The best data removal services give you the ability to keep your data safe online and out of the wrong hands.
Working alongside the best VPN, the best antivirus, the best malware removal, and the best password manager, a data removal service can be a really powerful tool to both keep track of your data and remove it from anywhere you don't want it.
The data broker industry has been increasing in size in recent years, and there are likely companies you have never heard of that can build a profile on your life, including name, email address, physical address, and much more. All of this is perfectly legal, especially in the US, which has weak data privacy laws.
Data removal services can also work well for enterprises that want to keep their employees safe and their details private, an especially big consideration within sensitive industries like defense or health care. Some of the services also cover family members and friends.
During our reviews, we tested all of the services and how well they performed at both basic functions like removing data from well-known brokers, and more advanced stuff, like the enterprise plans and any bonus features.
Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best data removal services on our list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
As with all software, it's worth checking each individual service against your own needs and, importantly, how much each costs. Some of the services with fewer features are cheaper while doing the basics, for example.
It's also worth noting at the top that almost all data brokers are either US-only or work best in the US. Data brokers are much less of an issue in the EU thanks to GDPR, the privacy law introduced in 2018.
The best data removal service of 2024 in full:
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Best data removal service overall
Optery might not be the oldest data removal service on the market, but the quality of all of its tiers was pretty much unmatched among its rivals. Even the cheapest tier does an amazing job of removing data from the corners of the web.
The top two tiers, the Extended and Ultimate, which cost $$14.99 per month and $24.99 per month, respectively, cover up to 325 different websites and companies, from huge data brokers to Google.
We also really liked Optery's approach of combining human agents and machines to help remove the data in tandem – giving the service flexibility to remove data from the most troublesome data brokers.
Everything else about the service was impressive and easily up to the standard of its rivals, so Optery is our choice for the best data removal service in 2024.
Read our full Optery review.
Best data removal service for pros
DeleteMe, launched in 2011, has a convincing claim to be the oldest data removal service on the list. Whether or not that's the case, DeleteMe is definitely one of the most fully featured and, as such, is our pick for being the most powerful – the ideal service for anyone chasing features.
By 2022, DeleteMe had completed 50 million opt-out requests for its users, and the service comes recommended by The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The New York Times, and others, including TechRadar Pro.
The plans are simple: you either pay $129 per year or $209 over two years (billed annually), and this lets you access everything on the service straight away. DeleteMe covers up to 750 brokers, an astounding figure, and there is a really helpful dashboard to keep track of everything.
Overall, DeleteMe is a really strong service and there isn't too much between it and Optery for the crown of the best data removal service, besides the fact that DeleteMe costs more upfront.
Read our full DeleteMe review.
Best for Firefox users
If you're reading this, you're most likely familiar with Firefox, the web browser from Mozilla that competes with Google Chrome, Apple's Safari, and many others. Mozilla has carved out a niche for itself as a privacy-first company, and that reputation pays dividends when it comes to data removal.
Mozilla offers Monitor Plus as part of a much broader suite of software that includes a VPN (available for $4.99 per month) and seven other services, like Thunderbird (an email app), Pocket (a reading app), and Firefox Relay (to protect emails).
The biggest plus for Monitor Plus is, well, the Mozilla name: it seems very unlikely that the company is going anywhere, and given that you're handing over a lot of sensitive personal data, trusting the brand is important.
The $8.99 monthly price for Monitor Plus is very reasonable, and coverage of 190 data brokers – including many of the largest – is pretty okay compared to its peers.
Read our full Mozilla Monitor Plus review.
Best for transparency
Kanary is another well-established (and trusted) data removal service that offers all of the usual features and some extras for a pretty reasonable, if slightly high, price of $16.99 per month or $179.88 per year. Helpfully, there is a 14-day free trial.
The thing that really stood out to us about Kanary was how well it explained what exactly it was going to be doing and when. Between days four and 14 of the process, for example, is all about scanning the web, while by day 30 onward there should be around a 60% removal success.
In some ways, Kanary is a victim of its rivals offering really compelling services for just a little less, either per month or per year, but if you have the cash to spare then you could do a lot worse than Kanary.
The service also covers Google and Facebook, plus other social media, which is a huge boost over its rivals that only cover data brokers.
Read our full Kanary review.
Best for specific features
A lot of the data removal services listed above and below are generalists: they aimed to do everything at once in a single product. IDX takes a slightly different approach, offering three tiers all with their own powers.
IDX Identity, the cheapest at $8.99 per month, focuses on monitoring the web, rather than removing content. IDX Privacy, which costs $12.95 per month, focuses mostly on privacy protection rather than monitoring of the web itself, with access to data removal, a password manager, a private search, and a privacy score.
Combining the two is IDX Complete (duh), setting you back $32.90 per month and offering a combination of the features within Identity and Privacy plus a few tasty extras. The only downside is that nearly $33 per month is pretty expensive, and some of its rivals do similar for less.
IDX has been around since 2003 so you can be sure it isn't going anywhere, and the software on offer is really, really powerful, making IDX the pick for power users with a little extra cash who want every single feature available.
Read our full IDX review.
Best for unlimited budgets
Like IDX, Privacy Bee is another extensive data removal software suite that comes at a bit of a price but doesn't scrimp on quality. The service costs $197 per year – no ifs or buts – and there is only one tier. That does work out to $0.54 per day, but if stumping up near-$200 for a year looks too much then check the other reviews.
The upside is that Privacy Bee works with 440+ data brokers and other online services to remove your data, which is a pretty massive coverage area that competes directly with the likes of DeleteMe.
Privacy Bee monitors 24/7 using its "state-of-the-art monitoring to instantly detect re-exposures", comprised of an expert team that uses AI tech to find and re-delete any data that comes up.
There are a ton of features available on Privacy Bee and we recommend checking out our review and the company's website to get a sense of everything. One nice touch is a Privacy Manifesto that promises outright to always respect your data.
Read our full Privacy Bee review.
Best for simplicity
From VPN maker Surfshark comes Incogni, one of the more stripped-back data removal services on the market right now.
There's just one pricing tier to choose from – which costs $15 per month – and options to pay either monthly or yearly, which can lower the cost a bit. The service uses a mixture of local laws to compel the removal of data.
In our testing, Incogni got to work almost immediately and had results within a week or so, which is fairly typical of the industry. There are also weekly progress reports, a nice touch compared to the monthly reports of some rivals.
The main thing about Incogni is simplicity: there are no extra features, and everything is pretty, well, basic. That might be a virtue for some people, and to them, we recommend trying out Incogni.
Read our full Incogni review.
Best for cheapness
Not everything is about having hundreds of features and settings, or that seems to be the idea behind BrandYourself's Hello Privacy data removal service.
Costing a very reasonable $9.99 per month, Hello Privacy has the very basics: the ability to scan the web and remove your data from data brokers. All of the removal activity is then monitored and reported back to users.
There are more complex features for enterprise customers, like the ability to delete old accounts and social media cleanup. There are dark web monitoring services for both consumers and enterprises that we appreciated, and in our testing flagged a fair amount of data breaches where email addresses and so on had featured in leaks.
Read our full Hello Privacy review.
Best for a privacy suite
Aura is a full suite of privacy software, but there is a specific data removal component and it's pretty well featured, too. Aura offers competitive pricing across three plans – family, individual, and couple plans – starting at $12 per month.
The upside of Aura is that you get so many different tools in one, from a VPN to an antivirus and a password manager. In terms of data removal specifically, everything works how it should: Aura reaches out to get your data removed, and updates you on the resulting progress.
In the end, Aura is not the cheapest identity theft solution out there, but with its complete offer, it stacks well with the competing products in the market. With varying pricing plans and all-encompassing protection, we believe you can’t go wrong with Aura.
Read our full Aura review.
Best data removal services: FAQs
What are data removal services?
Data removal services have been around since the early 2000s but have really come into prominence in recent years as people become aware of just how much of their personal data is out there in the hands of companies.
Data brokers, which are mostly legal across the US, acquire data from a huge number of parties in order to build profiles on people and then sell them to other interested parties. In the EU, these kinds of practices are far more limited due to the introduction of GDPR in 2018.
All of the data removal services featured in this roundup do slightly different things and have different amounts of coverage. DeleteMe, for example, covers up to 750 data brokers on its top plan.
Are data removal services all I need?
Sadly not. Data removal services are very useful for searching the web for your data and removing it where possible, but the internet in 2024 has a lot of different threats. We recommend getting a VPN, a password manager, the best antivirus, and an anonymous browser.
Taken together, implementing best practices like having a hard-to-guess password that changes across accounts and two-factor authentication, will dramatically boost how safe you are online.
How to choose the best data removal services
The best place to start with picking a data removal service is by thinking about what kind of data you want to remove from the internet. Many of the services focus solely on data brokers, and others include search engines like Google as well as social media platforms like Facebook.
If you want to completely scrub yourself out of online existence, then you're going to need a very powerful, capable data removal service that will likely cost a fair amount of money. This brings us to the second consideration: price.
Data removal services can cost a little or a lot – up to and beyond $200 per year – and if you are just casually interested in seeing how much of your data is out there (most likely a lot), a cheaper service would be preferable.
We recommend taking the time to appraise the features of each service against your list of must-haves and deciding on that basis. Some services are geared towards signing up, removing data for a couple of months, and then leaving; others want to lock you in for a year.
How we test the best data removal services
To test the data removal services, we signed up to each and inputted our data, got the low down, and experimented with many of the features. All of the services were online only, which made the process easier within a browser.
Some of the services worked faster than others, and we noted this in the relevant reviews. All of them successfully completed a scan of our data and set about removing it from data brokers.
There are free trials available on some of the services, which are worth checking out to get a sense of how much data is out there. Sadly, a lot of the services limit the free trial to discovery, rather than removal, meaning you have to pay to get results.
