Disclosure: we make Clear Cleaner, one of the apps below. Every fact comes from each app’s US App Store page, checked on. Prices and features change — follow the links to check.
All four find duplicate photos and compress videos. Cleanup has the longest feature list, including email cleanup.Clever Cleaner is the one to try if you want to stay free. CleanMy®Phone suits MacPaw users on iOS 17+.Clear Cleaner is the smallest, also cleans contacts and calendar, and is the only one here whose privacy label says no data is collected. And before any of them: iOS itself already merges exact duplicates for free.
Weekly plans from $5.95 to $11.99 (several price points listed)
CleanMyPhone yearly $36.99, monthly $7.99
Weekly $6.99, lifetime $39.99
Free trial
3-day free trial
7-day free trial (per description)
3-day free trial on the yearly plan (per description)
3-day free trial on the weekly plan (per description)
What’s free
Scan, review and delete for free, with ads; video compression is free
Free download; full access with a subscription
Free download; full access with a subscription
“Free to download and use within generous daily limits”
App Store privacy label
Data Not Collected
Data used to track you: purchases, identifiers, usage data
Data used to track you: identifiers, usage data
Data used to track you: identifiers
Rating (US)
4.7 ★ · 29 ratings
4.7 ★ · 741K ratings
4.6 ★ · 23K ratings
4.8 ★ · 84K ratings
Download size
51 MB
119.8 MB
176.4 MB
123.2 MB
Requires
iOS 15.0+
iOS 15.0+
iOS 17.0+
iOS 16.0+
Features (from each App Store description)
Duplicate & similar photos
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
“Best shot” suggestion
Yes
Yes
Not stated
Yes
Large / similar videos
Yes
Partly
Yes
Yes
Video compression
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Merge duplicate contacts
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Old calendar events
Yes
No
No
No
Private / secret folder
Yes
Yes
No
No
Email cleanup
No
Yes
Yes
No
Swipe-to-review mode
No
No
Yes
Yes
“Partly” for Cleanup’s large videos: its description mentions removing large look-alike videos but not a size-sorted finder. “Not stated”: the description doesn’t say either way.
Best for: a small, focused cleaner that also handles contacts and calendar
Our app. It covers the essentials — duplicates with a suggested best shot, videos, batch compression, contacts, old calendar events — in the smallest download here, and its App Store privacy label says no data is collected. It’s new, so it has a fraction of the ratings the others have, and it has no email cleanup or swipe mode.
The category leader by downloads and ratings. Beyond photos and videos it cleans your email inbox and has a PIN-protected secret space. The listed plans are weekly, and its privacy label declares data used to track you.
Strengths
Category leader with by far the most ratings
Email cleaner for promo and spam mail
PIN-protected secret space
Trade-offs
Weekly pricing only in the listed plans
Tracking data declared in the privacy label
No calendar cleanup
Estimated at 1–2.5 million downloads a month (AppSprint).
From the makers of CleanMyMac. Declutter and Organize tabs, recent Swipe Mode and Email Cleanup. It needs iOS 17 or later and has the most expensive yearly plan in this list.
Strengths
From MacPaw, the makers of CleanMyMac
Email cleanup and Swipe Mode added in recent updates
Free to use “within generous daily limits”, with a lifetime purchase option for more. Strong on photos and large videos, with a swipe mode. It doesn’t clean contacts and has no private folder.
Strengths
Generous free daily limits
Lifetime purchase option
Large-video finder sorted by size, swipe mode
Trade-offs
No contacts cleanup
No private folder (only a Skip List)
Older reviews call it fully free — it now has paid plans
Before installing anything, try the built-in tools. They cover exact duplicates and show you where the space goes:
Where
What it does
Photos → Utilities → Duplicates
Finds exact duplicate photos and videos and merges them (iOS 16+). Doesn’t catch near-identical retakes.
Settings → General → iPhone Storage
Shows what takes space per app, with recommendations like “Offload Unused Apps” and reviewing large attachments.
Contacts → Duplicates Found
Merges exact duplicate contact cards (iOS 16+).
Photos → Media Types → Videos
Lists every video; you check sizes one by one in the info panel.
What they don’t do: group near-identical retakes, suggest a best shot, compress videos or merge the same number saved under different names. That’s where a cleaner app saves time. Our step-by-step guide covers the manual route: iPhone storage full: what to do.
How we compared
Only facts from each App Store page: prices, the In-App Purchases list, the description and the App Privacy section.
Feature marks are based on the app descriptions, not on our testing; an app may do more than it describes.
Privacy labels are declared by each developer and not verified by Apple.
We re-check this page every quarter. Spot something out of date? Write to us via support.
Try Clear Cleaner
Clear Cleaner finds duplicates, similar shots and heavy videos across your iPhone and compresses the videos you keep. Nothing is deleted until you confirm.
