Cleanup (cleanup.photos) is one of the most-installed photo cleaners on the App Store, and it does more than photos: video compression, an email cleaner, contact merging, a private vault. SwipePhotos does one job across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The honest comparison is mostly about pricing structure and focus. Both are below, facts checked against the US App Store listing on August 18, 2026.
Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner is the giant here, with 4.7 stars across roughly 700,000 US ratings and a genuinely useful video compressor. Its economics deserve a careful look: the free tier caps deletions at a handful per ad watched, and its US listing shows weekly subscriptions at five different price points between $5.95 and $11.99, which annualizes to $310 to $620. A $29.99 yearly tier exists if you find it. SwipePhotos has no ads and no metered free tier: weekly, yearly at €39.99, or lifetime, covering iPhone, iPad, and a native Mac app. If you need one free video-compression pass, Cleanup can do it. For actually finishing a library, run the yearly math before you subscribe to anything weekly, ours included.
SwipePhotos is our app, so read this the way you’d read any vendor comparison: we’ve kept every factual claim checkable and noted where Cleanup is the better pick. Facts checked against official sites and App Store listings, August 2026.
| Feature | SwipePhotos | Cleanup |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, and a native Mac app. One purchase covers all three. | iPhone (iOS 15+). No iPad-native, Mac, or Android version. |
| Free tier | None. Paid-only, no ads. | Free with ads; independent testing found deletion capped at about 25 items per watched ad, 5 without. |
| Paid pricing | Weekly, yearly (€39.99), or lifetime. Final pricing shows in the App Store. | Weekly 'Cleanup Pro' shown at $5.95, $7.39, $7.99, $9.99, and $11.99 simultaneously, plus $29.99/year (US listing, Aug 2026). A $44.99 lifetime has been reported in-app. |
| Photo review | Swipe keep-or-delete, month- and album-scoped sessions, similar shots stacked on-device. | Swipe review plus duplicate and similar detection with best-shot suggestions; reviews report the grouping and Select All can be unreliable. |
| Beyond photos | No. Photos only, on purpose. | Video compression (its standout tool), email inbox cleaner, contact merge, PIN-protected vault, widgets. |
| Trial | No trial theater: the price is shown, you decide. | Free trial converting to a weekly plan; reviewers report both 7-day and 3-day variants. |
| Delete safety | Apple's confirm dialog, then Recently Deleted (30-day undo). | Same Apple pipeline: deletions land in Recently Deleted with the 30-day undo. |
Cleanup facts from its US App Store listing (v6.20.0, August 2026) and independent reviews at insanelymac.com and connortumbleson.com. The multiple simultaneous weekly price points are visible in the listing's In-App Purchases section. Store pages are authoritative.
Nothing about a weekly subscription is inherently wrong; SwipePhotos sells one too, for people who want a short intense cleanup. The difference is structure. Cleanup's US listing shows five weekly price points live at once, between $5.95 and $11.99, which means different users see different prices for the same product, and its recent one-star reviews are full of people surprised by the conversion ('a 7-day free trial and then $11 a week'). An independent 2025 analysis of cleaner-app pricing used Cleanup as a case study for the launch-into-paywall pattern.
Kept for a year, those weekly rates total $310 to $620. The same listing's yearly tier is $29.99, a 90-percent discount for finding a different button. Our advice applies to every app in the category including ours: never hold a cleaner app on a weekly plan for months. Take a weekly plan for a sprint if that's your style, then either stop or switch to a yearly or lifetime price.
Cleanup bundles photo cleaning with video compression, an email inbox cleaner, contact merging, and a private vault. The compressor is genuinely good; independent reviews call it the app's best feature, and shrinking a few giant screen recordings can free more space in five minutes than an hour of photo swiping. If that's your actual problem, Cleanup free-with-ads might be all you need.
SwipePhotos stays on one problem: a camera roll with years of unreviewed photos in it. Scoped sessions, similar-shot stacks, screenshot and duplicate hubs, and the Rewind stories that resurface what you kept. No email permissions, no contacts access, no vault. The narrow scope is also a privacy posture: the app asks for photo access and nothing else, and photo analysis stays on-device.
SwipePhotos is paywalled in the app, with weekly, yearly, and lifetime options. Final pricing appears in the App Store.
There's an ad-supported free tier, but independent testing found deletion capped at roughly 25 items per watched ad (5 without). Unlimited use requires Cleanup Pro, which is sold weekly at prices between $5.95 and $11.99 on the US listing, or $29.99 per year.
The US listing displays five weekly price points simultaneously ($5.95 to $11.99, August 2026), which is consistent with running several price tests at once. Which one you're offered depends on factors the app controls, so check the exact price on the purchase sheet before subscribing.
Deletions go through Apple's Photos system into Recently Deleted with a 30-day undo, like every cleaner using Apple's APIs. Note that it requests full camera-roll access to work, and reviews report crashes on very large libraries.
It's an iPhone app (iOS 15+). SwipePhotos runs natively on iPhone, iPad, and Mac with one purchase covering all three.
Cleanup's batch tools can knock out obvious junk quickly if the app stays stable on a library that size, and its compressor helps with video bloat. For reviewing everything and ending with a library you chose, SwipePhotos' scoped sessions and similar-shot stacks are built for exactly that marathon, with a lifetime price so a long project doesn't bill weekly.
Weekly, yearly, or lifetime. Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. 100% on-device.