Optery Review 2026: Optery Pricing, Cost, and Is Optery Worth It?
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The short answer
Optery is a legitimate data removal service run by a Delaware C Corporation in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 2020, Y Combinator backed, SOC 2 Type II certified and the winner of PCMag's Editors' Choice for data removal. Core costs $39.00 a year and is the cheapest paid removal in the category. The detail that decides whether it is worth it: the 380+ sites Core advertises are only 150+ unless you switch on a setting called Expanded Reach, and the same 230-site gap applies to Extended and Ultimate. Optery is also the only major service with a genuinely free tier, so you can see your own exposure report before paying anything. It holds 4.1 out of 5 across 222 Trustpilot reviews.
Last updated 1 September 2026. Every price and every site count here was read on that date from Optery's own pricing page, and the Expanded Reach wording is quoted from Optery's help desk. The per-person figures are our arithmetic on published totals, shown in full so you can check the working. We sell a competing product, which is exactly why this page cites a source for every number instead of asking you to trust us.
Optery pricing: all four plans, both terms
Optery shows one billing term at a time behind a toggle. Here are all four plans on both terms at once, so you can see what the annual commitment actually saves rather than what the marketing calls it.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Plan | Month to month | Shown as a month, billed yearly | Billed yearly | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Basic | $0 | Free forever | $0.00 | No removals. Exposure report only. |
| Core | $3.99 | $3.25 | $39.00 | 380+ sites, fully automated, no privacy agent |
| Extended | $14.99 | $12.42 | $149.00 | 560+ sites, human privacy agent, screenshots |
| Ultimate | $24.99 | $20.70 | $249.00 | 635+ sites, unlimited custom removals |
Core at $39.00 a year is the cheapest paid removal published by any vendor in this category. Incogni's entry plan is $95.88, DeleteMe's is $129.00, and OneRep's is $99.95. Optery is also one of only three that will sell you a single month, at $3.99, which makes it the cheapest way by a wide margin to find out whether any of this works on your data before committing a year.
Paying yearly saves about 17 percent, not half. Core is $47.88 a year month to month against $39.00 prepaid, Extended $179.88 against $149.00, and Ultimate $299.88 against $249.00. That is a modest discount by the standards of this category, where Incogni's annual rate is exactly half its monthly one. All paid plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. Optery serves the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and not the UK.
There is usually a promo code running. There was one on 1 September 2026 and there was not one two days before, so we have priced everything at the undiscounted rate. That is the number worth budgeting against anyway, because a promotion applies to your first term and your renewal does not. If you want the same arithmetic run against the other vendors, our breakdown of what data removal costs covers the whole field.
The number under the number
Optery's site counts drop by 230 unless you switch on Expanded Reach
This is the single most useful thing to know before buying Optery, and no roundup we have read explains it. Every Optery plan card headlines a site count, and then, in the same sentence, prints a second and much lower one in parentheses. The parenthetical is what you get if you do not enable a feature called Expanded Reach, which is off by default and has to be switched on inside your account.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Plan | Advertised | Without Expanded Reach | The difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core | 380+ sites | 150+ sites | 230 sites, 61% of the advertised number |
| Extended | 560+ sites | 330+ sites | 230 sites, 41% of the advertised number |
| Ultimate | 635+ sites | 405+ sites | 230 sites, 36% of the advertised number |
The gap is the same 230 sites on all three paid tiers, because Expanded Reach is a single additional roster bolted onto whichever plan you hold. It costs nothing extra and is available to every paying customer. In proportional terms it matters most at the bottom: Core buyers who never open the setting are getting 150+ sites, which is 39 percent of the 380+ that sold them the plan.
The reason it is optional rather than on by default is the interesting part, and Optery is unusually candid about it. Expanded Reach is a staging area for brokers Optery has not yet brought up to its normal verification standard. For those brokers, Optery says there is no easy way to tell whether your profile is present in the first place, and that if you are strongly averse to potentially sending your personal information to a data broker that may not already have it, it does not recommend using the feature. Over time these brokers graduate into the standard roster.
So there is a real decision here rather than a trick. Turn Expanded Reach on and you get the coverage you paid for, at the cost of opt-outs going to a few hundred sites that may not have held your data. Leave it off and you should price the plan on the lower number, which changes how Core compares to Incogni's 420+ quite a lot. Either way, the plan card was telling you the truth. It just was not saying it loudly.
If you buy Optery, do this first
Open the setting on day one
Expanded Reach has to be activated in each account individually, and it is the difference between the product you read about and the product you bought. Decide deliberately: on, and you have the advertised roster; off, and you are on 150+, 330+ or 405+ sites depending on tier.
If you added family members, the setting is per account, so check each one rather than assuming the administrator's choice carried across.
The free tier is the reason to start with Optery
Optery is the only service in this category whose product you can inspect before paying. Free Basic takes no credit card and gives you a personalized exposure report with actual screenshots of the listings it found, a scan of your Google and Bing results, and self-service tools for filing opt-outs yourself. DeleteMe has no free tier and no free trial. Incogni has neither. OneRep offers a trial that still routes through checkout.
Be clear about what it is not. Free Basic files no removals on your behalf. It is a diagnosis, not a treatment, and Optery does not pretend otherwise. But the diagnosis is the part everybody skips, and it is the part that decides whether a subscription is worth buying at all. Some people turn out to appear on four sites and some on fifty, and $39.00 a year is excellent value in the second case and questionable in the first.
From Extended up, that same evidentiary habit continues into the paid product: Optery sends removal reports with before-and-after screenshots roughly every 90 days. That is the clearest proof of work anybody in this category publishes, and it is the honest argument for paying $149.00 rather than $39.00. You are buying a human privacy agent for the awkward brokers and photographic evidence that the work happened.
What $0 actually gets you
- Exposure report with screenshots of the listings found under your name.
- A scan of your Google and Bing results, so you see what a stranger sees.
- Self-service removal tools and opt-out guides you work through yourself.
- Unlimited name variations and past addresses for those self-service tools.
- No automated removals. Those begin at Core, $39.00 a year.
Our own free scan at the top of this page does the same job from a different angle, and running both costs nothing.
Four things the star rating hides
How to read an Optery review before you buy
-
1
The advertised site count needs a setting you have to switch on yourself
Optery headlines 380+, 560+ and 635+ sites by tier. In the same sentence on the same plan card, it prints a second number: 150+, 330+ and 405+ without enabling Expanded Reach. That is a gap of exactly 230 sites on every paid tier, and Expanded Reach is off until you turn it on. If you buy Core and never open the setting, you bought the 150+ product, not the 380+ one.
-
2
Optery itself tells some people not to enable it
Expanded Reach is a staging area for brokers Optery has not fully verified. Its own help desk says that for these brokers there is no easy way to tell whether your profile is there in the first place, and that if you are strongly averse to potentially sending your personal information to a data broker that may not already have it, Optery does not recommend using the feature. So the headline coverage is real, but it carries a trade that no roundup mentions.
-
3
The annual saving is 17 percent, not the half-price you see elsewhere
Core is $3.99 a month or $39.00 a year, which is $47.88 against $39.00: you save $8.88. Extended is $179.88 against $149.00, and Ultimate $299.88 against $249.00. That is roughly 17 percent in each case. It is worth knowing because Incogni advertises 50 percent off for paying annually, which sounds like a much larger gap between the two companies than it is.
-
4
The free tier is the real product decision, and it is genuinely free
Free Basic takes no card and gives you a personalized exposure report with screenshots, a scan of your Google and Bing results, and self-service opt-out tools. It files no removals for you, so it is not a substitute for a paid plan. What it does is answer the only question that decides whether any of this is worth paying for: how many sites are actually publishing you right now.
Is Optery legit, who runs it, and what do the reviews say?
Optery is a Delaware C Corporation operating out of the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 2020 by Lawrence Gentilello, Chen Atlas and Dekel Barzilay, and backed by Y Combinator. It is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and certified SOC 2 Type II. That last one is worth more than it looks: SOC 2 Type II is an audited examination of security controls over a period of months, not a badge a company awards itself, and it is not universal in this category.
On press recognition, Optery holds PCMag's Editors' Choice for data removal, where lead analyst Neil J. Rubenking wrote that Optery's handling of the core data removal task outshines the rest. It has also been covered by Fast Company. Press awards are a weaker signal than they look, because reviewers test on their own data and rarely for a year, but PCMag's testing in this category is more hands-on than most.
Independently, Optery holds 4.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 222 reviews, with 78 percent at five stars and 11 percent at one. For context, Incogni sits at 4.3 across 2,927 reviews and DeleteMe at 3.7 across 261. Optery's sample is the smallest of the three, so read the score with that in mind. The recurring complaint across all of them is the same, and it is structural: listings come back. That is what brokers do, and no subscription in this category can stop it happening, only keep filing against it.
Optery, checked 1 September 2026
- Operator
- Delaware C Corporation, San Francisco Bay Area
- Founded
- 2020, Y Combinator backed
- Certification
- SOC 2 Type II, BBB accredited
- Trustpilot
- 4.1 out of 5 across 222 reviews
- Entry price
- $0 Free Basic, $39.00 a year for removals
- Countries
- US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
- Guarantee
- 30 days, money back, on all paid plans
Optery vs Incogni vs DeleteMe vs OneRep
Every price here was read on each vendor's own pricing page on 1 September 2026. The columns where Optery loses are in the table too, because a comparison that only shows one company winning is not a comparison.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Service | Entry price | Coverage claimed | Human on the account? | Try before you pay | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optery | $39 a year on Core, or $3.99 month to month | 380+ on Core, 560+ on Extended, 635+ on Ultimate, 950+ with custom requests | Yes, from Extended up: a human privacy agent plus before-and-after screenshots. | Genuinely free Basic tier, no card required. 30-day money-back guarantee. | Seeing proof a listing came down, and trying a service before paying anything |
| Incogni | $95.88 a year, or $15.98 month to month | 420+ sites, plus 3,000+ more on the Unlimited tiers | No. Removals are automated. Live phone support on Unlimited tiers only. | No free trial. 30-day money-back guarantee. | Covering a household of five for the least money, at $38.38 each |
| DeleteMe | $129 a year. No month-to-month plan at any tier. | 986 data brokers, per its own sites page | Yes. A named privacy expert on every plan, and quarterly reports. | No free tier and no free trial. Satisfaction guarantee, no published window. | People who want a person, not software, working the brokers that refuse |
| OneRep | $99.95 a year, or $14.95 month to month | OneRep does not headline a single site count on its pricing page | Automated, with support | Free trial, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. | Large households: $179.95 a year covers up to six people |
What a seat costs, cheapest first
Headline prices cover different numbers of people, which makes them close to useless for comparison. This table reduces every vendor's best published rate to one number: what one person costs for one year.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Plan | What you pay | Per person per year | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optery Core, at the maximum family discount | $27.30 a year | $27.30 | Automated, no privacy agent |
| OneRep, up to 6 people | $179.95 a year | $29.99 | Automated, with support |
| Incogni Family, up to 5 | $191.88 a year | $38.38 | Automated |
| Optery Core, 1 person | $39.00 a year | $39.00 | Automated, no privacy agent |
| DeleteMe Family, 4 people, 2 years | $499.00 billed once | $62.38 | Named human privacy expert |
| Incogni Standard, 1 person | $95.88 a year | $95.88 | Automated |
| Optery Extended, at the maximum family discount | $104.30 a year | $104.30 | Human privacy agent, plus screenshots |
| DeleteMe Individual, 1 person, 1 year | $129.00 a year | $129.00 | Named human privacy expert |
| Optery Extended, 1 person | $149.00 a year | $149.00 | Human privacy agent, plus screenshots |
| Optery Ultimate, 1 person | $249.00 a year | $249.00 | Agent, plus unlimited custom removals |
Two rows deserve a caveat. Optery's family rows depend on a discount it describes only as up to 30 percent, without publishing the seat count at which each step applies, so treat $27.30 and $104.30 as the floor rather than a quote. And the cheapest seats in this table are all automated: if the problem you are solving is brokers that ignore software, price against the human-assisted rows instead, where Optery and DeleteMe are the only genuine like-for-like comparison.
So is Optery worth it?
For one person on a budget, Core at $39.00 is the best value in the category and it is not close, provided you switch Expanded Reach on. At $39.00 against Incogni's $95.88 you are paying 41 percent of the price for a comparable automated roster, and you can test the whole thing for $3.99 for one month first. That combination does not exist anywhere else here.
Extended at $149.00 is the harder call. It buys a human privacy agent and before-and-after screenshots, which is real, but DeleteMe assigns a named privacy expert on its $129.00 entry plan. If a person on the account is what you want, DeleteMe is $20 cheaper for one seat and dramatically cheaper for four. Optery Extended wins on evidence and on being cancelable monthly; DeleteMe wins on price and on the depth of its broker list.
Ultimate at $249.00 is a narrow product. What it adds over Extended is unlimited custom removal requests across 950+ sites and search-engine outdated-content submissions, which matter if you have a specific listing on a site nobody covers. For general tidiness it is $100 for coverage most people will never use.
Do not buy Optery, or anything else here, expecting a permanent result. Every service in this category sells maintenance rather than a cure: brokers rebuild profiles from fresh public records continuously, so a removal filed in March does nothing about a record created in September. Price the renewal, not the first year, and ignore the promo code when you do. We work through when a subscription genuinely pays for itself in whether data removal services are worth it, and if Optery turns out not to fit, our Optery alternatives page covers what to move to.
Before you pay Optery anything
Three free steps, in this order
- 1. Find out how exposed you actually are. Optery's own Free Basic tier will tell you, with screenshots and no card. So will the scan at the top of this page. The answer decides whether $39.00 is a bargain or a solution to a problem you do not have.
- 2. Clear the three or four worst sites yourself. The largest people-search sites carry most of the damage and each opt-out takes a few minutes. Optery's free self-service tools will walk you through them.
- 3. Check back in ninety days. If the listings you removed are still gone, you may not need a subscription at all. If they are back, you have just proved what the annual fee is for, on your own data rather than on a vendor's marketing.
Optery is the only vendor here where step one costs nothing and comes from the vendor itself. That is a genuine reason to start with it even if you end up buying elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
Is Optery legit?
Yes. Optery is a Delaware C Corporation based in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 2020, backed by Y Combinator, accredited by the Better Business Bureau and certified SOC 2 Type II. It publishes its prices, names the brokers it covers in a public directory, and won PCMag's Editors' Choice award for data removal. It also offers a free tier that lets you verify its exposure report before paying, which is the strongest legitimacy check available in this category.
Is Optery worth it?
Core at $39.00 a year is the cheapest paid removal in the category and is worth it for most people, with one condition: switch Expanded Reach on, or you are buying 150+ sites rather than 380+. Extended at $149.00 is worth it if you want a human agent and before-and-after screenshots, though DeleteMe puts a named expert on a $129.00 plan. Ultimate at $249.00 only makes sense if you need unlimited custom removals.
How much does Optery cost?
Checked 1 September 2026: Free Basic is $0.00, Core is $3.99 a month or $39.00 a year, Extended is $14.99 a month or $149.00 a year, and Ultimate is $24.99 a month or $249.00 a year. Paying annually saves about 17 percent. All paid plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee, and family members can be added at a discount of up to 30 percent.
Is Optery free?
There is a genuinely free tier, but it does not remove anything. Free Basic requires no credit card and gives you a personalized exposure report with screenshots, a scan of your Google and Bing results, and self-service opt-out tools you run yourself. Automated removals start at Core, which is $39.00 a year. Optery is the only major service in this category with a free tier that shows you your actual listings.
Is Optery Expanded Reach worth it?
For most people, yes, because it is what gets you the coverage you paid for: 380+ sites instead of 150+ on Core, and the same 230-site difference on Extended and Ultimate. It costs nothing extra. The tradeoff Optery states itself is that these brokers are less thoroughly verified, so an opt-out may go to a broker that did not already hold your data. If that concerns you, leave it off and price the plan on the lower number.
Is Optery safe?
Optery is SOC 2 Type II certified, which is a real audited control standard rather than a self-declared badge, and it is BBB accredited. Like every service here it needs your name, past addresses, emails and phone numbers, because nothing can find your listings without them. The one setting worth understanding before you enable it is Expanded Reach, which by design sends opt-outs to brokers that may not already hold your data.
Does Optery have a family plan?
Not a fixed-price family plan like Incogni or OneRep sell. Optery lets you add unlimited family members and friends to one account and discounts every plan as you add people, up to 30 percent off. It does not publish the seat count at which each discount step applies. At the full 30 percent, Core works out at $27.30 per person per year, which would be the cheapest seat in the category, but you cannot confirm that price until you are in the account.
Does Optery work?
Yes, within the limits of what any removal service can do. Optery scans monthly, files automated opt-outs across its covered roster, and from Extended up sends before-and-after screenshots roughly every 90 days so you can see specific listings gone. That screenshot evidence is the clearest proof of work published by any vendor here. What it cannot do is make removal permanent, because brokers rebuild profiles from fresh public records.
Is Optery better than DeleteMe?
Optery is cheaper to start at $39.00 against $129.00, sells month to month where DeleteMe sells no monthly plan at all, and is the only one of the two you can try for free. DeleteMe puts a named human expert on its $129.00 entry plan, where Optery only assigns an agent from $149.00 up. For one person on a budget, Optery. For a household of four, DeleteMe at $62.38 each is hard to beat.
Does Optery stop spam calls?
Indirectly and slowly, like every service in this category. Removing your phone number from people-search listings shrinks the supply of lists it appears on, so call and text volume usually falls over months rather than weeks. It does nothing about numbers already sold and already in rotation. Pair it with the free filters your carrier and your phone already provide if you want a faster result.
Does Optery work in the UK?
No. Optery's pricing page offers the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and the UK is not among them. Its roster is built around US and other English-speaking people-search sites. DeleteMe does sell a UK plan. If you are in the UK, that is the practical difference between the two, and it matters more than any price comparison.
What do Optery reviews and complaints say?
Optery holds 4.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 222 reviews, with 78 percent at five stars and 11 percent at one, and it won PCMag's Editors' Choice, whose lead analyst wrote that Optery's handling of the core data removal task outshines the rest. Positive reviews name the before-and-after screenshots. The recurring complaint is listings reappearing after removal, which is inherent to the category rather than specific to Optery.
Is there an Optery promo code?
Optery was running a SUMMER2026 code for 20 percent off when we checked on 1 September 2026. That promotion has come and gone more than once over the past month, so treat it as something to check at the checkout page rather than a price to count on. Every figure on this page is the undiscounted rate, which is the number worth budgeting against because your renewal will be at full price.
Compare the rest of the field
A review is one column of the decision. These pages cover the others: what each service costs in full, who owns it, and what the free route gets you before you pay anyone.
Optery alternative
What to switch to if Optery is not the fit, tier by tier and price by price.
Optery vs DeleteMe pricing
The only matchup where both vendors put a human on the account, priced seat by seat.
Optery vs Incogni pricing
The two cheapest automated rosters in the category, compared on what a seat really costs.
Incogni review
Incogni tested, including the month-to-month price that is double the rate every review quotes.
DeleteMe review
DeleteMe tested, including the four price tiers above the one its pricing page shows you.
DeleteMe cost and pricing
Every DeleteMe tier on both terms, with the per-person arithmetic worked out.
Is OneRep legit?
The ownership question that matters more than OneRep's price, and how Mozilla resolved it.
Best data removal services
The whole field ranked, with what each one is genuinely best at.
Data broker opt-out list
Every site to start with, and what each asks for before it will remove you.
Before you pick a tier, find out how many sites are actually publishing you.
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