Cheap skip tracing: what you actually pay per hit

Cheap skip tracing is about what each owner you reach costs, not the price on a pricing page. A price per row is paid whether or not anything comes back, so a low hit rate raises what each owner costs. This guide sets out per-record and per-hit pricing, then the ways a low price turns into a higher bill.

Price your list See a sample result

Key facts

Price: a flat $0.03 a record at any list size from 50 to 100,000 records.
Unit: Priced per matched record.
Minimum order: 50 records
Minimum charge: Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches.
Single search: Single search: $0.10, charged only on a match, paid from prepaid credit ($10 minimum top-up).
Prepaid credit: Prepaid credit expires 12 months after your last credit purchase, single search or credit-paid list, and unused credit is refundable on request within 90 days of purchase.
Free tool: Check your list free at /tools/skip-trace-csv-checker. Check columns, split addresses and download a fixed CSV in your browser before tracing at $0.03 a record. No account needed.
Subscription: None. A list order is paid for on its own by card or prepaid credit.
Max per order: 100,000 rows or 50 MB per file
Output: Up to 10 phones per owner, each with its line type (mobile, landline or VoIP), plus emails where found
Sources: 3 core providers: idiCORE, Enformion and Delvepoint
Not for: FCRA uses: credit, insurance, employment or tenant screening
Prices last changed: 2026-10-02
Last updated: 2026-10-07

The short answer

Ask what the price is per. Per row, per hit and per credit are different units, and the same headline number means different things on each.
Divide by what came back. Total paid, divided by the rows with a phone or email, is the cost per hit. Divided by the owners you reached, it is the cost per contact.
A cheap result you cannot use is not cheap. Missing owner names, phones with no line type and an address that is not split into street, city, state and ZIP all cost you time after the file is delivered.
Test with your own rows. No published rate is a fair guide to your list.

Per record vs per hit

A skip tracing service bills in one of three units. Which one it uses decides who carries the risk of rows that come back empty.

Skip tracing billing units and what each does to your cost
Unit	What you are charged for	What a low hit rate does
Per record (per row)	Every row you upload, whether or not anything comes back	Your cost per owner found rises as the hit rate falls, and the quoted price never shows it
Per hit (per match)	Only rows that come back with data, under the service's own definition of a hit	You are protected from empty rows, but the definition of a hit sets the bill
Credits or a plan	A bundle you buy first, spent as rows run, sometimes expiring	Unspent credits are money paid for nothing, and the price per credit says little about the price per owner

Skipmatch bills per matched record. The quote shows the per-record price and the total before you pay, and your card is held for that amount until the file is delivered. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches. The pricing page has the full terms, including which records are billed.

A worked example: the same price, three hit rates

Take a list of 1,000 rows and a price of $0.03 a row. If that is charged on every row, what each hit costs depends only on how many rows hit. The hit shares below are invented to show the arithmetic. They are not a Skipmatch result, not any other service's result and not a benchmark.

Invented example: cost per hit when $0.03 is charged on all 1,000 rows
Invented hit share	Rows that hit	Paid on every row	Cost per hit
30%	300	$30.00	$0.10
50%	500	$30.00	$0.06
70%	700	$30.00	$0.043

Invented hit shares, for the arithmetic only. Billed per matched record, the same rows cost $0.03 for each row that matches, whatever the share. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches.

The lower the hit share, the further the cost per hit climbs above the headline price. That is why a low per-row price is not enough to call a service cheap, and why the hit rate guide tells you to count hits on your own rows. Skipmatch publishes no match rate of its own, so nothing here says what share of your list will match.

What makes cheap skip tracing a false economy

None of these is a claim about a particular service. Each is something to check on a test file before you commit a whole list to a low price.

Ways a low skip tracing price raises the real cost
Check	Why it costs you	How to test it	Read more
A low hit rate	On a per-row price, every empty row is paid for. Cost per owner found is the price divided by the hit share.	Send the same sample of your own rows to each service and count the rows that come back with a phone or email.	Judging a hit rate
No owner name on the result	A phone number with no name beside it cannot be tied to a parcel without rework, or checked against the person you meant to reach.	Open the export and confirm each phone sits on the row of the owner you uploaded, with your own columns kept.	Sample result file
Address not split into street, city, state and ZIP	An address in one cell often has to be split by hand before the file loads into a dialer, a mail merge or a CRM, and a service that cannot read it may return nothing for the row.	Check whether the service wants separate street, city, state and ZIP columns, and whether the result keeps them that way.	CSV format
Phones with no line type	You cannot tell a mobile you can text from a landline or a VoIP number, so you dial and text blind and waste attempts.	Confirm each number is labelled mobile, landline or VoIP in the file you download.	Phone line types
Subscriptions and credits that expire	A low unit price is paid up front, whether or not you run the list. Unused credits are part of the real cost.	Ask what happens to the balance in a month you run nothing.	Skip tracing with no subscription
Bad input going in	A cheap trace on a list with company owners, missing ZIPs or only a property address wastes the low price at any service.	Fix the list before you pay to run it.	Mailing vs property address

How to compare prices fairly

Write down the unit. Per row, per hit or per credit, and any minimum, plan or expiry.
Run the same sample. Send the same 500 of your own rows, picked at random, to each service you are weighing.
Count the rows with a phone or email in each export yourself, under one definition.
Check the file loads. Owner names, your own columns and the street, city, state and ZIP fields should come back in a layout your dialer or CRM takes without rework.
Divide. What each test cost, divided by the rows that hit and then by the owners you reached, is the number to compare.

For other services' own published prices, side by side and dated, see cheapest bulk skip tracing. We sell a competing service, so read it as a competitor's comparison.

Skipmatch also runs skipcheap.com, which redirects to this site. If that is how you got here, the pricing page has the current price and the cost calculator prices any row count before you pay.

Questions

How do I keep the cost of skip tracing a list of property owners down?

Judge the cost per owner reached, not the unit price. Compare what each service charges per row or per hit, then divide the total by the rows that came back with a phone or email, and by the owners you actually reached. A price per row can look lower and still cost more per owner than a price per hit.

Is per-hit skip tracing cheaper than per-record?

Not always. Per-hit billing protects you from paying for empty rows, but each service decides what counts as a hit, so the definition sets the bill. Per-record billing costs the same whatever comes back. The Skipmatch pricing page sets out exactly which records are billed.

Is skip tracing worth paying for if free options exist?

It depends on how many owners you need to reach. Free lookups work one owner at a time and cost your time; a bulk service appends phones and emails to a whole file. The free-versus-paid guide sets out the trade-off.

Is skipcheap.com the same as Skipmatch?

Skipmatch also runs skipcheap.com, and it points here: every address on skipcheap.com redirects to the same page on skipmatch.com. This guide is for people who arrived by searching for cheap skip tracing.

Price your list before you pay for it.

Create an account, upload the file, and see your total before you pay. Records with no phone and no email are never charged.

Price your list