Google your own name right now. If the results make you uncomfortable, you are not imagining things. Data brokers have been quietly packaging your address, phone number, and family details for sale, and Incogni is one of the tools built specifically to make them stop.
Here is the thing nobody tells you when you sign up for a new app, enter a giveaway, or buy something online: that single data point gets copied, sold, and resold within weeks. By the time you notice the spam calls, your information is sitting in dozens of databases you have never heard of. This post breaks down what Incogni actually does, what it costs, where it falls short, and how to set it up in under ten minutes.
What Incogni Actually Does
Incogni is a subscription service that finds and removes your personal information from data broker sites and people search engines, then keeps checking so it does not creep back. It was built inside Surfshark in 2021 and launched as its own product in January 2022, and it has since become one of the more established names in a crowded category.
Data brokers are companies most people have never interacted with directly. They scrape public records, purchase information from apps and retailers, and combine it into a profile that includes your home address, phone numbers, relatives, income estimates, and sometimes your daily routines. People search sites take this a step further and publish it so anyone with a browser can look you up for free or for a few dollars. Incogni’s job is to send legal opt-out and deletion requests to these companies on your behalf, over and over, because a single removal rarely sticks.
Why This Actually Matters
It is easy to shrug this off as background noise until it shows up as something specific. Data brokers are the reason your phone rings with numbers you do not recognize and your inbox fills with offers you never asked for. That part is annoying but survivable.
The bigger problem is who else buys this data. Scammers use it to build convincing phishing attempts because a message that includes your real address or your kid’s school feels a lot less like a scam. Insurers and lenders have used broker data to quietly influence rates and approvals. And people search sites have made it trivially easy for an ex, a stalker, or someone with a grudge to find out exactly where you live. None of this requires a data breach. It is all sitting in databases that were built to be sold, legally, in plain sight.
How Incogni Works, Step by Step
Setting up Incogni takes a few minutes. Here is exactly what happens once you sign up.
- Create your profile. You provide your name, email, and home address, plus any past addresses or phone numbers you want covered. The more complete this is, the more matches Incogni can find, since data brokers often list old addresses too.
- Sign the authorization form. This is a digital document that legally allows Incogni to act on your behalf under privacy laws like the GDPR and CCPA. Without it, data brokers can and often do ignore removal requests, since they have no obligation to trust a random email.
- Incogni scans and sends requests. The service checks people search sites for matches to your profile and fires off removal requests to every relevant data broker on its list, currently more than 420 sites with automated coverage.
- Requests repeat on a schedule. Public broker requests resend roughly every 60 days and private broker requests every 90 days, because brokers keep re-scraping the internet and rebuilding profiles even after a successful removal.
- You track everything from a dashboard. Incogni sends progress reports showing which brokers have confirmed removal, which are pending, and what is still in progress.
Realistically, do not expect results overnight. Most brokers take somewhere between 30 and 45 days to comply, and some drag their feet well past that. Think of it less like flipping a switch and more like setting a slow, steady process in motion.
What It Costs
Incogni runs on annual or monthly billing, with four plan tiers as of this writing:
| Plan | Price (annual billing) | Price (monthly billing) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $7.99/month | $15.98/month | 420+ automated broker removals, recurring requests |
| Unlimited | $14.99/month | Higher on monthly | Everything in Standard, plus 2,000+ additional sites, unlimited custom removal requests, and live phone support |
| Family | $15.99/month | Higher on monthly | Standard-level coverage for up to 5 people |
| Family Unlimited | $22.99/month | Higher on monthly | Unlimited-level coverage for up to 5 people |
Every plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and prices, promo codes, and included site counts do shift over time, so check the current pricing page before you commit.
Incogni vs DeleteMe
DeleteMe is the name that comes up most often when people compare Incogni to something else, so here is how the two typically stack up. Coverage numbers and pricing shift often across the industry, so treat these as a snapshot rather than gospel.
| Feature | Incogni | DeleteMe |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $7.99/month, billed annually | Around $10.75/month, billed annually |
| Monthly billing option | Yes | No, annual commitment only |
| Automated broker coverage | 420+ sites | Roughly 750+ sites depending on the report |
| Removal approach | Fully automated, with human-assisted custom removals on higher tiers | Human-led review process |
| Independent audit | Yes, Deloitte assurance report published in 2025 | Not independently audited in the same way |
| Family plan | Up to 5 people | Up to 4 people |
Incogni tends to win on price and automation speed. DeleteMe leans on a more hands-on, human-reviewed process, which some people prefer even at a higher cost. Neither is objectively better across the board. It comes down to whether you want the cheapest fully automated option or you want a person double-checking the harder cases.
The Honest Limitations
No data removal service can promise a clean slate, and you should be skeptical of any that claims otherwise. A few things worth knowing before you sign up:
- It cannot undo a data breach. If your information already leaked in a hack, Incogni can reduce future exposure through brokers, but it cannot retrieve or erase data that criminals already downloaded.
- Coverage has limits. The base plan covers 420-plus brokers automatically, which is a lot, but it is not every data broker on the internet. The Unlimited tier’s custom removals close some of that gap, but only if you actively submit the links.
- Your profile has caps. Incogni typically limits how many past addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses you can add per account, so people with a long history of moving around may not get full coverage.
- It is geographically limited. Incogni is built mainly for people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the EU and EEA, and Switzerland. If you live outside those regions, check current availability before subscribing.
- It genuinely is whack-a-mole. Brokers can and do re-add your data after a successful removal, which is exactly why the recurring request cycle matters more than the first pass.
Is Incogni Worth It?
If the idea of manually opting out of hundreds of data broker sites sounds like a part-time job you never signed up for, this is the entire pitch. You are not paying for magic. You are paying for someone else to do the repetitive, tedious legal paperwork that most people would never get around to doing themselves, and to keep doing it on a schedule.
It makes the most sense for people who have been targeted by spam or scam attempts, anyone with a public-facing job or online presence, people going through situations like a divorce or a stalking concern where an address needs to stay private, and honestly, anyone who has Googled their own name and did not love what came up.
How to Get Started
- Run a free check first using Incogni’s exposure scanner to see roughly how much of your information is already out there.
- Pick a plan based on how hands-off you want to be. Standard covers the basics. Unlimited adds custom removals if you know of specific sites listing your information.
- Fill out your profile completely, including old addresses and phone numbers, since incomplete profiles miss matches.
- Sign the authorization form so requests are legally binding.
- Check your dashboard every few weeks instead of every day. This is a slow burn, not an instant fix.
Your data is going to keep getting collected either way. The only real choice is whether anyone is bothering to clean it up behind you.
Just Being Resourceful! 
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