CleanMyMac is the best-known Mac cleaner, and plenty of people want something lighter, cheaper or more transparent. The right alternative depends on what you actually want it to do. Here are six options, and who each suits. Features and pricing change, so check each product’s own site before you buy.

1. Your Mac itself

Best for: people who only need a few gigabytes back.

System Settings → General → Storage shows what’s using space and offers recommendations such as emptying the Trash automatically. It’s free and can’t break anything. It doesn’t explain individual items or find leftovers.

2. DaisyDisk

Best for: seeing exactly where the space went.

A paid disk visualiser that draws your drive as a sunburst chart so you can spot huge folders at a glance. It shows; you decide. It doesn’t tell you what a folder is for.

3. AppCleaner

Best for: removing apps along with their leftovers, for free.

A small free utility: drag an app onto it and it lists the related files it finds. It does one job and does it well.

4. OnyX

Best for: power users who want maintenance tasks and system tweaks.

A free utility that runs maintenance routines and exposes hidden settings. It’s powerful and assumes you understand what each option does.

5. Mole

Best for: people comfortable in the terminal.

An open-source command-line cleaner (GPL-licensed) that scans for caches, installers and build artifacts. It’s free and scriptable, with no graphical interface.

6. Gardner

Best for: a menu-bar app that explains what it finds, with no subscription.

Gardner uses the Apple Intelligence model already on your Mac to judge Downloads, unused apps and clutter, and explains each item in a line. It also gives each app its own volume and tells you when a restart is worth it. Nothing is ticked that you’d regret: apps are never preselected, files go to the Trash first and Restore puts them back. It’s a one-time purchase with a one-day free trial, and it needs a Mac with Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 or later (a basic rules-only mode works without it).

How to choose

If you want…	Pick
A few GB back, no installs	Built-in Storage panel
To see what’s huge	DaisyDisk
Clean app removal, free	AppCleaner
Maintenance and tweaks	OnyX
A terminal tool	Mole
Explained cleanup plus sound and restart help	Gardner

If you want a longer look at what “no subscription” means, read Mac cleaners without a subscription.

CleanMyMac alternatives: 6 ways to clean a Mac, free and paid