Last December, sitting in my home office in Austin, my privacy spreadsheet turned red. I’ve been tracking my own digital footprint since a 2024 Google search revealed my home address and my wife’s maiden name to anyone with an internet connection. I had manually opted out of 50 data brokers, but by December 1, 2025, three of the biggest ones had re-listed me. It felt like a subscription I’d cancelled that just kept billing my time anyway.
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Fed up with the manual 'whack-a-mole' game, I decided to run a head-to-head test. I signed up for DeleteMe and Incogni simultaneously to see which one could actually kill the 'zombie' data for good. If you’ve ever felt like your personal info is a junk mail problem that scaled to the internet, you’re not alone. My partner still thinks the Yubikey on my keychain is overkill, but after seeing my grandparents' names listed on a site I'd never heard of, I disagree.
The Contenders: A $50 Difference
The math on this was straightforward. DeleteMe costs $129 for an individual annual plan. Incogni comes in significantly lower at $79. That’s a $50 price premium for DeleteMe. As a self-employed consultant, I’m skeptical of marketing copy that promises 'complete' removal—usually, that just means they send a few automated emails and hope for the best.
I’ve previously spent time with the full Proton bundle ($119) and RoboForm ($30) to secure my active data, but data brokers deal in the passive leftovers of your life. They aggregate shadow profiles from property tax records and marriage certificates. To fight that, you need a service that doesn't just ask nicely once, but keeps checking back every 90 to 120 days.
The Setup: Automated Control vs. Human-Verified Silence
The first thing I noticed was the setup philosophy. Incogni requires a bit more of a 'granular' start. You see a dashboard immediately filled with dozens of 'in-progress' requests. It feels productive, like you’ve just hired a very fast assistant. However, it requires a bit more initial attention to make sure you’ve granted the right permissions for them to act on your behalf across various jurisdictions, including CCPA protocols.
DeleteMe is different. After I signed up on December 1, I didn't see much of anything. They have a 14-day wait time for the first report. If Incogni is the high-energy assistant, DeleteMe is the quiet contractor who tells you the job will be done in two weeks and then stops talking. For someone used to instant digital feedback, that first fortnight felt like I’d just thrown $129 into a black hole. You can read more about my skepticism in my post about my first month trying DeleteMe.
The Experience: January to April 2026
By January 14, 2026, the first major reports were in. Incogni’s UI is objectively better. It’s sleek, showing progress bars for each broker. It makes you feel like you’re winning. But when I cross-referenced the 'removed' list against a fresh Google search of my Austin address, I found a discrepancy. Incogni had successfully hit the major 'people-search' sites, but the obscure property-scraping sites—the ones that feed the smaller bottom-feeders—were still there.
DeleteMe’s first report arrived exactly on day 14. It was a PDF that looked like a boring tax document, but it was thorough. It caught the 'zombie' listings on Whitepages and Spokeo that had triggered my spreadsheet's red cells in December. More importantly, it flagged those obscure property sites that Incogni’s automated system had skipped. This is where the $50 extra seems to go: DeleteMe uses a mix of automation and actual humans to find the messier corners of the web that a standard script might miss.
The Audit: Which One Sticks?
I let both services run until April 15, 2026. This was the 19-week mark. Data brokers are persistent; they refresh their databases frequently. It's like a credit freeze you forget about—you think you're protected until you try to buy something and realize the wall is still up. In this case, the 'wall' is what we want.
The results were telling:
- Incogni: Great for the 'low-hanging fruit.' It cleared about 70% of the brokers I was tracking. It’s fast and the price is right if you’re on a budget.
- DeleteMe: Found the 'deep' data. It hit the niche brokers that specialize in Texas property records, which are notoriously difficult to scrub.
One thing I’ve learned is that no service makes you 'invisible.' If you're looking for that, you're buying into a fantasy. But DeleteMe managed to keep my address off the first three pages of Google for four months straight. That hasn't happened since I started this project.
The Final Privacy Stack
After testing both, I’ve decided to keep DeleteMe as my primary defense. My total active privacy stack now costs me about $278 a year—that’s DeleteMe ($129), the Proton bundle ($119), and RoboForm ($30). It’s not cheap, but it’s less than the cost of a single 'identity protection' subscription from the big companies that usually just monitor the damage after it's already done.
If you're just starting and the $129 price tag makes you wince, Incogni is a massive step up from doing nothing. It’s significantly better than the manual 'opt-out' path I tried first. But if you've already done the basic cleaning and you're still seeing your personal life pop up on page one of Google, the deeper reach of DeleteMe is worth the premium.
I’ve also kept a copy of EaseUS BitWiper ($39) on my desk for when I cycle out my old consulting laptops. It’s a one-time cost to handle the local data side of things—something neither of these removal services touches. Privacy isn't a single product; it's a series of small, dry decisions that eventually add up to peace of mind.