The best property data tool for solo investors with a limited budget

A list of 250 property owners with phone numbers and emails costs $99 a month on DealMachine Basic, the lowest bill of the three tools whether you pay monthly or annually. That is why we crown DealMachine for a solo investor on a limited budget. The plan price already covers the contact details, and a list that size spends a small part of the data credits the plan renews each month.

PropertyRadar Solo, the second-lowest bill, suits an investor who works one county or a handful of neighborhoods and wants the list to keep itself current. PropStream Essentials suits one who also needs comparable sales, or comps, to price a deal and expects to trace many more than 250 owners a month, because its Connect add-on makes skip tracing a flat monthly cost.

What a solo investor on a small budget should weigh

DealMachine Basic and PropertyRadar Solo include owner phone numbers and emails in the plan price, up to a monthly allowance. PropStream's entry plan bills them separately as skip tracing, the lookup that finds an owner's contact details; its plan price is the first line of the bill.

PropertyRadar Solo's contact allowance is the same size as the example list, so one more owner is the first billed on top. DealMachine Basic's allowance covers many lists that size, and PropStream bills by the trace unless you add Connect. None of the three carries unused allowance into the next month, so a month with no list pulled costs the full plan price.

Investors answering a BiggerPockets thread on how long a first wholesale deal takes put theirs at two to three months of outreach, so a beginner pays the bill two or three times before the tool earns anything. Annual billing lowers each monthly figure and moves the whole year's charge, $972 to $1,188 on these plans, to the day you sign up. PropertyRadar's pricing FAQ says you can start monthly and switch to annual at any time.

None of the three trials covers a 250-owner list: the most any of them includes is the 50 leads in PropStream's 7-day trial. All three also publish a no-refund term. DealMachine's terms of service and PropertyRadar's pricing FAQ call paid fees non-refundable, and PropStream's terms of use say the same of its monthly fee, so you pay for the first month before you have seen a full list's phone numbers.

Maricopa County's assessor posts its parcel data as free downloads, with owner names, property addresses, valuations and sale prices in the files. The file descriptions list no phone number or email field, and that contact layer is what a paid tool adds. A new wholesaler on r/WholesaleRealestate who traced county records on a free people-search site wrote that 60% of the numbers did not work.

The three entry plans side by side

What 250 owners with phone numbers and emails cost each month

DealMachine's export rules charge one credit per contact when the rows carry the property address alone and one more per property when they add details such as value or equity, which is how the same 250 owners come to 500 credits. A property-list export carries up to five contacts per property, each one a credit, so the audience you choose (owners alone, or owners and family) sets the count.

Past the allowance, PropertyRadar's pricing page sets a rate of 8 cents for each phone lookup and 8 cents for each email lookup. A hundred more owners with both adds $16.

On PropStream, multiply the traces that return information by 12 cents, or add Connect at $30 a month, which includes as many traces as the plan has saves: 25,000. The two cost the same at 250 traces. At 500, paying per trace adds $60 to the plan price and Connect still adds its flat fee.

DealMachine Basic: phones and emails for one owner cost one credit

One DealMachine data credit returns every matched phone number and email for one person, and Basic includes 10,000 credits a month. The help center says browsing properties and owner names uses no credits, so a credit is spent only when you reveal a contact or export a record. The skip tracing article adds that you never pay twice for the same contact in a billing cycle and that the app shows the billable count before you confirm an export.

A Trustpilot reviewer who was new to real estate investing wrote in February 2025 that "this tool has helped us tremendously." DealMachine moved to credit-based plans in July 2026, and two Trustpilot reviews from that month, one by a four-year customer, criticize the change on the ground that actions the earlier subscription included cost credits under the new plans.

DealMachine has no time-limited trial. Its help center describes a free account that needs no credit card and does not expire, and that keeps owner names and contact details locked until you pick a plan, so the phone numbers stay hidden until the first paid month.

Every plan includes Driving for Dollars, the phone app's route tracking and tap-to-tag for properties that look vacant or overgrown. DealMachine's summary of what changed from its older product lists comps with match scores and two deal calculators on the property page. The new DealMachine has no dialer, as its field guide for customers of the older product states, so an investor who plans to call owners needs a separate calling tool. For a beginner, the company runs free live Office Hours four days a week with no registration.

PropertyRadar Solo: a monitored list for one county, with contacts in the price

A monitored list on PropertyRadar Solo "Automatically updates lists by adding and removing properties that match your criteria," in the words of the company's help center article on monitored lists. Alerts trigger on new matches and on status changes and arrive by mobile push notification or by email. Solo monitors up to 10,000 properties, so a new foreclosure or probate filing that fits your criteria joins the list without a new search.

PropertyRadar's Texas coverage table lists what it holds county by county, with columns for probate, divorce, eviction and foreclosure filings beside assessor and recorder data and start dates by county. Anderson County's recorder data starts in January 1991 and its probate filings in October 2013. An investor working one county can read that row before paying, then search the county on more than 300 criteria.

The help center gives Solo phone numbers for 250 contacts and emails for 250 contacts a month, counted as separate lookups: one returns every phone number on file for a contact and a second returns the emails. The purchase window lets you buy for the primary contact alone or for every contact on a property, so you set the count before you pay. PropertyRadar's data page advises filtering for owners who have a mobile number and are not on the do-not-call list before you save the list, which keeps the lookups for owners you can reach. Every lookup beyond the allowance is billed, so Solo's pricing suits a list that stays small and tightly filtered better than a month of broad pulls across several markets.

PropertyRadar's support page lists on-demand training called the Getting Started Series, plus live chat and phone support during support hours. An App Store reviewer wrote in December 2025, "I find it easy to use and thorough plus help team/ support is awesome." Another gave up on the free trial in April 2026 over how much information the sign-up asked for.

PropStream Essentials: comps from MLS data and flat-rate skip tracing

Every PropStream plan includes MLS records and listings, and its pricing page describes a Run Comps tool that builds a PDF report from "public records & MLS data." The entry plan also includes a Fix & Flip Analyzer and a Rehab Calculator for working out an offer.

Each trace returns up to four phone numbers and four emails, according to PropStream's skip tracing page. Connect adds click-to-dial and dialer campaigns, with up to 150 call attempts a day. Monthly subscribers get a 14-day trial of Connect; annual subscribers get its first two months free and a one-time $100 marketing credit, enough for 833 traces at the per-trace rate. At 250 owners, either way of paying leaves PropStream with the highest bill of the three.

PropStream's trial comes with a live onboarding session, and the company runs live webinars daily. A new user wrote on Trustpilot in September 2026, "it's my first time using this website this week he broke it down for me." PropStream Academy adds free courses, one of them a "Getting Started As An Investor" pack, and the pricing page lists phone support from 6 AM to 6 PM Pacific on weekdays.

PropStream's phone app has a Drive Mode for saving properties from the road, and its store ratings are the lowest of the three. App Store reviews describe crashes, so the plan is a weaker fit for an investor who expects to work mostly from a phone.

Which property data tool is best for a solo investor on a limited budget?

We crown DealMachine Basic because it is the lowest bill for the 250-owner list on both billing options, and its monthly credits leave room for more lists that size at no added cost. PropStream's entry plan has the lower price on annual billing, $81 a month against $83, and matches Basic's on monthly billing, but it bills contact details on top, which reverses the order once a list is pulled. A beginner also gets to try DealMachine's search on the free account before paying anything.

PropertyRadar is the better buy when you return to the same county or the same few neighborhoods every month and want the list updated for you. Its monitored lists add and remove properties as they match your criteria, and its county tables show which court filings it holds where you work. The plan price already includes the contact details for a list this size, at the second-lowest bill of the three.

PropStream is the better buy when pricing the deal is part of the job and the list is set to grow well past the example. Its comps draw on MLS data as well as public records, and Connect holds the bill flat as the traces grow. The live onboarding session and free courses also suit a beginner who wants to be taught the tool.

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