DeleteMe v Optery v Kanary

Comparing data removal services like Kanary, Incogni, Optery, and DeleteMe

With the rise of personal data breaches and online tracking, it's important to have a reliable privacy service that can protect your personal information. This is especially true for public professionals, which range from creators to teachers, executives to athletes. Since our launch in 2020, we've gotten questions about these four services most: Deleteme, Optery, Kanary, and Incogni. At Kanary, scan frequency and site coverage stand above the rest, as we aim to be the fastest and most effective personal data security platform. If you take the time to try services, you may feel like you're comparing apples to oranges.

We try to summarize price in the description below but keep it high level because prices change frequently and can be complex across tiers. Don't be fooled when a service says they offer an affordable service, but skimps on covering top sites, support, and scan frequency. Look at the full scope of capabilities provided by a product, then look at the price. If it doesn't look transparent and fair, then it's probably a money-grab.

NOTE: We updated this comparison on March 14, 2023 because Removaly was taken offline with a vague message from the team. We have some hypotheses about what happened that we’ve written about in depth here: Removaly: What Happened?

We updated this comparisons November 2025, to reflect advances in Kanary's site list, removal rates, and pricing.

More about DeleteMe

DeleteMe is a privacy service that is owned by the parent company, Abine. Deleteme offers removals and provides a quarterly report that shows which sites your information was removed from. There is no free option and plans can get very expensive (thousands per person per year) if you want monthly scans or assistance with removals. Be careful! Some people ask us “Is DeleteMe a scam?” because there is another service that owns the url ‘deleteme[dot]com’ which hasn’t been verified as legitimate, so you want to go to ‘joindeleteme[dot]com.’

Optery

Optery is a venture-backed privacy service focused on enterprise clients and individuals. Optery offers removals tiers of broker sites depending on how much you pay them. They also provides a monthly pdf report that shows which sites your information was removed from. Optery offers a free DIY tier and paid plans start at about $99 per year for individuals but may not include many important data brokers you want to remove your data from. People like the screenshots provided by Optery to show what was found and confirm removal. They are PC Magazine’s choice for data removal, despite having an issue showing noisy results that they claim are about you when they are not.

Kanary

Kanary is an independent, US-Based privacy service that focuses on removing individual’s personal information from various sites online: data brokers, spam aggregators, breach sites, google search, and social media. Kanary claims to remove your information from over 1,000 sites, which is more than any of its competitors. Kanary offers a free app with automated removals and family deals that are easy to set up. Kanary is backed by the Mozilla Foundation and other privacy pros fully committed to helping save you time and worry while protecting your privacy.

Incogni

Incogni is owned by Nord which merged with Surfshark in 2022. If you're already using NordVPN or another Nord Security product, you might find it easier to onboard to Incogni. The cost can be very affordable, but you should note that a large portion of this service is based outside the US. There are also reports of Incogni sending data removal emails to brokers and scammers without verifying your information is on those sites in the first place. It is hard to directly trace the source of spam, but this approach to scrubbing data can unnecessarily leak your data to bad actors. Sometimes a broad approach to opting out can have unexpected consequences. While Kanary, Optery, and DeleteMe offer limited coverage outside the US, Incogni offers the most international coverage.

Finding the right option for you

Whenever you’re considering sharing your personal information with a site, it’s important to do the research. We'll share more updates soon as we develop Kanary and follow other tools making progress to help individuals protect themselves online. For more information on the privacy stack our founders recommend, check out our other blog posts. The most important thing you can do is start a maintainable routine for you and your loved ones around digital hygiene, privacy, and security. This makes your security stronger and keeps you protected from the ever-changing ways others can exploit your information. Download Kanary for free on iOS or Android to have the help you need to get started.

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