A Free Sifty Alternative With No Daily Swipe Limit

Sifty: Swipe Photo Cleaner, made by Spruzzo Labs in Canada, is an iPhone swipe cleaner that is free for 40 photos a day, then $3.99 a week or $29.99 a year for Sifty Pro, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. It launched on 2025-10-21 and was last updated on 2026-07-14. Pixtide is free with no daily limit, no subscription and no in-app purchases, checked on the same day.

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

Prices and facts verified on the App Store on 2026-09-25.

The two big differences: the daily cap and the third swipe

Sifty's free tier stops at 40 photos a day, a limit its developer raised to 40 in version 1.0.2 on 2025-10-28, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. Past that, Sifty Pro costs $3.99 a week or $29.99 a year, and there is no lifetime purchase and no free trial. Pixtide has no cap, so you can sort 40 photos or 4,000 in one sitting. At 40 a day, 4,000 photos take 100 days.

The second difference is what a swipe down does. In Sifty, down files the photo into an album. In Pixtide, down sends it to a Decide Later queue, so the photo you cannot make up your mind about stops blocking the session and waits for you at the end.

Everything else is closer than you might expect. Both apps deal your library one photo at a time, month by month, save your progress, and stage left swipes for review instead of deleting them on the spot. Sifty's own pitch is "Sifty deals your camera roll one photo at a time", and that describes Pixtide too. Sifty's listing does not mention AI, and Pixtide has none: in both apps you decide every photo.

Start with Apple's free built-in tools

Before any third-party app, it is worth knowing what your iPhone already does for free:

• Utilities > Duplicates finds exact and near-exact duplicate photos and lets you merge them.
• Media Types auto-sorts Screenshots, Videos, Selfies, Live Photos, Panoramas and more: no AI required, just media tags.
• Recently Deleted keeps anything you remove for 30 days, so deletions are recoverable, as Apple Support explains.
• Settings > General > iPhone Storage and Optimize Storage help you see and reclaim space.

These handle duplicates and storage math well. What they do not give you is a fast, one-photo-at-a-time swipe flow for the rest of your library. That manual swipe layer is exactly where a tool like Sifty or Pixtide fits in.

Sifty and Pixtide side by side

Every Sifty figure comes from its App Store page, checked on 2026-09-25. Sifty is a 5 MB download and its listing is in English only.

How Pixtide keeps your photos safe

Deleting from your camera roll feels risky, so Pixtide uses a triple safety net:

1. Swiping only marks. Nothing is deleted while you sort: a left swipe just tags a photo for removal.
2. A Review screen. Before anything is removed, you see everything marked for deletion and can rescue any photo you changed your mind about.
3. Recently Deleted. Confirmed deletes go to iOS Recently Deleted, recoverable for 30 days. Pixtide uses Apple's PhotoKit (PHAssetChangeRequest), so deletes behave exactly like they do in the Photos app: nothing exotic happening behind the scenes. For the full picture, see where deleted photos go on iPhone.

Sifty works the same way on the first two points. Its listing says "Photos you swipe left are staged, not deleted", and every app that deletes through the Photos library lands in the same 30-day Recently Deleted window. To get a photo back from either app, open Photos, go to Recently Deleted and tap Recover, following Apple's steps for deleted photos. On safety, the two apps are close to equal.

Built for momentum, not interruptions

Sifty frames its daily cap as a habit. Its listing calls the app "A ritual, not a chore. Five minutes a day." If a few minutes each evening suits you, 40 photos is a reasonable daily dose, and Sifty's per-month recap rewards finishing a month.

The cap bites when you want to clear a backlog in one go: a weekend with 3,000 old photos becomes 75 days at 40 a day, or $3.99 for a week of Sifty Pro. Pixtide leans on momentum instead. You can sort month-by-month or by whole year, progress saves so you can resume mid-session, and lightweight gamification (streaks, levels from Photo Rookie to Storage Guru, and a shareable stats card) gives you a reason to come back. Smart reminders are optional and capped at one a day.

You can also filter by category: screenshots, videos, selfies, Live Photos, panoramas, favorites, bursts. Those filters mirror iOS media-type tags, so it is the same honest, non-AI sorting Apple already does, surfaced inside a fast swipe interface. Videos play inline with sound, so you can check a clip before you delete it.

Where Sifty wins

Sifty is the better pick in several concrete cases, all checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25:

• Privacy label: Data Not Collected, against Pixtide's Data Not Linked to You. Pixtide's anonymous statistics can be switched off in Settings, but Sifty's label is the stronger one.
• Likely duplicates: its listing says Sifty surfaces likely duplicates while you sort. Pixtide does not.
• More devices: Sifty also runs on Apple silicon Macs and visionOS. Pixtide is iPhone only.
• Sort order: newest, oldest or random order inside a month deck.
• Small download: 5 MB.
• A short daily habit: if five minutes a day is all you want, the 40-photo cap may never get in your way, and you never pay.

One honest limitation

Pixtide does not detect duplicates or similar shots. Sifty's listing says it surfaces likely duplicates; for true copies, Apple's built-in Duplicates album in Photos does the job for free. Pixtide also shows only the representative photo of a burst, and deleting it removes the representative only, so prune individual burst frames in the Photos app. Full burst handling is on the roadmap. Pixtide is iPhone only and needs iOS 18.0 or later.

If those matter to you, that is a fair reason to keep Sifty in the mix, or to lean on Apple's tools alongside Pixtide.

Which should you pick?

Choose Sifty if you want a five-minute daily ritual, a Data Not Collected privacy label, likely-duplicate hints, or an app that also runs on a Mac, and you are comfortable with 40 photos a day (or $3.99 a week or $29.99 a year to lift it).

Choose Pixtide if you want to swipe as much as you like for free, decide every photo yourself, keep maybes in a Decide Later queue and watch videos before you delete them. There is no AI, no subscription, no ads and no swipe limit, just a fast manual layer on top of the safety nets your iPhone already has.

If you are also weighing other swipe cleaners, it is worth comparing a free swipe photo cleaner with no subscription, checking which photo cleaner apps are free, and reading Pixtide vs Swipewipe before you commit. And if you would rather just start swiping through your camera roll without counting toward a daily limit, Pixtide is free on the App Store.

Pixtide is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Sifty. 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.

Clean your camera roll, your way

Pixtide makes the manual swipe-through fast. You decide every photo, nothing is deleted until you confirm, and everything stays on your device. Free, no ads, no subscription.