Comprehensive Kanary review 2025: features, pricing, and is it worth it?

Identity theft, doxxing, phishing, and smishing are rampant in today’s digital world, underscoring the critical need to minimize your digital footprint and protect your online privacy. Services like Kanary promise to reduce your online presence and keep your personal information out of the hands of data brokers and bad actors who could use it to impersonate you, stalk you, steal your money, or expose your sensitive data to the world.

Kanary Copilot is a new app designed to help reduce risk and keep you safe online – but is it worth it? Our Kanary review reveals how the service works and what it costs to help you decide whether to download the Kanary Copilot app.

What is Kanary?

Though Kanary started as a web-based data removal service, it is now a mobile app called Kanary Copilot (the web version is still available to previous users, but new ones can only get Copilot). Currently, the app is only available on Apple devices, but you can join an Android waitlist.

The application guides users through brief step-by-step tasks that build good data privacy habits. Kanary says the tasks only take around ten minutes each week and suggests completing them during downtime, such as when riding the bus or waiting in line.

Kanary Copilot blends manual input with automation. Users respond to in-app prompts, and then the app goes to work. Privacy features include:

• Data broker removal
• Social media security
• Filing privacy-related legal complaints

We tested Kanary Copilot ourselves to take a deeper dive into its features.

Kanary features: how does it work?

Creating an account was straightforward – we input our information, and Kanary Copilot gave us a quick overview of the app and prompted us to adjust notifications and security settings.

Once on the dashboard, Kanary offers privacy tasks for users to complete. Each task is presented as a card with an estimated completion time – typically less than ten minutes each. You can scroll through and choose which available tasks to complete at the top. As you complete them, new ones are unlocked. 

Our first task was to find address leaks. Kanary Copilot listed five sites it would scan: Google’s search engine and people-search sites like Intelius and Whitepages. The app went to work Googling our address and scanning each data broker site one by one–we could watch what it was doing live on the screen. 

After the initial scan, Kanary displayed the profiles it found on data broker websites. Some were matches for us, others were not. Kanary gave us three options for each profile: “add to exposures,” “not about me,” or “I don’t want to remove.”

Then, Kanary walked us through each site and automatically sent official removal requests, though we had to complete CAPTCHAs for some data brokers. Some websites (like Intelius and Spokeo) required us to check our email inboxes for a confirmation email to complete the request. Kanary allowed us to choose whether we received the confirmation emails or if they didn’t work. We could also mark the removals as completed. 

Once we finished the first task, we could scroll through the remaining cards and choose the task to start next. Options included finding even more address leaks and sending email escalation, which would guide us through the process of sending emails to support and legal teams that hadn’t honored our initial opt-out requests. 

Upcoming tasks included: 

• Secure your LinkedIn
• Secure your TikTok
• Find photo leaks
• Find professional contact leaks
• Start or join a lawsuit

Pros and cons of Kanary

After testing the app, we believe Kanary Copilot has the following advantages:

• Bite-sized tasks are easy to complete, fostering good privacy habits
• Scans sites to check whether they expose your personal information instead of blindly requesting removals from every broker it covers
• Gives users control over what to do with potential exposures 
• App is free

However, we also feel that Kanary Copilot has some drawbacks and limitations:

• Extremely limited data broker coverage – as of this writing, Copilot only covers around ten websites – its web-based predecessor and other data removal services cover far more data brokers
• Unlike some other data removal services that are “set it and forget it,” Kanary Copilot requires user input during the opt-out process. Some might prefer the control this offers, while others might prefer the software to handle everything
• Limited choice of next tasks; some tasks are locked until you complete previous ones
• Available only for Apple devices

Is Kanary legit? User reviews and feedback

Kanary Copilot launched in late 2024, so there aren’t many user reviews and consumer reports about it yet. However, it’s operated by the same team that created the original Kanary web platform, which has generally positive reviews on Reddit.

Reviewers cite good removal quality that limits online exposure and responsive support as positives for Kanary. One reviewer claimed Kanary didn’t scan all the sites on its list, but to their credit, Kanary offered an explanation in response.

Kanary pricing: what does it cost?

The Kanary Copilot app has a free version and a premium tier that costs $9.99 per month and includes:

• A “deep dive” on risks, which means being able to add unlimited names, locations, email addresses, and phone numbers so Kanary can find more of your exposures on the sites it scans
• Discounted pricing for family members ($4.99/month)
• Early access to content, recommendations, and new automations

Copilot doesn’t currently have a yearly plan.

Final verdict: is Kanary worth it?

Kanary Copilot is a promising online privacy tool that provides unique features in a convenient mobile app. It’s great for building good data privacy habits such as securing social media accounts. 

However, we feel it has a way to go before it can compete with other data removal services. Though Kanary scans each site and grants control over what to do with potential exposures – providing good transparency on the removal process – the limited number of data brokers it currently covers pales in comparison to other services.

If you’re mostly interested in building data privacy habits and can commit to following the guided prompts ten minutes a week, Kanary Copilot is a good option. But if you prioritize comprehensive data removal, you’re better off with a service that can remove your private information from hundreds of data brokers on autopilot.

Kanary alternatives

Onerep

Onerep is a data removal service that opts you out of 212 people-search sites and handles the whole opt-out process for you–no user intervention is required.

The service scans people-search websites to find the exact pages where your personal information is exposed, than submits removal requests on your behalf. The informative dashboard keeps you constantly updated on your removal progress, with each data broker site featuring a link to the page where your information is published, the personal details found on that page, estimated removal time, and current status (opt-out requested, verifying removal, removed). Onerep marks profiles as removed only after the service rescans the brokers and verifies that your information is gone. But even after it’s gone, Onerep runs monthly scans to make sure that if your data reappears, it’s dealt with promptly.

Onerep offers flexible pricing options to accommodate different needs, with both monthly and yearly billing available. Users can choose between an Individual plan and Family protection (which covers up to six people). Additionally, all plans come with a free trial.

DeleteMe

DeleteMe covers 750+ data brokerages, though its standard plan includes around 100 (the only plan available when you subscribe). The rest require upgrading to pricier plans and requesting custom removals–you get 40 of those per year.

From what we can tell, DeleteMe combines automated removals with human assistance. The service seems to scan people-search sites to find exposed profiles, but it doesn’t add the links it finds to the dashboard. The dashboard also doesn’t list the exact brokers that publish your information or which ones have been tackled. DeleteMe’s quarterly reports, however, feature the exact websites and provide links to pages with exposed data for some.

DeleteMe offers annual and bi-annual billing options and has three plans: individual, couple, and family.

Incogni

Incogni promises to remove your data from 200+ sites. The service focuses on data brokers that don’t have publicly available databases (e.g. marketing, recruitment, risk mitigation brokers) and also covers around 60 people-search websites.

Incogni scans the people-search sites but it can’t scan non-public data brokers. So, in the case of the latter, the service sends removal requests to each website they cover without being able to check if these brokers even hold customers’ information and whether they’ve removed it. 

Incogni’s dashboard provides a removal status and some background info about each data broker, but doesn’t link to pages where personal information is exposed (even for people-finder sites). The service also sends weekly email reports that show your removal progress in numbers (e.g. the number of opt-outs requested).

Incogni’s billing options include monthly and annual for both individual and family plans.

BrandYourself

BrandYourself offers a suite of reputation management and personal branding software and services, including data broker removal that currently covers around 95 sites. BrandYourself’s dashboard doesn’t provide links to pages where your data is published but shares what personal information is exposed.

Beyond data broker removal, BrandYourself features include reputation management software, social media cleanup software, dark web scanning, and personal branding services.

The company doesn’t publish their pricing openly on the website but you can upgrade after creating a free account. The “Protect private info” plan that removes you from data brokers costs $49.99/month or $299.99/year at the time of this writing.

FAQ

Is Kanary trustworthy?

Kanary has robust privacy and security features such as HTTPS encryption, SOC 2 certification, multi-factor authentication, and a clearly defined data retention and deletion policy. These factors lead us to believe that Kanary is trustworthy.

Does Kanary work internationally?

Kanary says its team is focused on protecting customers from U.S.-based data brokers, and that its service is most effective for current and past U.S. residents, so it might not work as well internationally.

How long does it take for Kanary to remove data?

Kanary Copilot starts to send requests as soon as it identifies exposures. Actual removal time depends on how long it takes data brokers to respond. Some remove your data within 24 hours, while others can take 45 days or even longer.

Are there any free alternatives to Kanary?

Some data removal services like Onerep offer free scans of hundreds of data brokers along with DIY removal instructions. At the time of this writing, Kanary Copilot’s focus on habit-building through bite-sized tasks is unique.