
There are only a couple of pieces of software that I think are so important I’ve decided to pay for a license. On my computer, I have password management software, and a Mac cleaner.
Good Mac cleaning software is about isn’t exciting yet it’s essential. A Mac clearner will free up your hard drive, removing months of electronic clutter that needs to be incinerated. Deleting all of that data not only frees up space on your harddrive, but it also speed up the performance of your Mac.
To avoid sending your Mac into an early grave, we shortlisted the best mac cleaning software available. Before we get into the actual reviews, I’ll quickly answer the obvious question, “why do I need Mac cleaning software?”
What Does Mac Cleaning Software Do?
If you don’t use mac cleaning tools already you might think your computer is working efficiently. You put useless files in the trash and uninstall the apps that you don’t need. I used to think the same thing.
The problem with a Mac is there are a lot of files that get saved in places you never expect. This creates a lot of clutter.
Most Mac users have over 62 GB of junk on their computer. You might not care that much if you’ve got a new computer with a 512 GB hard drive, but I can tell you from experience that every GB and bit of energy counts on an old laptop with a 128 GB hard drive.
You can solve this problem manually, but this takes time. The best Mac cleaner solves this problem by automating the process and deleting the folders that you’re likely to forget about. The result is a hard drive with more free space.
So now you know why you need Mac cleaning software, here is a summary of what’s available.
Software | Starting From | Best Thing About It | Biggest Problem |
---|---|---|---|
CleanMyMac3 | $39.95 | Best Mac cleaning software. | None. |
MacClean | $29.99 | Cheap with great functionality | None. |
MacBooster | $39.95 | Good all round tool. | Tiered pricing. |
MacFly Pro | $13.95 a month | Lots of features. | Recurring fees. |
CC Cleaner Pro | $24.95 | Good all round tool. | Recent malware issues. |
DaisyDisk | $9.99 | Cheapest platform. | Not as much functionality. |
MacKeeper | $16.95 per month | All-in-one app 24/7 support with real agents. Supports multiple languages. Constant improvements and bug fixes. | No mobile app You might not need all feature at once. |
You can see there’s a big variance in the price of the different options. I’ll start this review of the best Mac cleaning software available with the platform I’m actually using. It also happens to be one of the most popular cleaning solutions for Mac.

CleanMyMac 3
CleanMyMac 3 is developed by a company called MacPaw. They launched the company way back in 2007 and CleanMyMac was their first product. You can say it’s been a big success. One in five macs on the market run a product designed, developed and owned by MacPaw.
So with all that said, let’s focus for a minute on the Mac cleaner.
CleanMyMac are currently on the third incarnation of the software platform (the rather intuitively named CleanMyMac 3). The platform has a clean user interface and it’s simple to use. The app does three core things.
- It cleans your Mac hard drive removing junk from the system.
- Has a set of additional utilities (things like a software uninstaller).
- Provides you with alerts and notifications about how your computer is doing.
You can purchase an additional tool called Gemini that deletes duplicate files on your computer.
CleanMyMac is a Swiss Army Knife for the health of your computer. I first installed it when I had ‘no space’ left on my hard drive, despite the fact that I had uninstalled everything… After the first clean up two-thirds of my hard drive went from red to green.
There’s a free and a premium version of CleanMyMac 3. I use the premium version, which costs $40 for a single license. Well worth the investment. You can purchase CleanMyMac and Gemini for $55.95.

MacClean
MacClean is the kind of name I expect an action hero to have in a B-movie. That’s a big win in my book.
It’s also a solid contender to CleanMyMac.
The app has a nice user interface with the same core functionality as CleanMyMac with a few additions. It can identify and delete duplicate files (this sounds like a small thing, but you’d be amazed at the amount of duplicate files on your computer).
MacClean claims to identify potential security risks on your computer (a bit like antivirus on a PC). It will scan your applications and downloads folders for potential security risks and even claims to clean malicious cookies.
At $30 for a single license MacClean is well priced. It’s also a great product. If you want to save a bit of money and still buy a great product then MacClean Comes highly recommended.

MacBooster
MacBooster is one of the top three Mac cleaning software solutions currently available.
It has more features than CleanMyMac while costing the same amount. You can defragment your hard drive and delete duplicate files and images. As I mentioned above this can free up a lot of extra space.
While MacBooster is great, it could cause newbies to have a heart attack. It has a system for identifying ‘issues’ on your computer (how can you miss all those red alerts in the screenshot). Many of these issues aren’t really issues at all, which might worry you if you don’t know much about your Mac.
Another minor annoyance is the tiered pricing where you have to pay for additional features. For example, MacBooster advertises the app as being able to detect and remove viruses. However, these features are only available on the Standard plan for 3 computers that costs $59.95. The features are not available for the Lite plan for one computer that costs $39.95.
That said, you get all of the core Mac cleaning functionality with the entry price. If you pay more money you get additional features that you wouldn’t expect to have, which is fair. Overall it’s a great solution for cleaning your Mac.

MacFly Pro
MacFly Pro is newest Mac cleaning software to be released and at first impression it looks great.
The first thing you notice when you download it is that it takes a long time to setup. When I installed it on my computer I thought the installation had frozen. It took at least five minutest to get started, which compares terribly to every other app on this list that is up and running in less than 60 seconds.
The user interface is well designed and the name is time travel tastic. The bigger selling point for a lot of people will be that when it scans your hard drive it finds a lot more files to delete. This sounds great, but could cause you problems as some of the files really shouldn’t be deleted.
My biggest issue with MacClean isn’t that it recommends you delete files that could be really important for your computer, something I’m sure they will resolve, but the payment structure, which it won’t.
MacClean uses a Software As A Service model. This means you need to pay the developers every month to access the App. This wouldn’t be an issue in many other niches, but with great quality Mac cleaning software being available at a one-time price it’s impossible to recommend this platform.

CC Cleaner Pro
CC Cleaner Pro was originally developed for Windows, it was released back in 2003. The Mac version came a couple of years later in 2011. It comes with much the same features and a very similar user interface to CleanMyMac.
As you’d expect from your cleaning software, the app removes redundant language files, deleting your browser cache history and finding all of those files gathering dust on your computer. The developers released a free and a premium version of CC Cleaner. The paid version is obviously superior, with more features and built in automation of monotonous tasks. You also get the same additional utilities.
While the Pro version is a good platform, CC Cleaner has more bugs, crashes more often and sometimes misses big files. It also had a significant issue with malware recently, so for the moment I recommend avoiding it.

DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk is an easy to use Mac cleaner. It doesn’t have the extra functionality that you get with the more expensive platforms, but it has the core functions, but it does look great (it uses sunburst diagrams to illustrate where you can save data).
This unusual design choice makes it really easy to see where the big files are on your computer. It also lists the filenames along the right hand side of the screen, so you can see what they are and preview them should you choose.
Keep in mind you can get the same results for free using your Mac with the following steps; About This Mac > Storage > Manage.
Overall I like DaisyDisk. It’s a cheap app that does the job it was designed to do. I can understand the appeal of this well designed app.

MacKeeper
The first association that comes to mind is a Mac cleaner, however, MacKeeper in 2020 includes way more features than any other similar software. Promoted as “multilayered protection and Mac performance optimization tool”, let’s take a closer look at its cleaning capabilities and extra features.
With more than 9 years out there in the digital world, there is a “Keeper” in MacKeeper for a reason. You can run multiple tools divided into 4 sections:
- The Security section includes the antivirus and adware protection
- The Privacy tools serve as a VPN, ad-blocker, and id theft monitoring
- The Performance section offers tools to clean RAM and tune-up login items
- The Cleaning tools serve to free up space. Let’s look closer at them
Reclaiming free space can be done in a few ways. MacKeeper detects and deletes files that are sometimes hard-to-get, like junks (caches, logs, localization files), duplicates, and apps you don’t use and have completely forgotten about.
A few things in this app catch your eye. Via MacKeeper you can empty the Trash. Also, if using many browsers, it can help you detect and delete unused browser extensions with a few clicks from one place. The same algorithm works for deleting apps.
Overall, MacKeeper has great solutions you’d want in 2020 for the smooth work of your Mac. And all the features come in one bundle, so no need to purchase any of them additionally—from $16.95 a month up to $119.40 paid yearly.
A Few Final Thoughts
To create this list of best Mac cleaning software we spent a few hours reviewing articles created by other content producers. We then downloaded the tools so that we could test them. Of course this system means that each post takes a long time to write, but we like to think it means you get the best recommendations.
For more useful tools for online business owners, check out our guide to the best database software, and the best quiz maker software. You might also want to check out our roundup of the best app design software.
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