Mac maintenance
Sweep vs Maintenance App: Which Is Right for You?
Maintenance is a free Mac utility for routine cleanup. Sweep is a paid cleaner with broader features. An honest side-by-side.
Maintenance is the simpler sibling of OnyX, also made by Titanium Software in France, also free. It strips OnyX down to just the routine maintenance tasks — run the cron scripts, clean the user caches, rebuild a few system caches. If you’ve stumbled across it and wondered whether it’s all you need, or whether a paid app like Sweep adds enough to justify the cost, this comparison is for you.
What Maintenance actually does
Maintenance is a focused subset of OnyX. Open the app, click a few checkboxes, hit “Execute,” and it runs:
- macOS daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts (rotate logs, clean tmp dirs)
- User cache cleanup
- System cache cleanup
- Mail download cache cleanup
- LaunchServices database rebuild
- A few smaller items
It does this in maybe 60 seconds and then quits. It’s free. It’s notarized. Joël Barrière at Titanium Software has been releasing versions for every macOS release since the Tiger era.
What Sweep is
Sweep is a Mac cleaner with an app uninstaller and privacy tools. Caches, logs, language files, downloads, app leftovers, RAM freeing, permission auditing. Free download with a paid tier for the full feature set.
Try Sweep yourselfFree download. Decide in 5 minutes whether it’s the cleaner you want. Get Sweep →
Feature comparison
| Feature | Maintenance | Sweep |
|---|---|---|
| Run macOS maintenance scripts | Yes | No |
| User cache cleanup | Yes | Yes |
| System cache cleanup | Yes | Yes |
| Browser data cleanup | No | Yes |
| Language file removal | No | Yes |
| App uninstaller | No | Yes |
| Privacy auditing | No | Yes |
| RAM freeing | No | Yes |
| Preview before delete | No (just runs) | Yes |
| Categorized scan results | No | Yes |
| Price | Free | Free tier + paid plans |
These overlap less than the names suggest. Maintenance is a checklist runner. Sweep is a cleaner with curated scans.
Pricing
Maintenance is free. Sweep has a free download with paid plans starting at monthly subscriptions and going up to one-time licenses with free updates forever.
If price is your only criterion, Maintenance wins. It’s been free for 20 years and shows no sign of changing.
Where Maintenance genuinely wins
Crediting fairly:
- Truly free. Not freemium, not trial — just free.
- Runs the macOS maintenance scripts. These are the daily/weekly/monthly cron jobs that ship with every Mac. They run automatically at 3:15, 4:30, and 5:30 AM if your Mac is awake; if it sleeps through them, they don’t run. Maintenance lets you run them on demand.
- Tiny download, tiny footprint. Under 5 MB.
- No telemetry, no upsell. Joël accepts donations and that’s the entire business model.
- Targeted at people who know what they want. The UI assumes you understand what each task does. If you do, that’s efficient.
If you specifically want the macOS maintenance scripts run on demand and nothing else, Maintenance is the right tool.
Where Sweep wins
- App uninstaller. Maintenance can’t touch this.
- Privacy auditing. No equivalent in Maintenance.
- Preview before delete. Maintenance just runs; you trust it. Sweep shows you what it’s about to remove.
- Browser cache categorization. Sweep groups Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Brave, Arc separately so you can clean some without clearing others.
- Language file cleanup. A real space saver Maintenance doesn’t include.
- RAM freeing. Different function, but useful.
- Modern UI. Maintenance has the dense Titanium house style. Sweep is built around standard Mac design conventions.
The “do I even need this?” question
Honest answer for Maintenance: most modern Macs run the maintenance scripts on schedule because they don’t sleep through 3 AM the way old desktops did. macOS also handles cache rotation pretty well on its own. If you have a 2022 MacBook that you close and reopen daily, you probably don’t need Maintenance at all.
Where it earns its keep: Macs that are powered off overnight, kept on a dock that lets them sleep deeply, or are old enough (2015 or earlier) that the scripts haven’t run in a while. Running Maintenance once a quarter on those machines does help.
For Sweep, the question is different. You don’t need a cleaner the way you don’t need any maintenance app. macOS works fine on its own for years. But you’ll notice the difference when you uninstall apps cleanly, when you reclaim 1+ GB of language files from Adobe Creative Cloud, or when you realize seven apps still have microphone permission you forgot you granted.
Want a calmer cleaner?Sweep does the cleaning without the upsell carousel. Try Sweep free →
Use cases mapped
“I want the macOS maintenance scripts run on demand.” Maintenance. Free. Done.
“I want a routine monthly cleanup of my Mac.” Sweep. Caches, language files, browser data, all in one preview-then-clean flow.
“I want to uninstall apps cleanly.” Sweep. Maintenance doesn’t do this.
“I want to audit which apps have microphone or camera access.” Sweep. Maintenance doesn’t do this either.
“I want both.” Run Maintenance once a quarter for the scripts, Sweep monthly for the cleanup. They don’t conflict.
On the philosophical level
Maintenance and Sweep represent two different ideas of what a Mac utility should be. Maintenance says: here are commands the OS already has, with a friendly button. Sweep says: here’s a curated list of things you can clean, with a preview, plus tools the OS doesn’t have built in.
Both are valid. Neither is trying to be the other.
Bottom line
Pick Maintenance if:
- You want exactly the macOS maintenance scripts and nothing else
- You’re price-sensitive
- You’re comfortable with a checklist UI
Pick Sweep if:
- You want a broader cleaner with uninstaller and privacy tools
- You want preview-before-delete
- You’d like the modern Mac-native interface
Maintenance is free, so trying it costs nothing. Sweep has a free download, so trying it also costs nothing. There’s no reason not to try both.