Incogni vs Onerep comparison [2024 review & explanation]

If you want to protect your online privacy, it’s imperative to remove yourself from data brokers that collect, publish, and sell your personal information online. The best data removal services can spare you from that time-consuming process, but they’re not created equal. It’s crucial to choose the right data privacy management software to keep your information removed in the most efficient way, meaning from the biggest number of data broker sites that pose the highest risk to your privacy and security. Our Incogni vs Onerep review will help you decide which data removal service is best for you.

Incogni overview

Incogni is a personal data removal tool created by Surfshark. The service primarily covers marketing and risk mitigation data brokers that don’t have publicly open databases, plus a number of people-search sites.

Incogni sends automated removal requests to a list of around 160 data brokers but doesn’t actually scan each site to find your unique profile. Instead, their service uses an algorithm to guess which data brokers have your information and relies on the brokers to confirm they’ve removed your data.

Onerep overview

Onerep is a personal data removal service that opts you out of 212 data broker and people-search sites. Instead of guessing which websites publish your information, our proprietary True Scan™ technology allows us to scan data brokers to find your actual profiles and verify their removal later on.

Our service focuses on people-search sites, which we consider the most problematic type of data brokers since they make your personal information easily accessible to the general public. 

Comparison of Incogni vs Onerep

Number and types of data brokers

Onerep removes personal information from 212 data brokers, while Incogni covers around 160 at the time of this writing. Incogni has a global focus, so some of their sites aren’t relevant to the U.S.A., while Onerep concentrates on websites that publish info about U.S. residents.

Incogni focuses primarily on private databases, which are mostly sold to other businesses for marketing, risk mitigation, recruitment, and related purposes. These sites usually don’t make detailed profiles easily accessible to the public, so they are not as problematic to an individual as people-search sites. Though Incogni does cover several of the latter, it doesn’t remove your information from the most prominent ones, including Whitepages, TruePeopleSearch, Truthfinder, Spokeo, Intelius, and BeenVerified.

In contrast, Onerep focuses on people-search websites as these data brokers pose the greatest threat to individuals. They allow anyone to find sensitive information such as your contact details, home address, court and arrest records, social media accounts, religious affiliations, income level, credit score range, and online photos. They are frequently used by criminals, aggressive ex-partners, stalkers, and hate groups for nefarious purposes.

Both services routinely add new brokers to our lists.

Ease of use and dashboard user friendliness

Both Incogni and Onerep dashboards are intuitive and provide user tutorials, though Incogni spreads your information across three dashboard screens. The primary view displays the number of requests sent, in progress, and completed next to an interactive timeline.

Below that, you can see how much time Incogni has saved you plus the number of suppression list entries. The main dashboard view also displays the latest removal activity.

Incogni’s detailed view features a sortable table that lists:

• Compliance score
• Severity
• Requests sent
• Last request status

You’ll need to toggle between public and private databases to see all the sites Incogni has submitted requests. However, Incogni does not provide links to pages with your personal information, so you can’t verify that the sites actually had your profiles and there’s no way to check what exactly was deleted.

Click on the dropdown arrow to view additional information such as:

• About the data broker
• Associated risks
• When the last request was sent
• When the last request was completed
• Average resolution time
• Upcoming request

Onerep’s dashboard provides detailed information on a single screen that displays:

• Last and next scan dates
• Time saved
• Number of profiles found
• Number of removals in progress
• Number of profiles removed
• Removal progress percentage
• Your exposure

Below that is a table of removals that lists:

• Status: Opt-out requested (and number of attempts), verifying removal, or removed
• Removal time: The estimated time it takes to remove your profile
• Data broker report: Links to sample in-depth background reports that data brokers provide behind paywalls
• Links to data brokers: Links to pages containing your information on each data broker; if your profile has been removed, a “view removal” link takes you to the page your profile was on or to the site home page
• DIY: If you don’t want to wait for the next request to be sent and want your information removed from a particular site ASAP, our manual removal instructions will guide you through the process

Scanning and removal quality

As Incogni states, they don’t actually know if a given broker has your information – instead, they use an algorithm to predict which data brokers are likely to have your data, which can result in requests sent to brokers that do not already have your info.

Incogni considers a request “completed” once they receive confirmation from the broker that your information was removed. That means they don’t scan websites to verify removal themselves but rely on what data brokers state instead. If a request is rejected, Incogni leverages consumer protection and data privacy laws (such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation) to remove your profiles.

Onerep employs our own advanced technology called True Scan™, which scans each site to find your exact profile. To ensure transparency, we add links to pages with your data to your personal dashboard before we submit a data removal request.

We only consider your profile “removed” when we rescan the site and the profile has disappeared. Once removed, the status text in the “Link to profile” column changes from “View profile” to “View removal.” You can verify removal by clicking on the link, which will lead to either a 404 response or redirect to another page on the data broker’s site (e.g., its homepage) because your profile no longer exists.

Search results quality

When you sign up, Incogni asks for your email address, first name, last name, physical address, phone number, and date of birth. You can enter multiple last names, but not multiple aliases, email addresses, or physical addresses, which could limit the number of your profiles discovered and removed.

If Incogni finds multiple profiles that might belong to you, they’ll ask you to select the best match so they can filter irrelevant results.

Onerep requests the same information during the sign-up process but allows you to add unlimited aliases, phone numbers, addresses, and emails for a more comprehensive sweep. This is an excellent feature that allows to find profiles based on your former identifiers; for example, your previous addresses or contact data. You can add new details any time after the initial sign-up. Once you do, Onerep will automatically initiate a fresh scan of all sites from its list to search for profiles that contain the added information (without waiting for a regular monthly scan).

Our service likewise allows you to filter irrelevant results when we find similar profiles.

Reporting

Incogni emails weekly detailed reports while Onerep offers a monthly report. Both opt-out services allow you to log in to view progress at any time.

Pricing, plans, and money-back guarantee

At the moment of writing, Incogni costs $14.98/month or $89.88 for an annual Individual subscription, which comes to $7.49/month. Their Family & Friends plan allows you to invite up to 4 people and costs $32.98/month or $197.88 for an annual subscription. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Onerep costs $14.95/month or $99.95 for an annual subscription (the latter comes to ($8.33/month). We also offer a pricing plan for up to six family members at $27.95/month (as low as $4.67/person) or $179.95 annually, which comes to $15/month (as low as $2.50/person), making our family plans the most affordable option. While our prices for the Individual plan are slightly higher, we cover more sites and focus on those that are more important to your online privacy and security. 

In addition, Onerep offers business plans, a free scan, and a five-day free trial.

Customer support

Both Incogni and Onerep have searchable knowledge bases and contact forms. In addition to those options, Onerep offers email, chat support, and phone support. Our customer support team will also help with complex cases upon request.

Data sharing and data collection

To ensure user privacy, both Incogni and Onerep only collect data needed to find your profiles and submit data removal requests. Neither service sells information to third parties.

However, most data brokers require your email address and, in some cases, your phone number to verify your identity before removing your profiles. While Incogni shares some of your details when contacting data brokers about opt-out requests, Onerep creates disposable email addresses and phone numbers to avoid exposing your personal information. We never share with data brokers any details our users provide to us: while most follow ethical opt-out practices, some sites might populate your profile with new details instead of removing it.

Service effectiveness

Incogni is primarily focused on sending removal requests to data brokers they categorize as marketing, risk mitigation, and recruitment databases. They also have a number of people-search websites on their list, but not many. Moreover, Incogni relies on data brokers themselves to confirm data removal instead of running their own scans.

Onerep covers more sites overall and removes your personal information from people-search sites, which subsequently removes it from search engines and helps manage your online presence. Our technology scans these sites to find your exact profiles and verify removal, making Onerep a more comprehensive data removal service. 

Incogni vs Onerep: pros and cons