DaisyDisk alternatives for Mac: free and paid, and what each is for

16 September 2026

DaisyDisk is the app people reach for when a Mac fills up: a sunburst chart of the disk, click a wedge to zoom in, drag things to delete. It is $9.99 and it is good at what it does. But it does one thing, showing you the disk, and the moment you see that ~/Library is 90 GB you are on your own deciding what inside it is safe. Here are the alternatives, what each one is actually for, and what they cost.

Free

GrandPerspective

Open source, since 2005, and still the purest treemap on the Mac: every file is a rectangle, size is area. Scans are fast and it will happily map a whole 2 TB drive. No cleaning logic, no explanation of what anything is, and the interface looks its age. Free on its site, a few dollars on the App Store if you want to support it.

OmniDiskSweeper

Also free, from the Omni Group. A column browser sorted by size, like Finder in list view but honest about sizes. Quick, plain, and it can delete. Same caveat: it shows you 30 GB of CoreSimulator and leaves the judgement to you.

Disk Inventory X

The original Mac treemap. Rarely updated now and it struggles with Apple Silicon and newer macOS, so treat it as a last resort.

ddeploy, free tier

Our own. Scanning is free with no limits: a treemap and a size list of any folder, the System Data breakdown, big files, duplicates, apps with their hidden data, memory. Everything is labelled Safe or Review First with a one-line explanation of what happens if you remove it, which is the part the analyzers above leave out. The first clean is free too.

Paid

DaisyDisk, $9.99 once

The prettiest chart of the bunch and a fine choice if all you want is a picture. It has no idea what Xcode, Docker or WhatsApp are, so on a developer Mac you will be looking up folder names.

CleanMyMac, from $39.95 a year

The other direction: a subscription suite with a malware scanner, an uninstaller, a duplicate finder, an updater and a menu bar monitor. It is thorough for everyday Macs and it is the only one here with malware scanning. Where it falls short is developer caches: simulator runtimes, NDKs, node_modules and build folders are invisible to it, and those are usually the biggest items on a dev machine. It also asks for a subscription for a job most people do a few times a year.

ddeploy Pro, $9.99 once

Unlimited cleaning on one Mac, for life. Old simulator runtimes with the newest kept, Docker, DerivedData, NDKs, project build folders with the git branch shown, AI model caches, WhatsApp media chat by chat, plus the everyday items: old downloads, caches, iPhone backups, unused apps, duplicates, app uninstalls with leftovers. Runs offline, no account. Signed and notarized by Apple.

Which one

• You just want to see the disk: GrandPerspective, free.
• You want a pretty picture and don't mind deciding what's safe yourself: DaisyDisk.
• You want malware scanning and don't mind a subscription: CleanMyMac.
• You write code, or you want to be told what's safe: ddeploy.

Whatever you pick, check Time Machine snapshots first. Deleting 50 GB and seeing nothing change is almost always a snapshot still holding it, and none of the analyzers show that. ddeploy's Hidden System Files screen does.