Cleaner Kit Alternative: A Free Swipe Cleaner With No Ads

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Pixtide is a free iPhone photo cleaner that works as a Cleaner Kit alternative for people who came for the swipe: right keeps, left deletes, down decides later, with no ads and no in-app purchases. Cleaner Kit - Clean Up Storage by BPMobile holds 4.44 from 350,825 US ratings, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25, and its listing says full access is billed weekly or annually and that the app contains advertising. It also cleans email, contacts and calendars, which Pixtide does not.

This page is written by the Pixtide team (we make Pixtide). We name where the other app wins.

The short verdict

Cleaner Kit is a large all-in-one storage cleaner, and Pixtide is a narrow, free swipe sorter. BPMobile's listing calls Cleaner Kit an "all-in-one iPhone cleaner" and says it is "trusted by 70M+ users", a figure we have not verified. Pick Cleaner Kit if you want one app to find duplicates and blurry shots, compress videos, merge contacts, clear a Gmail inbox and hide photos in a Face ID folder, and a weekly or annual plan is fine with you. Pick it too if your iPhone runs iOS 15, 16 or 17, or if you want the app in Japanese, Korean or Thai.

Pick Pixtide if the swipe is the part you want: going through months of photos and videos yourself, deciding each one, with no ads between cards, no daily cap and no algorithm choosing for you. Pixtide has no paid tier, so there is nothing to unlock and nothing to cancel.

One naming note: "Cleaner Kit: Free up Storage" by Glu Limited is a different app with a similar name. This page is about the BPMobile app.

How Pixtide and Cleaner Kit compare

The table compares Pixtide with Cleaner Kit on 14 objective points, checked on the US App Store on 2026-09-25 unless a row says otherwise. The Cleaner Kit listing is at apps.apple.com/us/app/cleaner-kit-clean-up-storage/id1194582243.

Prices vary by region and can change. The in-app purchase list does not show which plan each price belongs to, so the weekly and annual figures further down come from third-party reviews, each with its date.

Why people look for a Cleaner Kit alternative

Price is the most common complaint in recent Cleaner Kit reviews. We read 982 unique US reviews on 2026-09-25: 585 gave 4 or 5 stars and 306 gave 1 or 2. About 157 of them were about the app not being free, like "NOT FREE like at least say it's not gonna be free" (1 star, 2026-09-01). About 110 described a trial that turned into a charge and a refund they could not get; one reviewer quoted "6.99 per WEEK" after "a 7 day free trial" (2 stars, 2026-08-11). These are reviewers' own accounts, which we have not verified.

The newer theme is the rating prompt. At least 12 recent reviews describe a request for a rating that blocks the app mid-session: "App locked up on me until I gave it a rating." (1 star, 2026-08-28).

About 43 reviews report wrong AI picks or contact-merge damage: "App selects to delete most of my favorite photos" (1 star, 2026-07-23). Monthly averages of the latest 500 reviews are rising: 3.98 in July, 4.07 in August, 4.21 in September 2026.

What the swipe mode actually does

Cleaner Kit has a real swipe mode, closer to Pixtide than most all-in-one cleaners. The App Store listing advertises "Swipe-based sorting: Right to keep, left to delete", and the mode groups photos by time period; one reviewer describes working through them "month by month". Reviewers like it: "This swipe mode makes it so simple to toss the useless extras." (4 stars, 2026-02-28), and "Great for people with ADHD" (5 stars, 2026-09-15).

The difference is what the left swipe does. In Cleaner Kit it moves a photo to an archive, and the listing says you can "review archived photos later or delete them immediately". That review step is a genuine safety net. On the free tier, reviewers say they watch ads to delete; one wrote that "every 20 photos you swipe" you "watch an ad" (2 stars, 2025-08-24).

A decide-later direction, a video scrub bar and an undo for the whole session are not mentioned in the listing. We do not claim Cleaner Kit lacks them. In Pixtide, left marks a photo, down sends it to a Decide Later queue, and nothing is deleted until you confirm on the review screen.

The subscription, the ads and the paywall

Cleaner Kit's listing is clear that the full app is paid. It reads "Subscribe for full access ... billed weekly or annually" and says the free trial "includes all features, some with limited use", checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. The US in-app purchase list shows items from $4.99 to $6.99 named Premium or Pro, without durations.

Apple's listing does not show the plan lengths, so we rely on dated third-party reviews for them. InsanelyMac (review of 2025-02-23) and HandyRecovery (roundup of 2026-09-15) both reported $6.99 a week after a 7-day trial, HandyRecovery added $29.99 a year, and AppleHeadlines on 2026-04-18 reported a 3-day trial. Treat these as reported figures and check the paywall in the app before starting a trial.

Developer Connor Tumbleson, writing on 2025-01-13, described a paywall at first launch where "Regardless of the option you select you have to enter into a weekly contract", with a small close button. That is his account from January 2025, and the screen may have changed since. Our guide to which photo cleaner apps are free sets out the free limits of the other popular cleaners.

The privacy label and the on-device claim

Cleaner Kit's App Store privacy label lists six categories as "Data Used to Track You": Purchases, Location, Identifiers, Usage Data, Diagnostics and Other Data, checked on 2026-09-25. Data linked to you includes device ID and advertising data for Third-Party Advertising. Apple defines tracking as linking an app's data with other companies' data for advertising or sharing it with data brokers.

A Surfshark research chart on phone cleaner apps found that Cleaner Kit shares the most data among the cleaners it studied, nine data types with third parties.

None of this means your photos leave the phone. The listing says "Private by design: All AI processing happens on your iPhone only", we found nothing suggesting Cleaner Kit uploads photos, and we do not claim it does. The label is about usage, device and purchase data. Pixtide's label, checked on the same day, has no tracking section and lists only data not linked to you, from anonymous usage statistics that can be switched off in Settings. Our guide to whether photo cleaner apps are safe explains how to read these labels.

Where Cleaner Kit wins

Cleaner Kit is one of the most reviewed cleaners on the App Store. It holds 4.44 from 350,825 US ratings and 4.28 from 19,978 UK ratings, checked on 2026-09-25, and has been on the store since 2017-01-26. Roundups from Macgasm (2026-08-17), iOSHacker (2026-09-14) and CleverFiles (2026-05-14) list it. Many reviewers are older users who find it easy: "I'm 70 years old and very handy" (4 stars, 2026-07-27).

It also does far more than Pixtide. Its AI scan finds duplicates, similar and blurry photos, screenshots, Live Photos and bursts for one-tap removal. It cleans a Gmail inbox, merges and backs up contacts, tidies calendars, compresses videos, turns Live Photos into stills (version 5.31, 2026-09-25) and keeps private photos in a Face ID secret folder. It adds large fonts, a high-contrast mode and widgets.

It reaches more phones and more people: iOS 15 or later, where Pixtide needs iOS 18, and 14 languages, where Pixtide's listing is in English. About 80 of the reviews we read credit it with freeing real storage.

How Pixtide works instead

Pixtide does one job: it shows you every photo and video in a set and lets you decide, one swipe at a time. You pick a month, a year, a category (screenshots, videos, selfies, Live Photos, panoramas, favourites or bursts), your recent shots or On This Day, then swipe right to keep, left to delete or down to decide later. There is no AI, so nothing is scored, grouped or pre-selected, and there are no ads, no daily cap and no subscription to unlock more swipes.

Swiping only marks a photo. At the end of a session a review screen shows everything marked, so you can rescue anything before you confirm, and an Undo button under the card steps back through the whole session. Confirmed deletions go to the iPhone's Recently Deleted album for 30 days, as Apple describes in its guide to deleting and recovering photos.

Videos play inline with sound and a scrub bar. Progress is saved, so a year can be sorted over several evenings, and smart reminders send at most one notification a day.

Other Cleaner Kit alternatives

The free replacement for Cleaner Kit's duplicate scan is already on your iPhone. Apple's Photos app has a Duplicates album under Utilities, which merges exact copies with no limit and no subscription, and Media Types albums for screenshots, videos, Live Photos and bursts. Apple's guide to deleting or hiding photos and videos shows how to select many items at once.

If you are comparing other all-in-one cleaners with weekly plans, the Cleanup app alternative page covers Codeway's Cleanup, the AI Cleaner alternative page covers another AI-first cleaner, and the CleanMy®Phone alternative page looks at MacPaw's app, which has a monthly plan and a free tier for some tools. If you want a pure swipe app and are weighing the best-known one, the Swipewipe alternative page compares it with Pixtide.

Decide whether you need a storage suite or a sorting tool. Cleaner Kit is a suite. Pixtide, Apple's Duplicates album and the Photos app together cover the photo part for free.

One honest limitation

Pixtide is narrower than Cleaner Kit, and some of that is a real gap. Pixtide does not detect duplicates or similar photos, so for merging copies use Apple's Duplicates album or a duplicate finder. For burst photos, Pixtide shows and deletes only the representative photo, not every frame. It runs on iPhone only and needs iOS 18 or later, so an older iPhone on iOS 15, 16 or 17 that Cleaner Kit supports cannot run it. The app is in English. It does not compress videos, convert Live Photos, merge contacts, clean email or calendars, or offer a hidden folder. If those jobs are why you installed Cleaner Kit, Pixtide will not replace them.

How we compared

We compared the two apps on the US and UK App Stores on 2026-09-25. For Cleaner Kit we used the App Store listing, the in-app purchase list, the App Privacy label, the version history, Apple's public lookup data for ratings, and 982 unique US reviews. We added third-party sources with their dates: InsanelyMac, HandyRecovery, AppleHeadlines, Connor Tumbleson's write-up and the Surfshark research chart. Theme counts come from our own reading of the reviews and are rounded. When the listing does not mention a feature, this page says exactly that and does not treat it as missing.

Pixtide at a glance

• Free: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no premium tier.
• No ads.
• No AI: you decide every photo.
• Works entirely on your phone: no account, no photo ever uploaded.
• Swiping only marks a photo; you review everything before confirming, and deleted photos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
• Photos and videos, sorted by month, year, category or recent shots.
• iPhone with iOS 18.0 or later.

Pixtide is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Cleaner Kit. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. This comparison reflects publicly available information as of September 2026; pricing and features change, so please check each app's App Store listing for the latest details.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cleaner Kit free?

Cleaner Kit by BPMobile is free to download, and its App Store listing says it offers "essential cleanup tools at no cost". Full access needs a subscription "billed weekly or annually", and the listing says the app contains advertising, checked on 2026-09-25. Third-party reviews in 2025 and 2026 report $6.99 a week, and InsanelyMac described a free limit of 20 files per ad in 2025. Pixtide is free with no ads and no in-app purchases.

Is Cleaner Kit safe to use?

Cleaner Kit's App Store listing says all AI processing happens on the iPhone, and we found nothing suggesting it uploads photos. Its privacy label lists six categories of data used to track you, checked on 2026-09-25, and Surfshark research found it shares the most data among the cleaner apps it studied. Deletions still go to Recently Deleted for 30 days, as with any iPhone app.

What happens when you swipe left in Cleaner Kit?

In Cleaner Kit's swipe mode, photos are grouped by time period, a right swipe keeps a photo and a left swipe moves it to an archive. The listing says you can "review archived photos later or delete them immediately". Some reviewers on the free tier report watching ads to delete. In Pixtide, a left swipe marks a photo and a review screen appears before anything is deleted.

How do I cancel a Cleaner Kit subscription?

Cleaner Kit subscriptions are billed through Apple, so they are cancelled in the iPhone's Settings app: tap your name, then Subscriptions, then Cleaner Kit, then Cancel Subscription. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription. Cancel at least a day before a trial ends to avoid the first charge. Pixtide has no subscription, so there is nothing to cancel.

What is the best free alternative to Cleaner Kit?

It depends on the job. For exact duplicates, Apple's Duplicates album in the Photos app is free and unlimited. For sorting a camera roll one photo at a time, Pixtide is a free swipe cleaner for iPhone with no ads, no subscription and no AI, checked in September 2026. Pixtide does not clean email or contacts, which Cleaner Kit does.