Ranked · Security 2026

Best data removal services of 2026: what actually came down

Four services that send opt-out demands to data brokers on your behalf, ranked on the one thing that matters and almost nobody measures: how much actually came down. Only one controlled test of this category exists, it is three years old, and its most uncomfortable finding is that doing it yourself for nothing beat every paid service in it. Read that before you read the prices.

PRPriya Ramanupdated 21 August 2026 · 11 min read

Some links on this page earn us a commission. It never affects the ranking — see our disclosure.

Every service on this page does the same thing. You hand it your name, your addresses and your phone numbers, it finds the data brokers publishing them, and it files opt-out and deletion demands on your behalf — over and over, because the listings come back. The mechanism is legitimate and the underlying right is real. What almost no comparison of these services will tell you is how much actually came down.

There is a reason for that: it is hard to measure and only one organisation has properly tried. Consumer Reports tested seven of these services against thirteen people-search sites in 2023, and found they removed about 35% of listings within four months. The best did 68%. The worst did 4%. And the volunteers who filed their own opt-outs by hand, for nothing, did better than all of them. That study is the backbone of this ranking, along with what each vendor publishes about coverage, evidence and price — and the caveats on it are set out below rather than buried.

Best data removal services for 2026

scored out of 5

1OP
Optery★ 4.5
Anyone who wants proof a page is gone, not a status label saying so
$39/yr Core, $149/yr Extended, $249/yr UltimateGet it →
2IN
Incogni★ 4.3
Readers in the UK, the EU or Canada — the only one here that sells to them
$95.88/yr ($7.99/mo) annually, or $15.98/mo billed monthlyVisit
3EO
EasyOptOuts★ 4.2
US residents who want the most removal per pound — and no commission attached
$19.99/yr flat — no monthly, no tiers, no family planVisit
4DM
DeleteMe★ 3.9
Buyers who want a named human on the account and the fullest report
$129/yr one person, $329/yr for fourVisit

The only real test of this category

Services compared: 4
Controlled tests that exist: 1
Best measured result: Optery, 68%
Doing it yourself: 70%

In August 2024 Consumer Reports published Data Defense, based on fieldwork run between May and September 2023. Thirty-two volunteers in California and New York, homeowners and renters, were signed up to seven paid removal services and checked against thirteen people-search sites at one week, one month and four months. A further group filed opt-outs manually as a control.

The headline finding was that 117 of 332 listings — about 35% — came down within four months across all the paid services. Optery’s Ultimate tier led at 68%, EasyOptOuts followed at 65% for $19.99 a year, and DeleteMe reached 27%. The two worst performers, neither of them in this ranking, managed 6% and 4%. The manual control group cleared 70% within a week and held there — a better result than any product tested, at no cost.

Three caveats, because a three-year-old study should not be treated as a current benchmark. It covered thirteen people-search sites, which is a narrow and comparatively easy slice of a market that also contains marketing databases and risk-scoring firms you cannot check yourself. Optery has published detailed objections to the method, arguing that the manual comparison group used trained privacy professionals with automation and that participants were told not to use features most real customers use. And every service has had three years to change. Incogni was not in the study at all, which is why it is ranked here on coverage and jurisdiction rather than on a removal rate. Weigh it as the best evidence available rather than as a scoreboard — but do weigh it, because there is nothing else of its kind.

California changed the maths in August 2026

If you live in California, read this before you buy anything. The state’s Delete Act created DROP — the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform — run by the California Privacy Protection Agency. Californians have been able to submit a single deletion request through it since 1 January 2026, and since 1 August 2026 registered data brokers have been obliged to check the platform at least every 45 days and process what they find, with the regulator behind the requirement rather than a vendor.

More than 500 data brokers are registered with the agency. One free request from a resident now reaches all of them at once — which is, structurally, the thing these subscriptions were invented to do. For a Californian, that is the best value in this article and it costs nothing.

It is not a complete replacement, and it would be dishonest to present it as one. DROP reaches only brokers registered in California, and only California residents may use it. It does not cover data handled under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, HIPAA or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or information a government body publishes — and businesses already covered by those laws are not required to register as data brokers in the first place. It also does nothing for readers in the other forty-nine states or outside the US. Use DROP first if you can, then decide whether a paid subscription still earns its place.

Nothing here is permanent

The single most important thing to understand before spending money in this category: none of these services deletes you, and none of them can. Data brokers do not hold one static copy of your profile. They rebuild it continuously from electoral rolls, property filings, court records, marketing feeds and each other. An opt-out removes the record that exists this month; the next refresh cycle assembles a new one from sources that never saw your request.

That is why every service here re-scans and re-files on a schedule rather than sweeping once, and it is the specification to compare them on. Optery and Incogni re-check at least every thirty days. DeleteMe reports quarterly. EasyOptOuts scans every four months, which is the slowest cadence in this ranking and the one real weakness in an otherwise excellent-value product.

The commercial consequence is the part the advertising skips. These are indefinite subscriptions, not purchases — cancel, and your listings return over the following months, with no credit for the ground you gained. So the number to compare is not the first year’s price but the price multiplied by however long you expect to care, which for most people is the rest of their life. Any guide implying a one-off clean-up is misdescribing the product.

How we ranked them

Measured removals where a measurement exists. The Consumer Reports figures, with their date and their limits stated. Nobody here has run their own removal trial, and a guide claiming to have signed up and watched its own listings disappear is telling you something it cannot support.
Evidence of the work done. Whether the service can show you a broker page is gone, or only tells you a request was sent. Optery sends screenshots, DeleteMe sends per-broker status tables, Incogni and EasyOptOuts largely ask you to take their word for it.
Coverage breadth, and what the headline number really counts. Automated coverage on the plan you would actually buy — not the total that includes custom requests, VIP tiers and international add-ons.
Cost per year, and jurisdiction. The annual price against what it removes, and whether the service sells where you live and can cite a law that compels a reply.

Placement is editorial and not for sale. One of the four below pays us nothing at all, is ranked third on merit, and is labelled as such on its own card — as is every link on this site that earns commission.

The four services in detail

★ Editor’s pick

1OP

Optery

4.5

$39/yr Core, $149/yr Extended, $249/yr Ultimate

Free tier plus three paid tiers; 30-day money-back guarantee on a first purchase

The only removal service that photographs the work — on the tiers that include the reports

Optery wins on evidence twice over. It posted the best result of the seven services Consumer Reports measured — 52% of listings removed within a week, 58% within a month, 68% within four months — and it is the only service here that shows you its work, sending a report roughly every ninety days with before-and-after screenshots of the broker pages your details sat on. PCMag’s Neil J. Rubenking described that as a level of verification he had not seen elsewhere in the category. The free tier is genuinely useful too: it returns a real exposure report with screenshots rather than a scare-screen demanding a card, so you can find out whether you need any of this before spending. The drawbacks are specific and they matter. The Removals Reports do not exist on the $39 Core plan, so the tier actually worth buying is Extended at $149. There are no consumer plans in the UK or the EU, which rules it out for a large share of readers. And the "950+ sites" on the marketing counts Ultimate-only custom requests you cannot even file for the first thirty days — automated coverage tops out at 635+.

Removals Reports carry before-and-after screenshots of the broker pages, roughly every 90 days
Best result of the seven services in the Consumer Reports test: 68% removed at four months
Free tier returns a real exposure report with screenshots before you pay anything
SOC 2 Type II audited by Prescient Assurance — relevant, given what you hand over at signup

The $39 plan is not the one you want

Core covers 380+ brokers and includes no Removals Reports, which is the entire reason to choose Optery over something cheaper. Evidence starts at Extended, $149 a year. Price this service at $149, not at $39, and if that changes your answer then EasyOptOuts is the honest comparison.

What works

Sends photographic evidence that a broker page is gone, which no competitor here does
Highest measured removal rate in the only controlled test of the category
Paid plans re-scan and re-file at least every 30 days, and the broker directory is public

What doesn’t

Removals Reports start at the $149 Extended tier — the $39 plan includes no evidence at all
No consumer plans in the UK or the EU, the jurisdictions where GDPR bites hardest
The headline 950+ figure counts Ultimate-only custom requests, not automated coverage

See Optery pricing →Full Optery reviewfounded 2020 in San Francisco, Y Combinator winter 2022 · 380+ to 635+ brokers by tier, plus custom removals Optery counts towards 950+

Trustpilot: 4.4PCMag: 4.5Consumer Reports removals at 4 months %: 68.0

2IN

Incogni

4.3

$95.88/yr ($7.99/mo) annually, or $15.98/mo billed monthly

Subscription removal service for one person or up to five; 30-day money-back guarantee

Automated data-broker removals with statutory force behind them — for as long as you keep paying

Incogni is second on coverage and jurisdiction rather than on measured results, because no independent measurement of it exists — it was not among the services Consumer Reports tested, and nothing comparable has been published since. What can be established is scale and reach. Incogni states that Deloitte independently assessed its coverage figures at 420+ brokers with automated removals and 245m+ requests processed, and its list runs beyond people-search sites into marketing databases, recruitment brokers and the risk-mitigation firms whose files feed lending and insurance decisions — the ones you cannot scan for yourself. More decisively for anyone reading this outside North America, it is the only service in this ranking sold across the UK, the EU, Switzerland, Norway and Canada, where GDPR, UK GDPR and PIPEDA give a deletion demand real force. Against that: paying monthly costs roughly double the annual rate, there is no free tier at all, and Comparitech has noted that Incogni does not confirm a broker actually complied — the dashboard reports the request, not always the outcome. Set beside Optery’s screenshots, that is the gap.

Requests cite GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA and PIPEDA, so covered brokers have a legal window to comply
Re-scans and re-sends on a schedule, which is what stops profiles being rebuilt
Deloitte independently assessed the coverage figures: 420+ brokers, 245m+ requests processed
Family plan covers five people for $191.88 a year — around $3.20 per person per month

The only one on this page that sells in the UK and EU

Optery excludes the UK and EU from consumer plans. EasyOptOuts is US-only by its own terms. DeleteMe advertises UK plans but says on its own international page that sign-ups have ended. If you are in Britain or Europe, this ranking effectively has one entry, and it is this one.

What works

The legal basis is real: brokers in scope must respond, typically within 30 to 45 days
Recurring requests rather than a one-off sweep, which is the only approach that holds
Family pricing is the cheapest per person in the category

What doesn’t

Removals only continue while the subscription does — brokers re-list from public records
Monthly billing costs roughly double the annual rate, and there is no free tier
Sold only in about 34 countries, because elsewhere the requests have nothing to enforce them

Visit incogni.com →Full Incogni reviewbuilt by Surfshark in 2021, launched January 2022 · 420+ data brokers covered by automated removals, 3,000+ more sites on the Unlimited plans

Trustpilot: 4.3

3EO

EasyOptOuts

4.2

$19.99/yr flat — no monthly, no tiers, no family plan

One annual subscription per person; full refund within 150 days

One price, no affiliate programme, and the second-best measured result in the category

A flat $19.99 a year from a bootstrapped two-person company, and it removed more than services costing six and twelve times as much. Consumer Reports measured 59% of listings gone within a week and 65% within four months, second only to Optery’s top tier and comfortably ahead of DeleteMe’s 27%. Privacy Guides retested it independently in February 2025 against fifteen high-priority brokers, found 73% to 86% cleared, and called it the best value of anything it had tried. The refund window is 150 days, which is long enough to watch two complete scan cycles and still get your money back — no competitor here offers anything close. It sits third rather than first because of what surrounds the removals: it sells to US residents only and says so plainly in its terms, it re-scans every four months against monthly for Optery and Incogni, there is no family plan, and you get essentially no reporting and nobody to escalate to. One more thing you should weigh: EasyOptOuts runs no affiliate programme and states publicly that it never pays reviewers for traffic. This entry earns us nothing, and its link is a plain nofollow.

Consumer Reports measured 65% of listings removed at four months, second only to Optery
Retested independently by Privacy Guides in 2025: 73% to 86% of high-priority brokers cleared
A 150-day refund window — long enough to watch two full scan cycles before deciding
Runs no affiliate programme and says so publicly: “We never pay reviewers for traffic”

We are paid nothing for this one

EasyOptOuts refuses affiliate relationships as a matter of policy. Optery, Incogni and DeleteMe all pay commission on a subscription bought through this page; EasyOptOuts does not, and its link here is an ordinary nofollow. It is ranked third because that is where the evidence puts it, and you should read our conclusions about the other three knowing which way the money runs.

What works

Second-best measured removal rate in the only controlled test, at a twelfth of the winner’s price
Assessed twice by independent, non-commercial testers, with consistent results
The longest money-back guarantee in the category by a wide margin

What doesn’t

United States only — its terms state the service does not work for residents of other countries
Scans run every four months, against competitors re-checking at least monthly
No family plan, no reporting to speak of, and no human to escalate an awkward broker to

Visit easyoptouts.com →Full EasyOptOuts reviewbootstrapped by two US founders, Ben and Tyler · 200+ of the most visible data brokers and people-search sites, US residents only

Trustpilot: 4.5Consumer Reports removals at 4 months %: 65.0· not an affiliate partner — this link earns us nothing

4DM

DeleteMe

3.9

$129/yr one person, $329/yr for four

Annual or two-year subscription, 1 to 4 people; quarterly privacy reports

The oldest name in data removal, with the best reporting and the weakest measured result

DeleteMe is the oldest and best-known service here, run by Abine in Boston since around 2010, and it is last because of the two numbers that define it. The first is 986 against roughly 90: its site advertises removal from 986 data brokers, and its own footnote legend tiers that list so that about ninety carry the Standard-plan marker while 566 are custom requests you have to file yourself. The second is 27% — the share of listings Consumer Reports found removed after four months, the weakest of the seven services it tested, at $129 a year against EasyOptOuts’ $19.99 and its 65%. That test dates from 2023 and DeleteMe has had three years to improve on it, which is a fair defence and not a substitute for a newer measurement. What DeleteMe does better than anyone is tell you what happened: quarterly reports naming each broker, its removal status and exactly which categories of your data it held, with the full twenty-page sample published so you can read it before buying. Every plan carries a named privacy advisor, which is what gets past brokers whose opt-out process involves notarised forms. Consumer Reports also flagged DeleteMe’s own privacy policy, which reserves the right to transfer personal information with the business in a merger, acquisition or bankruptcy.

Quarterly reports name each broker, its removal status and which categories of data it held
A named privacy advisor on every plan — removals are human-assisted, not purely automated
The full 20-page sample report is published, so you can read it before buying
Sells UK, Canadian and Australian plans in local currency; 153 sites marked international

986 brokers, about 90 on your plan

The broker list is public and honestly footnoted — roughly 90 marked for the Standard plan, 566 custom-request only, 153 international, 143 VIP-only. Nothing is hidden. But the tiering sits in footnote symbols beside a very large headline number, and Comparitech observed the service contacting between forty and fifty brokers in practice. Buy on the ninety.

What works

The most detailed per-broker reporting of any service here, and the sample is public
A person is assigned to the account, which is what gets past obstructive opt-out processes
Full refund before the first report arrives, prorated after — tied to the work, not a countdown

What doesn’t

The advertised 986 brokers are tiered: about 90 on Standard, 566 custom-request only
Consumer Reports measured 27% of listings removed at four months — lowest of the services it tested
No monthly billing and no trial; cancellation goes through e-mail or a phone call

Visit joindeleteme.com →Full DeleteMe reviewAbine, Inc., Boston — trading since around 2010 · 986 brokers listed, of which roughly 90 are covered on the Standard plan

Trustpilot: 4.1Consumer Reports removals at 4 months %: 27.0

The only one that shows you the before and after

Optery posted the highest removal rate of the seven services Consumer Reports measured, and on its Extended and Ultimate tiers it sends a report roughly every 90 days with screenshots of the broker pages before and after. The free tier will tell you whether you are exposed at all before you spend anything.

See Optery pricing →

Which one should you buy

If you live in California, start with DROP. One free request, more than 500 registered brokers obliged to act on it since August 2026, and a regulator rather than a vendor standing behind it. Then decide whether you still need a subscription for the brokers it does not reach.

For most people otherwise, Optery — on the Extended tier at $149. It produced the best measured result in the only controlled test of this market, and it is the only service that sends photographic evidence that a page is gone rather than a status label claiming it. Do not buy Core at $39 expecting that; the reports are not on it.

If you are in the UK, the EU or Canada, Incogni, because it is the only one of these four that sells to you and cites a law with teeth behind it. Take the annual billing rather than the monthly, which costs roughly double, and the family plan if there is more than one of you. If the price is what is stopping you, EasyOptOuts at $19.99 — US residents only, second-best measured result in the study, a 150-day refund, and no commission to us whatsoever.

DeleteMe is the one to buy for the reporting, if a named advisor and a detailed quarterly breakdown are worth $129 to you. Go in knowing that the 986 brokers on the advertising are about ninety on the plan, and that it came last in the only independent measurement anyone has published. And if you would rather pay nothing at all, the volunteers who filed their own opt-outs by hand beat every paid service in that study — the reason to subscribe is that almost nobody keeps doing it, not that it does not work.

Frequently asked

Do data removal services actually work?

Partially, and the honest evidence base is thin. Consumer Reports ran the only controlled test this category has: 32 volunteers in California and New York, seven paid services, 13 people-search sites, checked at one week, one month and four months. Across all of them, 117 of 332 listings came down within four months — about 35%. The spread was enormous, from 68% for Optery’s top tier down to 4% for the worst performer. So the answer depends almost entirely on which one you buy, and the marketing claims of the whole category are not a guide to that. The fieldwork ran in 2023 and was published in 2024, and nothing comparable has been run since.

Is it cheaper to just do it myself?

It is cheaper and, on the evidence, more effective — with a catch. Consumer Reports included a manual control group that filed its own opt-outs, and that group cleared 70% of listings within a week and stayed there, beating every paid service at every interval, for nothing. The catch is that the control group did the work properly and then the study stopped. Doing this yourself means finding your records across hundreds of brokers, filing each opt-out through whatever obstacle course that broker has built, and then repeating the whole exercise every few months for the rest of your life, because the listings come back. Practically nobody sustains that. What you are paying these services for is not superior technique; it is the repetition.

What is DROP, and does it replace paying for this?

DROP is California’s Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform, run by the California Privacy Protection Agency. Californians have been able to submit a single free deletion request through it since 1 January 2026, and from 1 August 2026 the more than 500 data brokers registered in the state must check the platform at least every 45 days and act on those requests. For a California resident it is the best-value option in this article by a distance, because it costs nothing and carries a regulator behind it. It does not replace a subscription entirely: it only reaches brokers registered in California, it is open only to California residents, and it does not touch data covered by the FCRA, HIPAA or GLBA exemptions, nor anything a government body publishes. If you live in California, use DROP first and then decide whether a paid service is still worth it.

Which one works in the UK or the EU?

Of these four, Incogni. It sells across the UK, the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Canada, and its requests cite GDPR, UK GDPR and PIPEDA, which give a covered broker a defined window — commonly 30 to 45 days — to act. Optery does not sell consumer plans in the UK or EU at all. EasyOptOuts restricts itself to US residents in its terms. DeleteMe quotes UK prices on its pricing page while its own international page says sign-ups for international plans have ended, which is not a contradiction you want to discover after paying.

Why does my information come back after it is removed?

Because brokers do not hold a single copy of you; they rebuild a profile continuously from electoral rolls, property filings, court records, marketing feeds and each other. An opt-out suppresses the record that exists today. The next refresh cycle assembles a new one from sources that never received your request. This is why every service here re-scans and re-files on a schedule rather than sweeping once, and why cancelling does not leave you where you were — it leaves you drifting back towards where you started over the following months.

What can none of these services remove?

Anything not held by a data broker. Government and court records, news articles, professional registers, company filings, and anything you or other people posted on social media all sit outside the remit. So do search results themselves: a listing disappears from Google once the underlying broker page is gone, not before, which is why removal shows up in search with a lag. If your problem is a news story or a court filing rather than a people-search profile, none of the four is the tool for it.

Is it safe to hand a removal service my address and phone number?

It is the central irony of the category: to have your personal data removed you must first give one company an unusually complete package of it — full name, current and previous addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, sometimes date of birth — plus written authority to act for you. Treat the vendor’s own security and data handling as part of the purchase. Optery has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit. Consumer Reports specifically flagged DeleteMe’s privacy policy for reserving the right to transfer personal information as a business asset in a merger or bankruptcy. Give each service the minimum identifiers it needs to find you, and no more.

How do these compare on cost per year?

Very unevenly, and not in proportion to what they achieve. EasyOptOuts is $19.99 a year flat. Optery runs $39 for Core, $149 for Extended — the cheapest tier that includes the removal evidence — and $249 for Ultimate. Incogni is $95.88 a year annually against $15.98 a month billed monthly, with five people covered for $191.88. DeleteMe is $129 for one person and $329 for four. Since these are indefinite subscriptions rather than one-off purchases, multiply whichever you pick by the number of years you expect to care, and compare that figure against the free options: DROP if you are Californian, and filing the opt-outs yourself if you are not.

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