MacPrune vs CleanMyMac: How to Choose a Mac Cleaner

The honest answer is that it depends on what you want the tool to do. We built MacPrune, so we can tell you exactly what it does, and we will not guess at the details of someone else's product. MacPrune suits people who want to see what is filling the disk and clear it, with a free basic version and a one-time purchase for Pro. CleanMyMac is a long-established Mac maintenance app from MacPaw. Its current features, price and licence terms are on its own website, and that is the place to read them. The steps below help you decide.

Step 1: find out what your Mac needs

Before comparing tools, look at the problem.

1. Open System Settings, then General, then Storage.
2. Note how much space is free and which categories are largest.
3. Click the info button beside Applications and Documents to see the biggest items.

If one or two large folders explain the problem, you may not need a cleaner at all. Our guide to freeing up Mac storage covers the manual route.

Step 2: write down what you want from a cleaner

People buy these apps for different reasons. Decide which of these matter to you:

• Seeing where disk space has gone.
• Clearing caches, logs and old downloads.
• Uninstalling apps along with their leftover files.
• Watching CPU, memory and battery.
• Paying once, or paying a subscription.
• How much the app sends back to its maker.

Step 3: check each product on its own site

Features and prices change, so comparison tables in blog posts go out of date. For each product, read the maker's own pages for:

1. The current price and whether it is a one-time purchase or a subscription.
2. How many Macs one licence covers.
3. The macOS versions supported.
4. Whether there is a free version or trial, and what it is limited to.
5. The privacy policy, in particular what data the app collects.

For MacPrune, those answers are on our pricing page and in the next section.

Step 4: try before you pay

Where a free version or trial is offered, run it on your own Mac. Check that it explains what each item is before removing it, and that removed files go somewhere you can get them back from. A cleaner that asks for Full Disk Access can reach most of your files, so the way it handles deletion matters more than how the window looks.

What MacPrune does

These are the facts about MacPrune v2.0:

• Disk: a map where every folder is a tile sized by its space, plus views by kind of content, folders and file types.
• Clean: one scan sorted into Safe to clean, Review before cleaning and Handle with care.
• Large Files: files above a size you set, biggest first.
• Apps: uninstall an app with its related files, and find leftovers of apps removed earlier.
• AI: the disk space used by local AI tools such as Ollama and LM Studio.
• Monitor: live CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network and battery.

Everything you choose to remove is moved to the Trash after a confirmation, and space is freed when the Trash is emptied. The free version scans everything and cleans user caches, browser caches and the Trash. Pro is a one-time purchase with no subscription, for one Mac per key. MacPrune runs on macOS 13 and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel, and is downloaded from macprune.com.

What MacPrune does not do: it does not scan for malware, it is not a whole-disk duplicate finder, and it makes no claim about making a Mac faster. If you need those things, look for a tool that offers them.

Which one suits you

Choose the tool whose feature list matches the list you wrote in step 2, at a price model you are comfortable with. If disk space is your main concern and you prefer to pay once, try the free version of MacPrune and see whether it finds what you expected. For more on the pricing question, read our guide to Mac cleaners without a subscription, and for how MacPrune handles your data, see is MacPrune safe.