CleanMyMac vs MacKeeper

At a glance

CleanMyMac: what you get for $40 a year

CleanMyMac is made by MacPaw, a Kyiv-based software company that has been building Mac apps since 2008. They are the kind of company that shows up at WWDC, ships regular updates, and maintains a support team. That matters more than most feature checklists suggest.

The app itself is a genuine Mac-maintenance suite. It cleans caches and system junk, scans for malware, uninstalls apps and their leftover files, visualises disk usage, and runs maintenance scripts (repair permissions, flush DNS, rebuild launch services). The interface is polished and well-organised. Each module does a real job.

Notarization. CleanMyMac is notarized by Apple, meaning Apple has scanned it for malicious code before distribution. This is a baseline security check, not a guarantee of quality, but it means CleanMyMac passed Apple's automated review.

Setapp inclusion. If you already subscribe to Setapp (MacPaw's app bundle, roughly $10 a month), CleanMyMac is included. For Setapp subscribers, it's effectively free within their existing spend. That changes the value calculation significantly.

Track record. MacPaw has shipped CleanMyMac for nearly 18 years. The app has been through multiple macOS transitions, Apple Silicon, and various privacy restrictions. That longevity means the software has been stress-tested in ways newer apps haven't.

The main caveat: like most maintenance suites, CleanMyMac can surface "problems" that aren't particularly urgent. The smart-care alerts and badge counts are designed to prompt engagement. Turn them off if they feel pushy. The underlying tools are legitimate.

MacKeeper: the honest history

MacKeeper's story has several chapters, and understanding them is more useful than any feature list.

Zeobit and Kromtech (2010-2019). MacKeeper was originally built by a Ukrainian company called Zeobit and later acquired by Kromtech. During this period, it was distributed heavily through pop-up ads that displayed fake system alerts, warning users their Mac was infected or failing. The ads were designed to frighten people into buying. In 2014, a US class-action lawsuit was settled over these deceptive practices. The app was removed from and reinstated on the Mac App Store multiple times. Independent review sites accumulated thousands of negative reviews, many from people who had downloaded the app without understanding what it was.

Clario (2019-present). Cromtech rebranded to Clario, repositioned MacKeeper as part of a broader digital privacy product, and cleaned up the advertising. The aggressive pop-up era ended. The current app, as a technical product, is not malware: it does what it says, it can be uninstalled, and it won't damage your system.

What the current app actually does. MacKeeper 2026 includes antivirus, a VPN, an ad blocker, performance monitoring, memory cleaning, a duplicate finder, and an uninstaller. It is a security-and-performance bundle as much as a cleaner. The feature set is real. The question is whether you trust the company behind it enough to install it.

The trust gap

MacKeeper's bad reputation persists for a simple reason: the internet has a long memory, and the damage from the scareware era was extensive. Thousands of blog posts, forum threads, and review-site entries documented the aggressive pop-ups and the difficult cancellation and refund processes of that period. Many of those pages still rank well in search. New users researching MacKeeper today will encounter that history before they encounter any information about the current product.

The current MacKeeper team is not responsible for what Zeobit and early Kromtech did. That's worth saying clearly. But trust is built slowly and lost quickly, and a company that distributed scareware for the best part of a decade has a long way to travel before independent observers treat it as a default-safe recommendation.

There are also structural concerns that remain relevant. MacKeeper is not on the Mac App Store, which means it bypasses Apple's review process entirely. It installs helper components that run in the background. Its subscription cancellation and refund processes have attracted complaints more recently than the scareware era. None of these are disqualifying on their own, but they add up to a product that asks for more trust than it has clearly earned.

Should you use either?

The honest answer for most people is: probably not.

macOS does a significant amount of maintenance on its own. It purges caches automatically. XProtect, Apple's built-in malware scanner, updates silently in the background. The operating system manages memory. The App Store handles software updates. A modern Mac running a reasonably current version of macOS does not accumulate the kind of system rot that made cleaner apps feel essential a decade ago.

The most legitimate use case for a cleaner suite is finding and removing large old files: log archives, application caches that have grown to gigabytes, old iOS backups taking up space. These are real problems. But a one-time tidy with CleanMyMac doesn't require an ongoing subscription; you could run it once a year and cancel.

If memory pressure is the specific problem you're experiencing, a full cleaner suite is probably the wrong shape of tool. Memory cleaners built into products like CleanMyMac and MacKeeper are one module among many, surrounded by features you may never use and a subscription you pay for regardless. A focused memory utility is a more proportionate response to that specific problem.

If malware scanning is the concern, Malwarebytes offers a free scanner that doesn't require a subscription, and Apple's own XProtect covers most real-world threats without any additional software.

Neither CleanMyMac nor MacKeeper is harmful. CleanMyMac, in particular, is a well-made product from a company with a credible track record. But "not harmful" and "worth paying for ongoing" are different questions. Be clear about which specific problem you're trying to solve before you subscribe to either.

You can read more about the individual products in our posts on whether CleanMyMac is safe, whether MacKeeper is a scam, and alternatives to CleanMyMac if you'd like to keep looking.