Identity Guard is a 1996-vintage identity theft protection brand that has belonged to Aura since 2019, so the most-advertised "alternative" is a sibling product, and its data-broker removal covers about 20 sites under a no-guarantee clause. If you're weighing Identity Guard alternatives, this page gives you who owns it, what it costs as of September 2026, why subscribers leave, five real competitors with live prices, and a short explanation of why data-broker removal services are a different purchase.
What Identity Guard is, and who owns it
Identity Guard started in 1996 as a product of Intersections Inc. of Chantilly, Virginia. Intersections' own press boilerplate dated it to "since 1996," and the Identity Guard homepage today says "for Over 25 Years." In January 2019 a joint venture led by iSubscribed completed its acquisition of Intersections, and that July the combined company renamed itself Aura. Aura says so plainly on its own comparison page: "Aura and Identity Guard are independent brands owned by the same parent company, Aura Sub, LLC." The Identity Guard terms of use name the same entity.
That has a practical consequence. Half the "Identity Guard vs Aura" articles online are published by one or the other brand, and "switching to Aura" is moving between two products of one Boston company with one customer-service operation. It can still be the right move (the products differ), but it isn't a change of vendor.
Identity Guard pricing as of September 2026
From the plans page on September 6, 2026. Annual prices are the first-year rate, and the page also lists the renewal rate. (A non-browser fetch of the same page on the same day returned a "Save 50%" variant with the tiers renamed Basic, Standard and Ultra at $4.49, $9.99 and $14.99 a month billed annually, so expect the numbers, and the names, to move.)
| Plan | Annual (first year) | Monthly | Renews at | Family (annual) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | $7.50/mo ($90/yr) | $8.99 | $107.88/yr | $12.50/mo |
| Total | $16.67/mo ($200.04/yr) | $19.99 | $239.88/yr | $25.00/mo |
| Ultra | $25.00/mo ($300/yr) | $29.99 | $359.88/yr | $33.33/mo |
Family plans cover five adults and unlimited children. Insurance is $1 million on every tier, and the page's footnote says "white glove fraud remediation is only available to Ultra plan members." There's no free trial. The 60-day money-back guarantee applies to annual plans bought through the website or customer support. Aura's own comparison notes that three-bureau credit monitoring is only on Total and Ultra, so Value is the tier without credit monitoring.
Why people look for an Identity Guard alternative
Reviewers on Trustpilot give Identity Guard 3.1 out of 5 across roughly 4,480 reviews as of September 2026, with 55 percent five-star and 10 percent one-star. The low reviews cluster around a few themes:
- renewal prices that jumped without warning (one reviewer cites a 29 percent increase at renewal), which the table above explains: the first-year discount comes off
- cancellations that reviewers say weren't processed, followed by another year's charge
- long hold times, with 20 to 45 minute waits mentioned repeatedly
- accounts moved over to Aura without notice, in one reviewer's telling, with the family members they'd added no longer on it
A word of caution if you go to the BBB. The profile that comes up for "ID Guard" is a Clearwater, Florida company called ID Guard LLC, unrelated to Identity Guard. Identity Guard's complaints, where they exist, sit under Aura's Boston profile.
The feature gap is the other driver. Aura's own comparison page lists Identity Guard's online privacy tools as "Not included" next to its own, and Identity Guard's data-broker coverage is thin, which we'll come to.
Five Identity Guard alternatives, with September 2026 prices
All prices are from each vendor's own site on September 6, 2026. Introductory rates are marked where a vendor states one.
| Service | Individual price | What it includes | Data-broker removal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aura | $10/mo billed annually during the Labor Day sale running that day ($12 pre-sale), or $15 monthly. 14-day trial | 3-bureau credit monitoring, $1M to $5M insurance, VPN, antivirus, password manager | Automated requests to "over 425" sites, daily re-scan, assisted removals where it can't automate |
| LifeLock (Norton) | Core $124.99/yr or $12.49/mo, Advanced $199.99/yr or $19.99/mo, Total $349.99/yr or $34.99/mo. 30-day trial | Up to $1.05M to $3M reimbursement, 2- or 3-bureau monitoring, 60-day guarantee on annual | "Automatic Data Broker Removal" on all three tiers as of September 2026 (marked NEW on Core). Site count not stated |
| IDShield | $14.95/mo (1 bureau) or $19.95/mo (3 bureaus); family from $29.95 | Up to $3M protection, licensed private investigators for restoration, VPN, password tools | "PrivacyCheck" finds and helps remove info from "top data broker sites"; no count or limit published |
| Zander | Essential $6.75/mo or $75/yr; Elite $11.99/mo or $130/yr; family $12.90/mo ($145/yr) or $21.99/mo ($240/yr) | Up to $1M for stolen funds and expenses, dark web and SSN monitoring; Elite adds home-title and account monitoring, a VPN and Experian CreditLock | None listed on its plans page |
| Experian IdentityWorks | Premium $24.99/mo, Family $34.99/mo. 7-day trial | 3-bureau monitoring, up to $1M insurance, Experian CreditLock | "Monthly privacy scans & help getting personal info removed from covered people finder sites" |
A few things the table can't show. Zander is the cheapest and the plainest: no credit monitoring in the Essential tier, no software, and no broker removal, but the family plan covers two adults and up to ten children for $145 a year. LifeLock's standalone plans renew at the same price you pay in year one, according to its plans page. It's the Norton 360 with LifeLock bundles that renew higher, so check which one you're buying. IDShield's distinguishing feature is that restoration is handled by licensed investigators rather than a call centre, which matters most to someone who has already been hit. Experian's plan is the one to consider if you mainly want your credit file watched by a bureau itself, and its privacy scan is monthly rather than daily.
Is Identity Guard worth it against these? Its Value tier at $90 a year is competitive for insurance plus dark web monitoring without credit monitoring. Its Ultra tier at $300 a year is priced against Aura's Individual plan at $120 to $144 a year, from the same company, with more in it.
What Identity Guard's data-broker removal actually covers
This is the point where identity theft protection and data-broker removal get confused, so here is what the company itself publishes. The terms of use describe the service as covering "approximately 20 third party databases and/or websites," promise "reasonable efforts" to have data "removed or suppressed," and state: "We cannot and do not guarantee that the Services will be effective, that opt out requests will be honored by Data Brokers, or that all opt outs will be equivalent." Its own opt-out article describes "requesting the removal of your information from up to 20 data brokers." The plans page comparison table has no row for it at all, and Aura's comparison page lists Identity Guard's online privacy tools as "Not included."
Twenty is a small number. In our own broker catalog, the people-search and background-check sites that publish a US resident's address and relatives run into the hundreds, though a large share of them are white-label storefronts fed by a handful of real data holders, so the number that matters is how many of the holders a service reaches rather than the raw site count. Twenty doesn't reach most of them.
Identity Guard alternatives for one job: data-broker removal services
If the thing you actually want is your address and phone number off Spokeo, Whitepages, TruthFinder and their relatives, the identity theft protection suites above are the wrong shelf. A data removal service does that one job and does it across far more sites. Prices from each vendor's site, September 2026:
- Incogni: Standard $7.99/mo or $95.88/yr covering "420+ data broker sites"; Unlimited $14.99/mo or $179.88/yr adds custom removal requests and "3,000+ additional sites"
- Optery: free self-service tier; Core $39/yr for "380+ sites," Extended $149/yr for 560+, Ultimate $249/yr for 635+, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on the paid tiers
- Privacy Bee: Essentials $8/mo for 517 people-search sites and affiliates; Pro $16/mo for 1,127 brokers across eleven categories
- DeleteMe: $129 a year for one person ($10.75/mo), $229 for two, $329 for four, or $209, $349 and $499 on two-year terms; every plan includes quarterly privacy reports and custom removal requests alongside the automated ones. The prices only render once the page's scripts run, so a plain fetch of the page shows none of them
None of these monitor your credit or carry insurance, so if you want both, you buy both. What the removal services share, and the suites mostly lack, is a recheck cycle. Removed listings come back when brokers refresh their data, and a service that files once and stops is doing half the job. Our best data broker removal services comparison goes deeper, and our full removal guide covers doing it yourself for free.
One thing from our own removal work that applies to every vendor on this page: a successful takedown looks identical to a listing that was never found. When we recheck a site after an opt-out and see nothing, we can't tell from the outside whether the removal worked or the site never had the person, which is why we log what we found before we file. Ask any service you're considering whether it shows you the before as well as the after.
Common questions
Is Identity Guard the same as Aura? Same owner, Aura Sub, LLC, since 2019. Different apps, plans and feature sets.
What's the cheapest Identity Guard alternative? Zander's Essential plan at $75 a year, if you don't need credit monitoring. Among suites with three-bureau monitoring, Aura's introductory $120 to $144 a year is the lowest here.
Does Identity Guard remove you from data brokers? It makes "reasonable efforts" across about 20 sites, per its terms, with no guarantee. Dedicated services cover hundreds.
Can I cancel Identity Guard and get a refund? The 60-day guarantee applies to annual plans bought through the website or customer support. The terms say to cancel by phone (1-855-443-7748), by email to customercare@identityguard.com, or from the account dashboard, at least one day before the next billing cycle.
Do I need identity theft protection at all? A free credit freeze at all three bureaus blocks most new-account fraud on its own. Our identity theft prevention guide covers which paid features add something beyond that.
Delist My Data sits in the removal category, not the protection one: people-search and background-check sites, filed and then rechecked. We're in pre-launch with a waitlist for founding-member access.