whatever you have time for |
| PrivacyDuck (white glove) | $400+ | High | Comprehensive |
| Optery Premium | $99 | $5.50 | People-search sites |
For most readers: pick the cheapest of the two big services, or do it manually if you have time. The expensive premium options (PrivacyDuck, etc.) are for people whose specific situations (high net worth, prior doxxing, public-figure status) justify the cost.
What happens after 90 days
The cycle continues. Data brokers re-add information from public sources, the services re-submit opt-outs, the cycle repeats. The graph over time looks like a sawtooth wave, with the line trending downward overall.
Neither service produces a permanent state of “removed from the internet.” That state is not achievable through this kind of service. What both produce is “actively maintained reduction in your data broker presence,” which is genuinely valuable but is not the same as the marketing might suggest.
After 90 days of running both services, my conclusion is that they do roughly what they advertise, that the differences between them are smaller than the marketing implies, and that for most users either is a fine purchase if you decide you want this kind of service. The harder question is whether you actually need it, and that question is personal.
DeleteMe | Incogni | Optery | Inteltechniques workbook (free, manual)
Related: Inside the data removal industry