a free CleanMyMac alternative
updated · by Anton Shakirov
CleanMyMac is a maintenance suite that cleans, scans and looks after a Mac. it is sold by subscription — the plan for one Mac was €39.95 a year when we checked on 10 September 2026, and a one-time licence is offered alongside it. hop does one part of that job — removing an app together with the caches, preferences and support files it left in about thirty places — for nothing.
if you want the whole maintenance suite, hop is not a replacement and this page will not argue otherwise. it is for the person who only ever used the uninstaller, and does not want to pay yearly for it.
what this page is not claiming
hop does not clean your Mac, scan for malware, free mysterious gigabytes or make anything faster. those are separate promises and we make none of them.
it removes an app and what the app left behind. if that is the only part of CleanMyMac you ever opened — and for a lot of people it is — the rest of this page is relevant. if you use the maintenance side, stay where you are.
the module this page is about has its own page, with the list of places it looks in and what it does when macOS refuses to hand a file over. the uninstaller in hop
what CleanMyMac does that hop does not
this is the section comparison pages skip, and it is the one you came for. the list below is not a formality — it is most of the product.
finding things hop cannot find
duplicate files across a disk, and large or old files you have forgotten about, are two whole features hop has nothing to answer with. neither is a small job: both need a full scan and a way to compare files by content rather than by name. if reclaiming space by hunting through your own files is what you want, we do not have it.
maintenance, extensions and malware
running maintenance scripts, rebuilding indexes and repairing permissions — none of that is in hop. removing browser extensions, preference panes and login items as a category is not in hop either: it removes what an app left, not what a plug-in installed on its own. and malware scanning is a different product with a different job, which we do not do at all.
there is also a version floor worth knowing. CleanMyMac lists macOS 11 as its minimum; hop needs macOS 14 or newer. on an older Mac this page is academic. the free alternatives below run further back than we do.
and the honest shape of our side
hop's tidying is not a product. it is part of the uninstall module: the same screen that removes an app also shows every app holding a cache, biggest first, installers left in Downloads and on the Desktop, and the data of apps you removed long ago. that is useful, and it is a corner of what a maintenance suite does, not a replacement for one.
the number a cleaner shows you
any cleaning tool, ours included, reports a figure of what it could remove. part of that figure is space macOS would have freed on its own the moment something needed it — Apple calls it purgeable. on this Mac on 10 September 2026 the gap was about six gigabytes: «df» reported 40.3 GB free, the system's own «important usage» figure 46.4 GB.
Apple states the behaviour plainly: when space is needed, macOS clears caches and logs that are safe to delete, including temporary database files, interrupted downloads and website data. optimize storage space on your Mac — Apple Support
the gap is not a quirk of the disk: the larger figure comes from a documented key that reports capacity including what the system is willing to reclaim. volumeAvailableCapacityForImportantUsageKey — Apple Developer
we took that number apart category by category on a live disk in a separate article, so it is not repeated here. what the space a cleaner finds is made of
if what sent you here was a storage bar you could not explain, that has its own page too. find out what system data is using
the free CleanMyMac alternatives worth naming
AppCleaner is free, has done this job well for years, and if it already suits you there is no reason to change. Pearcleaner and PureMac are newer, free and open source, and do the same job. none of them is worse at removing an app than we are, and it would be strange to pretend otherwise on a page arguing that you should not pay for this.
the comparison with the one most people already have is a page of its own. hop and AppCleaner
how hop removes an app, and where that differs
three differences are worth knowing, and they are about what happens when something goes wrong rather than about the removal itself.
everything it removes goes to the trash rather than being deleted outright, so a wrong click costs a restore rather than a file. every app in the list shows what it weighs, with the bundle and its data counted separately — an app of two hundred megabytes sitting on six gigabytes of cached data is common and invisible. and an app already in the trash is still recognised, so a removal you started by hand and abandoned halfway can be finished properly.
| what you are doing | the free route | with hop |
|---|---|---|
| removing one app, cleanly, and AppCleaner is already installed | drop it on the window, tick the list, done | no reason to switch — keep AppCleaner |
| removing it by hand, without any tool | you need to know which of about thirty folders are its | the list is assembled for you |
| you deleted the app months ago and the leftovers are still there | search Library by name and hope the name matches | orphaned data is a category you can see |
| you ticked the wrong app | gone, if you deleted by hand | it is in the trash |
| an app is eating gigabytes of cache but you still use it | find its cache folder, judge whether it is safe | clear that app's cache, keep the app |
| you want duplicates, old files and maintenance too | that is what the paid suites are for | hop does not do this |
the removal itself, step by step and with the list of places it covers, is written out separately. uninstall an app with its leftovers
why the same junk comes back
clear a browser's cache today and it will be back inside a week, because a cache is not debris. it is the file the app kept so it would not fetch the same thing twice. that is the honest reason cleaning feels like a scheduled chore: you are not fixing a fault, you are resetting a working part of the system, and it starts filling again the moment you use the app.
which also means a recurring chore and a recurring fee fit each other neatly. that is not an accusation of anyone. it is the shape of the problem, worth seeing before you decide what to pay for it.
how macOS itself handles caches and when it purges them is covered in detail outside any vendor's marketing. caches and purging in macOS — The Eclectic Light Company
the other thing people clean for is memory, and that one is a misunderstanding worth reading about rather than sweeping. fix «out of application memory»
what a cleaner should leave alone
not every folder with the word cache in it is disposable. inside a sandboxed app's container the Caches folder sits as a sibling of Application Support, Calendars and the rest of that app's real data — one folder holding both the throwaway half and the half you would miss. a messenger with twenty gigabytes in its container is the usual example: some of it is images it can fetch again, some of it is your history, and from the outside the two are not distinguishable.
so hop leaves containers alone and says so in the interface rather than quietly skipping them — only the app's own cleanup knows which half is which. the same goes for anything macOS refuses to hand over: it is named with the reason instead of being passed over in silence.
the opposite case — an app that will not go away at all — has its own answer. delete an app that will not delete
how to try it without deciding anything
- install hop — six megabytes, no account, macOS 14 or newer
- open the uninstall module and look at the list of what is installed and what each app weighs
- remove something you have not opened in a year; check the trash to see exactly what went
- if it does not do what you needed, drag it to the trash — where, appropriately, it can uninstall itself
frequently asked questions
- will hop speed up my Mac?
- no, and we would rather not pretend. it removes apps and their leftovers, which frees space. speed is a different problem with different causes.
- does macOS need a cleaner at all?
- for space it mostly manages itself — it clears caches and logs when something needs room, which is why part of any «junk» figure is space you already had. what it does not do is remove an app's leftovers when you drag the app to the trash. that gap is real, and it is the one hop fills.
- why does the same junk come back a week later?
- because caches are working files, not debris. the app refills them as you use it. nothing is broken and nothing was done wrong — it is what a cache is for.
- does it scan for malware?
- no. that is not what this is.
- are files deleted permanently?
- no. everything moves to the trash, so a mistake costs a restore rather than a file.
- should i use AppCleaner instead?
- if it already suits you, yes — it is free and good, and so are Pearcleaner and PureMac. hop makes sense when you want several small tools behind one icon.
- is there a subscription later?
- no. free and open source under MIT, with no paid tier planned.
the hop side of this
app uninstaller — remove an app together with what it left in about thirty places.
about the author
Anton Shakirovmakes hop
makes hop and every page on this site. eighteen tools under a single menu bar icon, MIT licensed and open source. reads and answers issues and email himself.