Whenever you browse the internet, accept cookies, or download an app, data brokers could be harvesting your personal information, such as your name, address, email, and phone number. Third parties can then use this data to send you spam emails, hit you with targeted ads, or pester you with telemarketing calls.
While you can send requests to data brokers to remove your private information yourself, this takes a lot of time and effort.
Luckily, thanks to Incogni, you don’t have to. Created by the team behind Surfshark, one of the best VPN services we’ve tested, this data removal service can handle everything on your behalf. The subscription-based service contacts these companies for you and demands that they remove your information from their databases.
Incogni sends automatic data deletion requests to over 420 data brokers, including public and private ones, paid sites, and people search sites. If you choose one of their Unlimited tiers, you can submit an unlimited number of custom removal requests to get your data removed from sites not yet covered by automated removals. Incogni claims to have had data removed from over 1,000 unique sites in response to these user-generated requests.
Incogni has undergone an independent, third-party audit assurance report from Deloitte. The report goes on to validate Incogni’s coverage of over 420 data brokers and confirms that it has processed more than 245 million removal requests for its customers. The report also confirms the accuracy of Incogni’s statements about the data brokers’ response rates, the frequency of deletion requests, and that recurring removal requests are sent every 60-90 days, and that they have zero affiliation with the data brokers themselves.
But how well does it all work in practice? How much does it cost? And does it really work as well as the claims suggest? We’ve put it through its paces for our full Incogni review.
What are data brokers?
A data broker (sometimes also called an information product company) is an organization that makes money by harvesting your personal information and selling it to third parties. This is usually for marketing purposes, such as cold calls, spam emails, and targeted ads.
Data brokers can collect and sell a surprising amount of highly sensitive information about you, including your name, date of birth, contact information, home address, marital status, and profession. Perhaps more concerningly, they can also gather information about your purchase habits, political preferences, medical history, and even criminal record.
They collect this data through multiple sources, such as your search history, public records, and purchase history. You may also have inadvertently agreed to data brokers collecting and distributing your personal information when signing up for new online services. This is because clauses hidden in the terms and conditions often give companies the right to harvest and share your data with third parties.
Private data brokers are opaque and require a specialized opt-out process, which is why a dedicated service like Incogni can be a massive time-saver compared to sending these requests yourself. They know where to look first.
Sign-up process
Signing up for Incogni is very straightforward. First, you’ll be prompted to sign up with your email address and create a password. Once that’s done, you’ll need to complete the authorization form granting Incogni the right to submit requests on your behalf.
You’ll be asked to fill in a few more details before signing up, which may feel a little intrusive, especially if you’re concerned about companies harvesting your data. But Incogni assures us that this is only to ensure that it has enough identifying information to get brokers to delete your data successfully.
Finally, you’ll need to enter your payment details and decide whether to pay monthly or annually. Then you’re all set.
Unlike the early days of Incogni, when we originally published this review in 2023, you can now submit up to three email addresses (instead of one) for them to search for. The family plans also cover up to five users (each can submit three email addresses), giving friends and family more options.
Results
Brendan Griffiths/Incogni
As soon as you’ve created your account, you’ll be taken to the Incogni dashboard. This shows you how many data brokers they have contacted, how many requests are in progress, and how many have been completed. You’ll also see an activity log, which displays how many databases you’ve been removed from in real time.
When I created my account, Incogni started working immediately. And within seconds, it had completed two requests to remove my details. However, because data brokers have a reasonable window to respond to requests, many of them take a while to be completed.
The Detailed view is now split into two sections: data brokers and requests. This gives clearer insights into each step of the removal process and greater transparency into how your data protection works. Incogni also sends monthly summary reports via email.
Incogni has made significant improvements over the years to enhance visibility into progress on removal requests in their dashboard, along with more specific details about what was found in the first place. The lack of detail on which information the brokers were found to hold was one of the biggest sticking points in our original review of Incogni. So it’s great to see that’s been addressed since, even if it does take a few too many clicks to see the information from the dashboard.
When I created my account and logged in for the first time, Incogni identified 52 data brokers that held personal information about me and immediately contacted them all. Two responded instantly, while others took weeks to resolve.
Now, three years later, I can see that Incogni has completed over 1300 requests, with 62 currently in progress as new exposures are identified on an ongoing basis.
In the detailed view, you can see a complete list of the data brokers contacted, their compliance scores, and their associated risks. These risks can range from targeted ads and spam emails to identity theft and even an impact on your credit rating.
Brendan Griffiths/Incogni
While testing it out, I double-checked that some of the data brokers that had my details before I signed up for Incogni had actually deleted my information when Incogni said they had. From what I could see, Incogni was as good as its word and had ensured the brokers removed my details.
The specific brokers covered by Incogni can change, though, and not always for the better. RocketReach is a major player in the public data broker space and was no longer covered by Incogni in 2026 at the time of writing (or at least on our Standard tier). However, it was covered back in 2023, when we originally published this review, and it removed my details at the time.
Support options
When it comes to support, Incogni has made improvements beyond the basic FAQ section over the years. In addition to a broader help section, it now offers proper 24/7 live chat support, email, and web forms. Unlimited tier users can also get phone support.
When we tested this, we received a helpful and polite response within 24 hours via the web form and within a few minutes via Live Chat.
Incogni
Pricing and plans
Incogni formerly offered just one tier of service, but has since changed things up with a Standard or Unlimited plan. The main differences between the two are that the Unlimited tier lets you submit a manual request for a specific website, provides additional protection for an extra 3,000 sites, and offers live phone support. Standard costs $15.98 a month in the US, and Unlimited costs a frankly eye-watering $29.98 a month. That’s a fair bit higher than the original $12.99 before the new tiers came into effect.
Of course, as with most digital subscriptions, the big savings are reserved for annual subscriptions, where you’ll save 50% on the above fees, bringing the effective monthly prices down to $7.99 and $14.99, respectively.
Despite price increases over time, Incogni remains competitively priced compared to the competition. The highly rated DeleteMe service doesn’t offer a rolling one-month plan, but annual prices work out to $10.75 or $8.71 a month on a two-year deal.
Incogni used to have very limited availability (USA, Canada, and the UK), but has greatly expanded over the years. It’s currently available to help send data removal requests from any of these supported countries:
USACanadaUnited KingdomSwitzerlandNorwayIcelandLiechtensteinEuropean Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden
Conclusion
Whether you know it or not, your personal information, including your marital status, location, and medical history, is probably being stored and sold by data brokers you’ve most likely never heard of. And if you want to get your data removed from their records, Incogni is an easy and effective way to do this.
It will identify the data brokers storing your information, contact them to request the removal of your data, and let you know when it’s been completed.
Pros
Gets to work straight awayImproved reporting systemCovers a wide range of data brokersVerified claims via third-party audit
Cons
The Unlimited tier is very expensiveCan take a while to notice a cleaner inboxLimited protection if your details have already been passed on by brokersSome big brokers aren’t covered
