1. Five ways a trace is priced
Every figure below is attached to a different event. Two vendors can print the same number and bill you very differently for the same file.
| Model | What the charge is attached to | Vendors whose own pages use it |
|---|---|---|
| Per record | Every row you submit, whether or not anything comes back | Common in third-party cost guides rather than on the vendor pages read here |
| Per match | Only the rows the vendor counts as a match | Skipmatch, REISkip |
| Per qualifying search | Only searches that meet a rule published on the pricing page | Locate Next |
| Credits | An allowance drawn down as contacts are revealed | SkipGenie, DealMachine |
| Plan quota | A monthly fee that covers a stated number of traces or leads | BatchData, BatchLeads; PropStream Pro and Elite fold tracing into the plan |
Per record is the easiest to forecast and the worst value on a thin file, because an empty row costs what a full one does.
Per match moves that risk to the vendor, so the definition of a match is the whole deal. Ask whether the match has to be the owner named on your file or can be any person at the address, and whether a match needs a phone or an email at all.
Per qualifying search is the Locate Next model. One search is billable at $0.17 per qualifying search when a single returned person carries an owner name from your file along with a well formed phone or email; where your file names no person as owner, a person found at the address can qualify instead, labelled as an address contact. A search settles at $0 when nothing comes back, when it fails, when a result from the last 30 days is reused, when two returned people share the owner name, and when no phone or email is usable. Rows that sit behind one search are billed once between them. Well formed is not the same as reachable, and a name agreeing is a suggestion rather than proof of ownership. The full rule and examples are on the pricing page.
Credits behave like a prepaid allowance. A membership allowance that resets each month means a quiet month still carries its fee.
Plan quotas reward steady throughput. The effective rate per trace falls as the quota fills and climbs steeply when it does not.
2. What each vendor publishes
Each cell below came off the vendor’s own page on October 24, 2026, and the sources are listed at the end. Rates move, so open the page again before you buy.
| Tool | Model | What its page publishes | Minimum or fee | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skipmatch | Per match | 3 cents per matched record for 50 to 100,000 records, unmatched records free; a single search is 10 cents, charged only on a match | 50-record minimum order and a 50 cents minimum charge | [1] |
| REISkip | Per match | 15 cents per match, marked introductory pricing | Minimum 50 matches on Bulk, 1,001 on Volume | [2] |
| Locate Next | Per qualifying search | $0.17 per qualifying search, with $0 for the cases listed in the rule | Prepaid balance; top-ups start at $10 when access opens, and there is no monthly plan | [3] |
| SkipGenie | Membership with credits | $58 a month including 100 search credits; 17 cents per extra credit, and bulk search at 17 cents a record | No long-term contract stated | [4] |
| PropStream | Plan plus per contact | Essentials $99 a month with tracing at 12 cents per contact; Pro $199 and Elite $699 fold tracing into PropStream Connect, described as a $6,000 or $12,000 value with no contact count printed, then 10 cents per extra contact | Monthly plan, lower billed annually | [5] |
| BatchLeads | Lead quota | Growth $119 a month for 10,000 leads, Professional $349 for 35,000, Scale $749 for 75,000; phones and emails are included and extra leads are 4 cents | Saved leads are traced automatically and count against the quota | [6] |
| DealMachine | Credits | Its pages print both $99 a month and $119 a month as the starting price; the pricing page prints Scale at $599 per package a month, and its own pricing explainer prints Basic $99 per user with 10,000 data credits and Pro $149 per user with 20,000; one credit per contact revealed and one per exported record | Monthly plan | [7], [8] |
| BatchData | Plan quota | Growth $2,000 a month up to 100,000 traces, Professional $5,000 up to 300,000, Scale $10,000 up to 750,000, Enterprise $20,000 up to 3,000,000 | No per-record rate appears on the page | [9] |
| REsimpli | CRM plan with tracing | Solo at $249 a month billed annually; no per-record tracing rate is printed | Annual billing on the printed figure | [10] |
| TLOxp, IDI | Credentialed | No current public rate was found on October 24, 2026 | Credentialing and a permissible purpose | None found |
For a wider estimate, Deal Run’s skip tracing cost guide, dated March 19, 2026 and read October 24, 2026, puts bulk tracing at 2 to 15 cents per record and most real estate services at 5 to 10 cents. That is one vendor’s estimate across the market, not a measured figure, and manual or investigator work sits far above it.
3. The lowest published rate, and paying per result
Of the pages read for this note, Skipmatch prints the lowest flat rate at 3 cents per matched record. If the requirement is to pay per result with no membership attached, the candidates here are Skipmatch, REISkip and Locate Next.
Locate Next is the dearest of those three per result. What the figure buys is a rule you can apply to your own file before you upload it, company review in state business records through LLC owner lookup, and an export that returns your own columns. Do Not Call checks run in Export against the DNC dataset currently active on this site. The check compares phone numbers with the dataset currently active on this site. It does not promise a live connection to government records, identify the owner of a number, or establish consent to contact someone. DNC checks are included at no extra charge. Whether that is worth the gap depends on how many company owners and duplicates your file carries. A lower rate per record is not the same as a lower rate per contact you can act on, which is the next section.
4. Cost per usable contact
A usable contact is a phone or an email for the person you meant: the owner on your file, not a relative, a tenant or a namesake. Two files billed at the same rate per record can land a long way apart per usable contact, because:
- Some models bill for misses and some do not.
- A match can be the wrong person at the right house.
- Duplicates you failed to merge get billed twice wherever the vendor does not merge them.
- A monthly fee divides across however many contacts you actually used that month.
Cost per usable contact = everything charged in the period ÷ contacts you confirmed. Include the plan fee in the numerator. Confirmed is the hard part, which is why a trial run against owners you had already verified yourself is the only honest input; the test method is in how to choose a skip tracing service. None of the vendors above publishes a match rate that an outsider could repeat, and Locate Next publishes no match rate at all.
5. One file, six bills
The rates here are the published ones from the table above. Everything else is an assumption invented for the arithmetic, not a measured rate for any tool. Swap in your own test results before you decide anything.
Assumptions, illustration only
- The file holds 1,000 rows, 50 of them the same property twice. You merge those first, so every vendor receives 950 rows.
- 570 of the 950, or 60 percent, come back as a match. The arithmetic treats the same 570 as a match at Skipmatch and REISkip and as a qualifying search at Locate Next, although each definition differs.
- 400 of those 570 turn out to be usable contacts for the right person.
- SkipGenie draws one credit per record submitted, so 950 credits inside one month.
- PropStream Essentials bills its 12 cents on each of the 950 records sent to tracing.
- BatchData’s smallest plan, Growth, is bought for this file alone that month.
| Tool | Arithmetic | Total | Per usable contact, divided by 400 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skipmatch | 570 matches at 3 cents | $17.10 | 4.3 cents |
| REISkip | 570 matches at 15 cents | $85.50 | 21.4 cents |
| Locate Next | 570 qualifying searches at $0.17 per qualifying search | $96.90 | 24.2 cents |
| SkipGenie | $58 plus 850 extra credits at 17 cents, which is $144.50 | $202.50 | 50.6 cents |
| PropStream Essentials | $99 plus 950 contacts at 12 cents, which is $114.00 | $213.00 | 53.3 cents |
| BatchData Growth | The plan fee alone | $2,000.00 | $5.00 |
What the arithmetic shows
- Under these assumptions the per-match tools come out cheapest, and Skipmatch cheapest of all.
- Plan fees dominate a small file. BatchData’s Growth plan reaches 2 cents a trace only when all 100,000 traces are used; against 950 rows it is the most expensive line here.
- If assumption 5 is wrong and PropStream bills only the 570 contacts found, its total is $99 plus $68.40, or $167.40, which is 41.9 cents per usable contact.
- A plan fee also buys everything else in the platform, so this table compares tracing alone. On PropStream Pro or Elite, where tracing sits inside the plan, an extra file like this one may add nothing.
- Change assumption 3 and every figure in the last column moves. At 200 usable contacts instead of 400 each one doubles. That is why your own test outranks any published rate.
To run this on your own volumes, the skip tracing cost calculator takes out duplicates, rows with no eligible search address and recent searches, prices only the searches you count as qualifying, and lets you change the rate to model any service that bills per result.
6. Where Locate Next fits
It fits a team that already holds an owner file and wants to pay from a prepaid balance with no membership; a file carrying duplicates and company owners, since duplicate properties are merged, rows behind one search are billed once and no person is searched until you confirm the company; and anyone who wants the maximum cost on screen before a search starts, with spending caps to hold it.
It does not fit a buyer for whom the lowest published rate per match decides it, because Skipmatch and REISkip print lower rates; very high steady volume through an API, which is what BatchData’s tiers are built for; or anyone who wants a published match rate, because Locate Next prints none. Access opens in stages.
Common questions
How much does skip tracing cost per record?
On the vendor pages read October 24, 2026, pay-per-result rates ran from 3 cents per matched record at Skipmatch to 15 cents per match at REISkip and $0.17 per qualifying search at Locate Next. Plan-based tools print a monthly fee instead, from $58 to $2,000, so their rate per record depends on how much of the quota you use.
What is the cheapest skip tracing per record?
Skipmatch printed the lowest flat rate of the pages read: 3 cents per matched record, with unmatched records free and a 50-record minimum order. Cheapest per record is not the same as cheapest per contact you can act on, which depends on how many of the matches are the right person.
Is a per-match price always better than a per-record price?
Per match shifts the cost of empty rows to the vendor, which usually helps. It only helps as much as its definition allows, so ask whether a match has to be the owner you named and whether it must carry a phone or an email.
Do monthly plans work out cheaper?
Only at volume. A plan fee divides across the traces you actually run, so a $2,000 plan against 950 rows is the dearest option in the worked example above and the cheapest if the full 100,000-trace quota is used.
What does Locate Next charge for, exactly?
$0.17 per qualifying search, from a prepaid balance. Nothing is charged when a search returns nothing, fails, reuses a result from the last 30 days, returns two people sharing the owner name, or returns no usable phone or email. The full rule sits on the pricing page.
Sources
- Skipmatch, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- REISkip, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- Locate Next, pricing and the qualifying-search rule. Read October 24, 2026.
- SkipGenie, home page. Read October 24, 2026; its pricing path returned a not-found page.
- PropStream, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- BatchLeads, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- DealMachine, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- DealMachine, how DealMachine pricing works, dated July 30, 2026. Read October 24, 2026.
- BatchData, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- REsimpli, pricing. Read October 24, 2026.
- Deal Run, skip tracing cost guide, dated March 19, 2026. Read October 24, 2026. A vendor blog, cited for its market estimate only.
Competitor figures are quoted from each company’s own pages on the date given and are not endorsements. No independent test of any vendor’s match rate is cited here, because none was found. The worked example’s match and usable-contact rates are invented for the arithmetic.