Keepworthy
Cleanup is the biggest app in this category. Here is what it charges.
About 716,000 ratings at 4.65 stars, which makes it the one most people meet first. On 15 September 2026 its App Store page listed nine separate weekly subscriptions at the same time, priced from $5.95 to $11.99 a week, alongside a single $29.99 annual plan.
Nine prices for the same thing
Apple's App Store page shows an app's best-selling in-app purchases. Cleanup's showed ten, and nine of them were a weekly subscription named Cleanup Pro 1 Week. Same name, nine prices.
What its listing says
Direct quotes from Cleanup's App Store description, read on 15 September 2026. Two of them contradict each other.
“Compress large files without losing quality”
“Compress large files with minimal quality loss”
“Free up storage instantly with one tap.”
“Choose between the following subscription options… • Weekly Subscription • Lifetime Subscription”
Where the line falls
Cleanup
$5.95 to $11.99 a week, or $29.99 a year
- It does more than photos. Email, contacts, a PIN-protected vault, widgets, charging animations. If you want one app for all of that, this is the one that has it.
- It marks a best shot. Its listing says similar photos get “Smart grouping… with ‘Best’ marked.”
- It has a review screen. The listing says “Nothing is removed without your approval.”
- It claims lookalike videos. “Remove large, lookalike videos.” Whether that is real visual similarity or a size heuristic is not something the listing settles.
- No written reason for the frame it picked, and no note on the ones it passed over.
- No side-by-side video comparison, and no measured figure after compression.
- No Mac app.
- The weekly default is the expensive path by a wide margin.
Keepworthy
Free to clean up. Pro $19.99 once
- One price, shown to everyone. No weekly tier, no trial timer, no A/B test on what you pay.
- Cleaning up is free, with no daily limits and no cap on how much you clear.
- The pick carries its reason. Eyes open, sharper, good exposure, written under the photo. Demoted frames carry a note of their own.
- Near-duplicate videos play side by side, lined up to the same second.
- Compression is measured. The copy is compared to the original and the change is shown as a number.
- iPhone and Mac, one purchase, shareable with family.
- Photos and video only. No email, no contacts, no vault.
What its recent reviewers say
Written reviews from Cleanup's US App Store page, most recent first, pulled 15 September 2026. Written reviews run more negative than an app's star average, because the average is carried by star-only ratings collected from in-app prompts. Cleanup's average is 4.65 and that is a real number too.
“Seriously? $11.99 a WEEK?!!! Maybe $11.99 a year would be more reasonable. That cost more than my Internet monthly.”
“I go back in to see and nope, even though the app says it's deleted it has not deleted one thing!!!”
“be careful some of the videos of flagged as similar that it wanted to remove had nothing to do with each other.”
Questions
Is Cleanup a scam?
No, and it's worth being precise instead of loud about this. It is a real app from a real company that does what it says, and 716,000 ratings at 4.65 stars are not nothing. The thing to watch is the pricing structure: nine weekly tiers running at once, a 7-day trial that converts automatically, and an annual plan at $29.99 sitting next to a weekly plan that costs $623 over the same year. If you install it, look for the annual option before you accept the default, and check Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions, to see what you are actually on.
How do I cancel a weekly subscription I didn't mean to start?
On your iPhone, open Settings, tap your name at the top, tap Subscriptions, and cancel it there. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. If you were charged for something you never knowingly agreed to, Apple's refund page at reportaproblem.apple.com handles that, and people do get refunds.
Does Keepworthy do email and contacts too?
No. It's photos and videos only. That's deliberate rather than a gap I'm working on.
Why is Keepworthy free if that one costs $623 a year?
Cleaning up stays free because charging for it would put Keepworthy in the same bucket. Pro is a one-time $19.99 for people who want batch tools and the full score card for a big library. One developer, and that's the whole business model.
Other comparisons
Sources
- Cleanup on the US App Store, where the in-app purchase list and the description quoted above are published. Apple shows only an app's ten best-selling in-app purchases, and Cleanup's list was full at ten, so there may be prices in the app that the store page doesn't show.
- Ratings and version read from Apple's public lookup endpoint on 15 September 2026: version 6.21.0, released 7 September 2026, minimum iOS 15.0, seller DEEP FLOW SOFTWARE SERVICES - FZCO. Apple's caches disagree by a few hundred ratings, so the count here is rounded.
- Reviews from the US App Store review feed for the same app, sorted most recent, same date.
- Connor Tumbleson, “Predatory iOS Cleanup Applications”, January 2025, which is the piece that documented this pricing pattern first.
Who wrote this. Bill Dirkes, of Dirkes Medical, PLLC. I make Keepworthy, which competes with the app on this page, so weigh it accordingly. I've quoted Cleanup's listing rather than paraphrasing it, and given its star average alongside its worst reviews, because a page that only showed one of those would be the kind of page I'm complaining about.
Prices change, and this category changes fast. Checked 15 September 2026. If something here is wrong, tell me and I'll correct it.
Free to clean up, with no daily limits.
Pro is a one-time $19.99 that covers your iPhone and your Mac. You can clean your whole library without it.
