How to judge a skip tracing service's hit rate

A hit rate is the share of your rows that came back with any phone or email. It is not the share that reaches the owner, and every service counts a hit its own way, so published rates cannot be compared. Judge a service by running the same 500 records through two of them and counting right-party contacts.

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: 2026-09-25

The short answer

A hit is not a reached owner. A hit means the row came back with some contact data. Whether that data belongs to the owner shows up only when you call or text it.
Two published rates are not two measurements of the same thing. They come from different lists, different definitions of a hit and sometimes different denominators.
Your list sets most of the number. Missing addresses, company owners, deceased owners and old records lower a hit rate at every service.
Test before you buy. Send the same random 500 rows to two services, dial both results the same way and compare the cost of each right-party contact.

Hit vs match vs right-party contact

Four of these numbers are known the moment the file comes back. The other three, the ones that say whether you reached anyone, are known only after you dial. The glossary has the one-line definitions.

Skip tracing result measures: what each counts and when you know it
Term	What it counts	Divided by	Known when
Hit	A row that came back with contact data. Each service sets the rule: any phone or email, or a phone only.	Nothing: it is a count	When the file comes back
Match	Usually the same thing as a hit, under another name. At Skipmatch, a row with at least one phone number or email.	Nothing: it is a count	When the file comes back
Hit rate (match rate)	The share of rows that came back as hits.	Rows submitted, or only the rows the service accepted	When the file comes back
Phone hit	A row that came back with at least one phone number, leaving out email-only rows.	Rows submitted	When the file comes back
Connect	A call that reaches a live person, whoever that person is.	Rows or numbers dialed	Only after you dial
Right-party contact	A call or text that reaches the owner you were looking for, not a relative, a tenant or a wrong number.	Rows dialed	Only after you dial
Accuracy	The share of returned phone numbers that belong to the owner on the row.	Numbers returned	Only after you dial every number

A worked example: one file, five numbers

Take one list of 500 rows and count its result five ways. The counts 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: one 500-row result counted five ways
Measure	Rows	Share of 500	What it is
Rows with any phone or email (hits)	350	70%	The hit rate most services would quote
Rows with at least one phone	320	64%	A phone-only hit rate
Rows with at least one mobile number	260	52%	The rows you can text
Rows where a call reached a live person	140	28%	Connects
Rows where that person was the owner	90	18%	Right-party contacts

Invented counts, for the arithmetic only. The last two rows exist only after you dial.

The same file supports a headline of 70%, a phone-only figure of 64% and a right-party rate of 18%. None of them is wrong; they answer different questions. Only the last one says how many owners you can talk to, and it is the one no service can print in a result file. Note too that the 140 connects include relatives, tenants and people who took over an old number: a connect is not a contact with the owner.

Why published hit rates differ

A rate on a pricing page was measured on someone's list, under someone's definition, at some point in time. Four things change it before the data source even comes into it.

1. Input quality

A row with the owner's name and a complete mailing address describes one person. A row with a company name, a vacant lot's road name or a missing ZIP describes no one in particular. Clean lists produce higher rates at every service, so a rate measured on a clean test file says little about a raw county export.

2. List age

Owners sell, move and die; phone numbers are dropped and given to new people. A list pulled last week and a list pulled two years ago are different lists, even with the same parcels on them.

3. How a hit is counted

Some services count a row with only an email as a hit; others count only rows with a phone. Some divide by every row you sent, others by the rows left after they set aside duplicates or rows they could not read. Each choice moves the rate without changing a single phone number in the file.

4. The billing unit

When a service bills per hit or per match, its definition of a hit also decides what you pay, so read it before you multiply. When it bills per row, the hit rate decides what each useful row costs. Either way, the fair unit to compare is the cost of one right-party contact: total paid, divided by owners reached. The glossary sets out per row, per match, per hit and credits.

What Skipmatch counts as a match

A match is a row that comes back with at least one phone number or email. A row with only an email still counts. A row with no phone and no email is a miss. That is the whole rule: the file does not grade how good a match is.

You can check the count yourself. The result file keeps every column you uploaded and adds, on the same row, up to 10 phone numbers with each one's line type, up to 3 emails and a HitFlag column that reads HIT or MISS. After delivery, the order page shows Records, Matched, Match rate and Phone numbers for that list. Exact duplicate rows are removed before the list runs, so Records and Match rate count the rows left after that, and duplicates do not appear in the result file. The sample file shows the exact layout before you sign up.

Double Check: name matches and owners at the address

Double Check, powered by SkipSmart Technology, is on for every list order. After the name-and-address search, eligible misses are searched by address alone. These results may belong to whoever owns or lives there, rather than the named person. It is not offered on single searches or free starter orders.

The last result column, Match type, reads Name match, Owner at address, or is blank for a miss. Both match types count toward the total hit rate; the order page shows the split so you can judge name-match quality separately. A row is billed at most once at its normal price, with no extra charge for the second check. Neither label guarantees a right-party contact.

We publish no rate, and no benchmark of our own

Skipmatch publishes no match rate, no average across customers and no head-to-head test against another service, so nothing on this page can tell you that Skipmatch finds more owners than anyone else. The only match rate we show is your own, for your own list, after it runs. To compare us with another service, run the test below.

A fair test: the same 500 records, two services

Pick the rows at random. Take 500 rows from your own list, in the county you market to, spread across the whole list rather than the first rows of a sorted file. Leave out owners you have already reached.
Send the identical file to both. Same rows, same columns, same week. Remove exact duplicate rows yourself first, so both services divide by the same count, and do not clean it for one service and not the other.
Count hits yourself. Open both exports and count the rows with a phone or email, and the rows with a mobile number, under one definition.
Dial both results the same way. Same caller or texting tool, same number of attempts per row, same week. Count connects and right-party contacts.
Check the export. One row per row you sent, your own columns kept, every number labelled with its line type, and a file your dialer or CRM loads without rework.
Divide the cost. What each test cost, divided by its right-party contacts, is the number to compare.

Before you dial, scrubbing numbers against the do-not-call registries and following the calling and texting rules is your responsibility. This is not legal advice; our permissible-use terms set out how results may be used.

Scorecard for testing two skip tracing services on the same records
Record	How to count it	Why it matters
Rows submitted	The same file, byte for byte, to each service, with exact duplicate rows removed first	Every other number is divided by it, so it has to be identical
Rows with any phone or email	Count the rows yourself from the export, not from the service's summary	Puts both services on one definition of a hit
Rows with a mobile number	Count rows with at least one number typed mobile	These are the rows you can text
Connects	Dial the same rows the same way at both, in the same week	Shows whether the numbers are live
Right-party contacts	Rows where the person confirmed they own the property	The only count that measures what you are paying for
Total paid	What each service charged for the test file, and on what unit	Divide it by right-party contacts to get the cost of reaching one owner
Export	One row per row you sent, your columns kept, every number labelled with its line type	A file you cannot load into your dialer or CRM cancels out a good result

At Skipmatch, a 500-record test is priced at $0.03 per matched record, at most $15.00 for the file, and the total is shown before you pay. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches. The cost calculator prices any row count.

Fixable causes of a low hit rate

Before you blame the service, check the list. Each of these lowers the rate at every service, and each has a fix you can make before the next run. The skip trace CSV checker reads your header row and flags a missing name or address block before you upload.

Fixable causes of a low skip tracing hit rate
Cause	How to spot it	Fix	Read more
Property address only	Absentee and rental rows come back with the tenant, or with nothing	Add the owner's mailing address from the county record as its own block	Mailing vs property address
Incomplete address	Rows missing a city, state or ZIP, or a ZIP that lost its leading zero in a spreadsheet	Fill in or delete the row; keep ZIP codes as text	CSV format
Company or trust as owner	Owner names ending in LLC, Inc, Trust or Holdings	Put the manager or member named in the state filing on the row instead	LLC-owned property
Owner has died	"Estate of" names, or an owner whose tax bill still goes to the property years later	Trace the heir or the executor, with that person's address	Probate lists
Land with no street address	A road name, a lot number or a 0 in place of a house number	Lead with the owner's mailing address; the parcel address carries little	Vacant land owners
Old list	The list was pulled long ago and some parcels have since sold	Re-pull owner names and mailing addresses from the county before you trace	Find an owner's phone number

Questions

What is a good hit rate for skip tracing?

There is no fair number to aim at. A hit rate is set as much by your list, how complete and how recent it is, as by the service, and each service counts a hit its own way. A good hit rate is a higher count of right-party contacts than the other service got on the same records. Skipmatch publishes no hit rate.

What is the difference between hit rate and accuracy?

Hit rate is the share of rows that came back with some contact data. Accuracy is whether that data belongs to the owner. A row can be a hit and still carry only wrong numbers. The file shows hits; only calling or texting the numbers shows accuracy, which is why right-party contacts are the count to compare.

What is the most accurate skip tracing service?

We will not name one, ourselves included. Accuracy depends on the list, the county and how old the records are, and no published comparison was run on your list. A ranking without that test is a guess. Run the same records through two services, dial both results the same way and count right-party contacts.

Why is my skip tracing hit rate low?

Usually the input. The common causes are a property address where the owner does not live, a missing city, state or ZIP, a company or trust as the owner, an owner who has died, land with no street address, and a list pulled so long ago that parcels have sold. Each has a fix before you run the list again.

How do I test a skip tracing company before buying?

Take a random sample of about 500 rows from your own list, in the county you market to, and send the same file to two services. Count the rows with a phone or email yourself, dial both results the same way in the same week, and compare right-party contacts and what each test cost.

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