Your DeleteMe renewal notice just landed. Same day, you searched your own name and found your home address, your phone number, and your parents’ names on a people-search site you have never heard of. You paid for this to stop. Now you are wondering whether $129 a year is buying protection or a dashboard full of reassurance.
That is a fair question, and the market has more answers than it did two years ago. Prices have dropped, coverage claims have ballooned, one service has been caught in a conflict of interest, and California built a free state tool that does part of the job. This guide compares seven DeleteMe alternatives on what they cost, what they cover, and whether they can show you proof. Every price below comes from the vendor’s own pricing page as we checked it in October 2026, unless noted. Data removal companies run promotions constantly, so confirm the number at checkout.
For a baseline: DeleteMe’s own pricing page lists $129 per year for one person, $229 for two, and $329 for four, with a two-year single plan at $209. Its “Sites We Remove From” page claims 969 data brokers in its headline, though the meta description on the same page says “over 750,” and the list is tagged by plan tier, with many sites reachable only on business tiers or through custom requests you submit. Optery, a competitor, argues in its DeleteMe review that a large share of those sites fall outside the standard plan. Read that as a competitor’s interpretation, then check the tags yourself.
The 3R Test for Judging Any DeleteMe Alternative
Comparison pages love to rank by broker count, and broker count is the easiest number to inflate. I use a three-part check instead, which I call the 3R Test: Reach, Recheck, Receipts.
Reach asks which sites the service removes you from automatically on the plan you are buying, not the total it lists across every tier and custom request. A service that covers 200 high-traffic people-search sites can do more for your safety than one that covers 900 obscure marketing-list brokers. Ask for the list for your plan.
Recheck asks how often the service scans for your data reappearing and resubmits requests. Brokers repopulate profiles from public records and from each other. A one-time sweep decays within months, so the scan cadence matters as much as the starting count.
Receipts asks whether you can see proof: screenshots of listings before removal, live links, and confirmation that each one is gone. Without receipts, you are trusting a progress bar.
The reason the 3R Test matters is the best independent evidence we have. In August 2024, Consumer Reports published a study that ran seven removal services against 13 people-search sites with 32 volunteers over four months. Removal rates ranged from 4% (Confidently) to 68% (Optery), with EasyOptOuts close behind at 65%. Manual opt-outs did better and faster: about 70% of listings were gone within a week. That study is two years old and services have changed, but it remains the clearest public evidence that coverage claims and actual removals are different things. Use it as a reason to demand receipts, not as a final ranking.
One more filter sits underneath the 3R Test: what you hand over. To remove you, every service needs your name, addresses, phone numbers, and sometimes your date of birth, and some brokers ask for more before they will act. Read each service’s privacy policy for how long it keeps that data and whether it ever shares it with brokers beyond the opt-out request itself. The DeleteMe alternatives below differ more on this point than their marketing pages admit.
Incogni: Broad Automated Coverage at a Mid-Range Price
Incogni, from the team behind Surfshark, is the most common name people compare against DeleteMe, and its pricing explains why. On its pricing page in October 2026, the Standard plan showed $7.99 per month on annual billing, billed at $95.88 per year (the page lists a $191.76 reference price, crossed out). Unlimited showed $14.99 per month, billed at $179.88 per year. Family plans ran $191.88 per year for Family and $275.88 for Family Unlimited.
On Reach, every plan lists automated removal from 420+ data broker sites, including both public people-search sites and private brokers that sell to marketers and insurers. The Unlimited tiers add custom removals across what Incogni calls 3,000+ additional sites, handled by its privacy specialists, plus live phone support. That custom layer is useful if you find yourself on a site that no automated list covers.
On Recheck, Incogni’s annual plans include year-round monitoring and repeated removal requests, and the page warns that some requests take over 30 days, which is why it steers people away from monthly billing. On Receipts, Incogni gives you a dashboard of requests sent and completed, but private brokers rarely publish your profile, so for that half of its list you are relying on the broker’s confirmation rather than a screenshot. Incogni is a strong pick if you want to set it and leave it, and if marketing-list brokers bother you as much as people-search sites.
Is Optery the Best Value for Proof?
Optery is the service that comes out best on the Receipts leg of the 3R Test. Its pricing page in October 2026 listed three paid tiers on annual billing: Core at $39 per year, covering 380+ sites; Extended at $149 per year, covering 555+ sites; and Ultimate at $249 per year, covering 625+ sites. Each count drops if you do not enable what Optery calls Expanded Reach (to 150+, 330+, and 400+ respectively), so turn that setting on. Optery also offers a free plan for scans and self-service opt-out tools.
What sets Optery apart is the visibility. Its scans show screenshots and what the company calls patented view links into your listings at hundreds of sites, before and after removal. That turns removal from a promise into something you can audit. It also scored the highest removal rate, 68%, in the Consumer Reports study.
The Core plan is the best-value paid option in this roundup for most people: under $40 a year for automated removals from the most visible sites, with proof. Upgrade to Ultimate if you want the widest list and priority treatment, which Optery describes as getting new brokers and features first. If you are weighing DeleteMe alternatives mainly on the question “can I see it working,” start here.
EasyOptOuts Wins on Price
EasyOptOuts does one thing, cheaply. Its homepage in October 2026 listed a single plan at $19.99 per year, covering what it calls the 200+ most visible data brokers and people-search sites, plus Google search results.
On Reach, that list is the smallest in this roundup, by design. EasyOptOuts argues that hyper-targeted requests to the sites people see beat blasting your details to hundreds of disreputable brokers, and it says it shares as little personal information as possible with each broker. The Consumer Reports study backs part of the argument: EasyOptOuts removed 65% of listings at four months, second only to Optery, and was the cheapest service tested. The company also says it runs fully automated opt-outs with US-based staff and no relationships with data brokers.
The tradeoff is depth. You get fewer receipts and no human handling of custom requests. For someone whose main worry is the first page of people-search results for their name, EasyOptOuts is the cheapest credible answer. For someone with a stalker, it is not enough on its own.
Choose Kanary If You Are a Target
Kanary prices itself for people with a specific threat, and its plans say so. The pricing page in October 2026 listed Core at $250 per year per account and Advanced at $500 per year, with family members at 50% off ($125 and $250). A Team option requires five seats minimum, aimed at companies protecting executives or staff.
On Reach, Kanary looks beyond brokers. Core covers search engines and data brokers; Advanced adds social media and AI and LLM sources, which no other service in this roundup lists as a category. On Recheck, Core runs monthly scans and monthly removal requests, while Advanced moves to weekly scans, daily scans on some sources, unlimited custom removals, and help enrolling in a state address confidentiality program.
That last feature is the tell. Address confidentiality programs exist for survivors of domestic violence and others at risk, and Kanary built a tier around people in that position. If you are a journalist, an executive facing protests, a public official, or someone being harassed online, Kanary Advanced costs more than everything else here because it does more of the manual work. If you just want fewer spam calls, it is overkill.
Aura Bundles Removal Into Identity Protection
Aura is not a data removal company first. It sells identity theft protection, and data removal is one feature inside the bundle. Its pricing page in October 2026 listed an individual plan (one adult, ten devices) at $12 per month billed annually, or $15 month to month; a couple plan at $22 per month annually; and a family plan for five adults and unlimited kids at $32 per month annually. Each includes data removal from 425+ data brokers, people-search sites, junk mailers, and Google search results, alongside three-bureau credit monitoring, identity theft insurance ($1 million per adult on the individual plan), and device security.
Aura also offers a 14-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee on annual plans, according to the same page.
Run Aura through the 3R Test and it does fine on Reach, comparable to Incogni’s 420+ count. The case for Aura rests elsewhere. If you would otherwise pay for credit monitoring, antivirus, and a VPN separately, a $144 bundle that includes data removal can cost less than DeleteMe plus those tools. If you only want broker removal, a specialist will give you more visibility into what is happening.
Privacy Bee Goes Widest
Privacy Bee makes the biggest coverage claims of any service here. Its pricing page in October 2026 listed Essentials at about $8 per month billed annually, covering 608 sites (people-search sites and list brokers); Pro at about $16 per month, covering 1,438 sites including broader data brokers; and Signature at about $67 per month, a white-glove tier for people in crisis or at high risk with expedited handling. Pro and Signature also list unlimited custom removals across what Privacy Bee says are 185,094 supported sites.
On Reach, those counts lead the market, though the 3R logic applies: ask which sites on the list actually publish profiles about you, because a long tail of B2B and marketing brokers inflates any total. Privacy Bee adds features others lack, including a private email proxy for broker communications and protection for unlimited email addresses, plus search engine results monitoring.
Signature is the rare plan built for the scenario at the top of this post turned serious: a doxxing campaign, a viral moment, a threat that needs action within 24 hours. At roughly $800 per year it is not cheap, but it competes with hiring a reputation firm by the hour.
Should You Still Trust Onerep?
Onerep’s pricing page in October 2026 listed four plans by the month: Individual at $8.33 (317 public data broker sites), Family at $15.00 for up to six people, Individual Pro at $15.95, and Family Pro at $29.95, with the Pro tiers covering 876 data brokers, split into 317 people-search sites and 559 non-public brokers. The page advertises annual savings of up to 47% but did not show annual totals when we checked, so confirm the billed amount before paying.
The bigger question is trust, and this is the anecdote every buyer should know. On March 14, 2024, Krebs on Security reported that Onerep’s CEO, Dimitri Shelest, had launched dozens of people-search services since 2010, and that he kept an ownership stake in Nuwber, a still-active data broker he founded in 2015. Mozilla, which had bundled Onerep into its Monitor Plus product, said it would end the partnership. According to Krebs’ follow-up in November 2025, Mozilla finally announced the end of the relationship that month, with the Monitor Plus wind-down ending December 17, 2025.
A removal service whose founder built the industry it removes you from is a conflict of interest, whatever the service’s technical performance. Some buyers will decide the price and the 876-site list outweigh it. If your threat model includes anyone motivated to find you, I would pick a service without that history.
How to Choose (and Where California’s DROP Fits)
Start with your threat, not the price. If you want fewer spam calls and less junk mail, EasyOptOuts at $19.99 or Optery Core at $39 covers the sites that matter, and Optery shows you proof. If you want broad automation and do not want to think about it, Incogni or DeleteMe are the mainstream picks, and Incogni costs less on an annual plan. If you already pay for identity protection, see whether Aura replaces several bills at once. If someone is actively looking for you, pay for Kanary Advanced or Privacy Bee Signature, where humans handle the edge cases.
Then check whether your state did part of the work for you. If you live in California, start with DROP, the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform that the state built under the Delete Act. According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, which now goes by CalPrivacy, DROP launched January 1, 2026, at privacy.ca.gov/drop. It is free, and one request reaches every registered data broker. CalPrivacy reported more than 176,000 sign-ups in its first month, and by June 2026 the count passed 300,000, according to a Captain Compliance report citing CalPrivacy, with 581 brokers on the state’s registry. Since August 1, 2026, registered brokers must check DROP at least once every 45 days and process deletion requests, with fines for brokers that fail to register.
DROP has limits, and they matter. It only reaches brokers registered with California, it only serves California residents, and it does not touch Google search results, social media, or sites that do not meet the state’s definition of a data broker. Brokers also have up to 90 days to act after they pull a request, according to Malwarebytes’ August 2026 coverage, so the first wave of deletions from the August start date is only now landing. For Californians, the smart stack is DROP first, then a cheaper paid service (EasyOptOuts or Optery Core) for the unregistered people-search sites and the reappearing listings DROP cannot see.
Watch the billing terms as closely as the coverage. Most DeleteMe alternatives in this list push annual plans with steep discounts against a crossed-out monthly price, and most renew automatically. Put the renewal date in your calendar a month ahead, so the decision to stay is one you make with fresh evidence rather than one a card charge makes for you.
Whatever you buy, run the 3R Test every renewal: ask for the plan-specific list, ask for the scan cadence, and ask for screenshots. Also search your name in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode. Answer engines now summarize what brokers and other sites say about you, which is why Instant Press offers a free AEO rating that shows how AI tools describe your name.
DeleteMe is a solid service, but it is no longer the only sensible choice or the cheapest one. Optery wins on proof, EasyOptOuts on price, Incogni on hands-off coverage, Kanary and Privacy Bee Signature on high-risk protection, and Aura on bundling. Onerep carries a trust problem you should weigh. Californians should file with DROP first, because it is free. Pick the threat you face, test each service on Reach, Recheck, and Receipts, and check the price on the day you buy.