Buyer’s guide · Reviewed October 2026
How to compare probate lead providers
Probate filings are free and public, so every provider starts from the same raw material. What you are paying for is everything that happens after: matching the estate to a property, keeping it fresh, removing duplicates, and telling you honestly what the record does and does not show. These twelve questions separate the providers who do that work from the ones who resell a docket export.
We sell probate data, so read this with that in mind. Our own answers are at the bottom, including the places where another provider will suit you better.
Before you start: probate or pre-probate?
Probate leads come from estates actually opened with a Register of Wills. There is a docket, a personal representative with an address of record, and a case number you can look up.
Pre-probate leads are usually built from death records or obituaries matched to property owners, before an estate is opened or where one never will be, for example because the house passed to a surviving joint owner. They can reach a household earlier, but there is no court record to verify, and the right person to contact is less certain.
Neither is better in general. Know which one you are buying, because the verification and the etiquette are different.
Twelve questions to ask any provider
- Where does each record come from, and can I check it? Ask for the estate number on every row. If you cannot look a record up at the source, you cannot tell a good list from a bad one.
- Is the estate matched to a property? A probate filing names a person, not a house. Ask how the match is made and whether you get property detail such as assessed value, year built and occupancy.
- How conservative is the matching, and do you report the match rate? Loose matching produces bigger lists and letters to strangers who share a surname with the deceased. A provider that reports its match rate and flags uncertain rows is showing you its error budget.
- How fresh is it? Ask how often the data refreshes and how long it takes a new filing to reach your file.
- What exactly is on each row? Personal representative and address of record, attorney of record, filing date, whether a will was filed, inventory status, claims. Each field is a decision you can make yourself instead of trusting a score.
- How many other buyers receive the same record? Ask whether exclusivity by area or trade is available, and what it costs.
- Is it ranked for my business, or one file for everyone? The same estate is a different prospect for an agent, an attorney, a contractor and an investor.
- Are prior deliveries and opt-outs removed? You should never pay twice for the same estate, and anyone who asked not to be contacted should stay off every future list.
- Is phone or email included, and how was it obtained? Skip-traced contact data varies widely in accuracy. Calling and texting also carry their own legal rules, which are your responsibility as the sender.
- Which counties are actually covered? Ask for recent record counts by county, not a map. Coverage claims are cheap; counts are not.
- What does it cost, and what are the terms? Monthly or per record, setup fees, contract length, cancellation.
- Can I see real records first? A sample you can verify against the Register is worth more than any sales page, including this one.
Our answers
| Question | Bluebeam Signals |
|---|---|
| Source and verification | Maryland Register of Wills filings. Estate number on every row, plus source links. |
| Property matching | Every estate tied to the property the decedent owned, with the personal representative and their address of record. Precision-first; match rate reported with every delivery. |
| Freshness | Estate data refreshed weekly. |
| Probate or pre-probate | Probate, with trust transfers offered as a separate signal. We do not sell obituary-based pre-probate lists. |
| Fields | Personal representative and address of record, attorney of record, will filed, claims, inventory status, months open, number of representatives, plus matched property detail. |
| Exclusivity | Available by county and trade. Lists built on your criteria are yours and are not sold to anyone else. |
| Ranking | Ranked separately for agents, attorneys, contractors and investors. |
| Duplicates and opt-outs | Deduplicated against everything you have received. Opt-outs suppressed permanently across every product and client. |
| Phone and email | Optional add-on, 15¢ per record with a match, from a third-party contact-data provider. Numbers marked mobile or landline and flagged against the National Do Not Call Registry and known TCPA litigators. Not offered on divorce or owner-occupied foreclosure records. Details. |
| Coverage | Every Maryland county. Montgomery and Prince George’s run as standing weekly feeds; any other county is set up on request for your territory. |
| Price and terms | $75 a month, no setup fee, month to month. Letters written and mailed for $2 a piece if you want them; phone and email append 15¢ per matched record if you want it. |
| Sample | 25 real records free for your county, with estate numbers to check against the Register. |
Who we are the wrong choice for
If you want a self-serve app with a built-in dialer, or obituary-based pre-probate records, choose a provider built for that. If you work anywhere in Maryland and want every row tied to a house, checkable against the Register of Wills and ranked for your trade, with phone numbers added when you want them, ask for 25 records.
Related
- How to find probate properties in Maryland yourself
- How Maryland probate works: a timeline
- What you actually get: fields, sample records and letters
- Data sources and limits
About the data: Bluebeam Signals compiles publicly available Maryland records and links records back to their source. It is not a consumer reporting agency, and its data may not be used for eligibility decisions covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
