Full disclosure upfront: I make Shiny, a small $4.99 Mac menu-bar app that frees memory pressure. MacKeeper covers that ground among many others, which makes me a competitor. I've tried to write this honestly. Where MacKeeper is the right call for someone, I'll say so.
The honest verdict
The current MacKeeper is technically legitimate. It is signed with a valid Apple Developer ID and has passed Apple's notarization process, which scans every app for malware before it can run on your Mac. It is not a virus. It will not steal your files. The company behind it, Clario Tech, is a registered business.
But "not a scam" and "has a clean reputation" are different things. MacKeeper spent most of the 2010s running advertising campaigns that many security researchers and consumer advocates considered scareware: browser popups that told ordinary Mac users their computers were infected, fake virus alerts, and sales funnels designed to frighten people into buying. A 2014 class-action lawsuit was settled over some of these practices in the United States.
The reputation that era created is real, fair, and earned. The software has changed ownership twice since then. Whether the reputation has caught up with the changes is another question, and the honest answer is: not entirely.
The history: Zeobit, Kromtech, Clario
MacKeeper was created by a Ukrainian company called Zeobit around 2010. From the start it was marketed aggressively, with affiliate programmes that paid publishers per install. Those affiliates plastered the web with banner ads and popup overlays warning Mac users their machines were dangerously full of junk, often without any actual scan having taken place.
In 2013, Zeobit sold MacKeeper to a German company called Kromtech Alliance. The aggressive advertising continued under new ownership. The class-action settlement followed in 2014. Kromtech also suffered a significant security incident in 2017 when a researcher discovered a MongoDB database containing data on around 13 million MacKeeper users was left publicly accessible online without a password. Kromtech confirmed the breach and patched it, but the damage to trust was compounding.
In 2019, Kromtech sold MacKeeper to Clario Tech, an Irish-registered company. Clario repositioned MacKeeper as a broader "digital wellness" platform, adding VPN, identity monitoring, and data breach alerts alongside the cleaning tools. The popup advertising era wound down significantly under Clario. The software was rewritten and notarized.
That is three ownership changes in roughly a decade. Each new owner inherited the brand name and its baggage. Clario has made genuine efforts to clean up the product. It has not yet fully cleaned up the search results, the forum threads, or the IT professional instincts that formed in the Zeobit and Kromtech years.
The scareware era
It is worth being specific about what MacKeeper did during its scareware peak, because the vague accusation "it was scareware" does not capture why the reputation is so durable.
The pattern was this: users browsing ordinary websites would encounter a popup, styled to look like a system alert, informing them that their Mac had detected problems or was running critically low on resources. The popup would direct them to download MacKeeper. Once installed, MacKeeper's scan would report a large number of "issues," implying the machine was in serious trouble, and prompt an immediate purchase to fix them.
None of the "issues" found in a fresh scan were typically dangerous. The alerts were designed to create urgency, not to report genuine threats. This is the definition of scareware: software that uses fear of system damage or infection to sell itself.
IT professionals who spent those years fielding panicked calls from non-technical users who had seen a scary popup and handed over their credit card details have not forgotten this. Many corporate IT policies still flag MacKeeper as a potentially unwanted program. Some antivirus vendors still include detection signatures for it. These are the residues of behaviour that genuinely harmed a lot of ordinary people.
Clario's MacKeeper does not do this. The question is whether a rebrand and a few years of cleaner behaviour is enough to overcome a decade of the opposite.
What the current MacKeeper actually does
The current MacKeeper is a multi-tool suite with several distinct functions bundled into one subscription. At around $5-10 per month (depending on plan and sale), it covers:
Memory cleaner. Frees inactive RAM with a button press. This is useful when macOS memory pressure turns red. Smaller dedicated apps do the same job for a one-time cost; Shiny ($4.99 once) is one. Memory Cleaner is another (free with paid extras).
Junk file cleaner. Scans for caches, logs, and leftover files and offers to delete them. macOS cleans most of this up itself over time; the genuinely useful jobs here are finding old app leftovers and large forgotten downloads. AppCleaner (free) handles app leftovers more precisely.
Malware scanner. Scans for known threats. macOS already includes XProtect, Apple's own malware scanner, which runs silently. MacKeeper adds a second layer. Malwarebytes also provides a free scanner if you want a second opinion without a subscription.
VPN. Routes your traffic through an encrypted tunnel. Functional, though dedicated VPN providers generally offer faster speeds and a longer track record for this specific job.
ID theft guard and data breach monitoring. Checks your email against known breach databases. HaveIBeenPwned does this for free.
Ad and tracker blocking. Blocks web trackers. A browser extension like uBlock Origin does this for free and with more transparency.
None of these features are bad. Several of them are genuinely useful. The question, as with any bundled suite, is whether you need enough of them to justify the ongoing subscription cost, or whether single-purpose free and cheap tools would serve you better.
For a broader look at how MacKeeper stacks up against specific alternatives, see our MacKeeper alternatives guide.
Should you use it?
Honest profiles:
MacKeeper might suit you if you want a single dashboard for memory cleaning, malware scanning, VPN, and breach monitoring; you don't want to think about which tool to open for which job; and you find the subscription price acceptable for the breadth you'll actually use.
MacKeeper probably doesn't suit you if you only want one of its jobs (memory cleaning alone, malware scanning alone); you prefer one-time purchases over subscriptions; you're already comfortable with built-in macOS tools; or the historical reputation makes you uncomfortable trusting it with deep system access.
That last point deserves weight. MacKeeper requests broad permissions: it needs access to scan your files, monitor your network, and run in the background. Granting those permissions to a product from a company with the history described above is a reasonable thing to feel cautious about, even if the current version is technically clean.
If you want a fuller comparison of the current landscape, our are Mac cleaners worth it post covers the category honestly, and our CleanMyMac review looks at the main competitor with a cleaner reputation. A disclosure for this section: I make Shiny, a $4.99 memory-only menu-bar tool, so I have an obvious interest in you not buying MacKeeper for the memory job alone. If you need the full suite, MacKeeper is a legitimate option. If you only need memory relief, there are cheaper, focused tools, and Shiny is one of them.