Best Email Cleaner App to Choose in 2025

How to Choose Email Cleaner Apps

When it comes to email management, declaring an app as the absolute "best" can be subjective, as individual preferences and specific needs vary widely. What works seamlessly for one person might not necessarily be the perfect fit for another.

However, most people looking for an app that deletes emails and cleans up mailboxes require the same specific functionalities and unique features regardless of what email provider they use.

As we prepared this list, we looked for options that were compatible with a wide range of email services and operating systems, worked as both an inbox organization tool and email blocking app, plus offered ways to unsubscribe and segment spam messages. We also selected apps that focused on privacy, security, and customer support.

After testing dozens of possible options, our recommended apps to clean up email include:

1. Clean Email: Best Overall
2. Mailstrom: Best Simple Functionality
3. Sanebox: Best for Message Prioritization
4. Leave Me Alone: Best Focused Email Management
5. Chuck Email: Best Quick Email Cleanup
6. Shortwave: Best for Gmail Inbox Zero
7. Canary Mail: Best AI Features
8. BlueMail: Best for Task Management
9. Triage: Best Simple Swipe-Based Management

The Best 9 Apps to Clean Up Email Inbox

2. Mailstrom

Pricing: Free trial; paid subscriptions start at $9/month for 1 email account.

Works on: Web

Mailstrom is an email cleanup tool that helps you organize your inbox and apply actions to hundreds of messages at once.

Here’s how it works: you connect your inbox to Mailstrom and it pulls everything from your account into its system. Then you can use the left menu bar to group and sort messages by sender, subject, size, etc.

Mailstrom will create bundles of messages based on these criteria and you can use the top menu bar to move, delete, archive, block, or unsubscribe from all messages in the bundle. This is great for bulk email delete.

Mailstrom works with almost all IMAP email providers including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, and iCloud. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with POP inboxes so some third-party email services may not connect to Mailstrom.

Check out our Clean Email vs. Mailstrom comparison.

3. Sanebox

Pricing: Free trial available; paid subscriptions start at $7/month for 1 email account and only 2 features included, while the full plan costs $36/month.

Works on: Web, iOS

SaneBox is the best email cleaner app for individuals who enjoy having an organized inbox. It focuses on helping users prioritize important emails and manage inbox distractions efficiently.

When you initially set up SaneBox, it will watch how you manage and sort messages. Then, the app will use smart algorithms to automatically sort your emails into folders based on whether or not the app believes the messages are a high priority.

This leaves you with an inbox containing only important emails, while unimportant messages wind up in "SaneLater.” SaneBox will also place newsletters and similar mailings in "SaneNews” and messages where you aren’t the main recipient into a dedicated “SaneCC” folder.

The app’s Email Deep Clean feature identifies and organizes old or large messages, making it easy to declutter your inbox by removing space-consuming emails in bulk.

SaneBox works with any IMAP email service, making it widely compatible with most notable email providers.

Check out our detailed comparison of SaneBox and Clean Email.

4. Leave Me Alone

Pricing: Free trial; paid subscriptions start at $9/month.

Works on: Web

If you want an app to block and remove you from subscription messages, Leave Me Alone is a good one. Just sign up with your email address (you’ll need to create an app password) and let the app do its thing. Leave Me Alone will curate a list of subscription messages you receive and give you the option to unsubscribe or keep the messages from each sender.

Leave Me Alone also has a feature called “Rollups.” With this you can find a middle ground with some of your subscription messages by adding them to your weekly “rollup” with information from each newsletter’s mailing in a single, scrollable thread.

The downside is that Leave Me Alone only focuses on subscriptions and can’t clean up other unwanted emails, like old messages, large attachments, or emails from inactive contacts, so your inbox will still be cluttered.

Leave Me Alone works with most major email providers including AOL, Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, and Yahoo.

5. Chuck Email

Pricing: Free version available with limited functionality; Pro version starts from $9.99/month.

Works on: macOS, iOS

If you exclusively use Apple products, then Chuck Email may be the free email cleaner app for you. Like most of the other best email cleaner app options we’ve evaluated, Chuck Email offers many notable features, including a filtering tool, unsubscribe feature, and messaging groups to make bulk actions easy.

However, what makes Chuck a bit different than most other email cleanup tools is the fact that it lets you combine inboxes. Instead of logging into the email clean up app separately for each inbox you want to perform actions in, you can add all of your inboxes to a single Chuck account in a few quick steps. Then you can view, sort, and manage everything from all of your inboxes in one place.

The downside is that Chuck processes messages locally, limiting cleanup to a few thousand at a time, making it time-consuming for large inboxes. Additionally, its desktop experience relies on Mailstrom (sibling product), which lacks integration with Chuck’s mobile features, creating a fragmented user experience.

Chuck Email works with nearly all IMAP email clients, including Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Comcast Xfinity, Outlook, Mail.com, Office365, Fast Mail, and iCloud.

Read more about how Chuck Email differs from Clean Email.

6. Shortwave

Pricing: Free basic version for individuals; premium features start at $8.50/month for personal use and from $18/month per user for business (if billed monthly)

Works on: Desktop (Windows and Mac), iOS, Android

Shortwave is an email declutter app that helps you get to inbox zero. It’s different from any other inbox cleaner on this list. The app has tools specifically designed to organize your emails using the Shortwave Method.

📌 But unlike some competitors, Shortwave doesn’t allow users to set rules for auto deletion or archiving of recurring unwanted emails.

Shortwave’s new stars and todos features help with task management by separating simple and complex tasks into dedicated workflows:

✅ Stars let you flag high-priority tasks, and display them in a concise, reorderable section at the top of your inbox for quick action. They’re great for lightweight, time-sensitive tasks you need to keep visible throughout the day.

✅ Todos enable more robust task organization, where you can name and group related threads for managing larger, more detailed projects. AI-assisted naming and grouping makes it easy to keep tasks clear and organized in a dedicated "Todos" tab.

Shortwave also has advanced customization features like Inbox Splits, bundles, and delivery schedules to organize your inbox to your workflow.

Its AI Assistant is another big feature, with smart suggestions for replies, drafting emails, summarizing long threads, and scheduling meetings or managing your calendar.

While its approach is powerful, the learning curve can be steep for users not familiar with its workflows. And Shortwave is only available as a Gmail cleaner app and doesn’t work with any other email providers.

7. Canary Mail

Pricing: Forever free for personal use; paid plans start at $36/year (no monthly plans)

Works on: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS

If you want a free email cleaner app with AI powered tools and features then check out Canary Mail. With AI, Canary Mail can create a list of priority messages, summarize long emails, send quick replies, and more.

For email cleanup Canary Mail has tools like the Bulk Cleaner feature which allows you to select and remove multiple emails at once. You can also block specific senders or entire domains from your inbox so unwanted emails don’t clutter your mailbox.

Canary Mail is also very focused on privacy with end-to-end encryption with PGP and SecureSend. This makes it a great choice for professionals handling sensitive information like healthcare providers who need HIPAA compliance.

Canary Mail works with most major email clients and offers a unified inbox for those who link multiple accounts in a single Canary Mail login.

8. BlueMail

Pricing: Free plan available; premium subscriptions start at $5/month

Works on: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux

Part of the reason why many inboxes remain cluttered is because people save emails that require action, even if that action is a task that occurs outside of email. With BlueMail, you get an email cleaning app and task management tool combined, meaning you no longer have to hold onto every message you receive.

With the Get Stuff Done tool, you can flag messages that require follow-up or action. This flag will add them to your task list, and you will receive a reminder notification at the time you specified. Once you mark an email as “done,” the email moves out of the way so it’s no longer cluttering your inbox.

BlueMail also has other cool inbox cleanup tools like Clusters which group emails by sender or type and Unified Inbox which combines all your accounts into one view for easier management.

Plus you can use One-Tap Unsubscribe to remove yourself from unwanted newsletters and promotional emails and GemAI assistant to save time with summaries and drafting help.

BlueMail works with most IMAP, SMTP, Exchange ActiveSync, and POP3 email providers and across all platforms.

9. Triage

Price: Free version available; the paid plan unlocks additional features for $11.99/year

Works on: iPhone

The inbox cleaner Triage is back and better than ever in its second iteration. Although it is exclusively available for iPhone, it’s a completely different email organizer than any other apps to clean up email we’ve seen.

With Triage, your emails appear like a stack of cards, much like profiles do within dating apps. As you view the top message, you can swipe left to archive or right to keep, and finally get to inbox zero. You can also read messages in their entirety and compose replies, all from the Triage app without leaving the interface.

📌 It's important to note that Triage does not delete messages; it only archives them. While this makes your inbox appear clean, the messages remain stored, which does not truly empty your inbox.

What’s important, Triage ensures all data processing happens entirely on your device, preserving your privacy. Your data remains yours, with no access granted to Triage’s developers. Metadata, such as account preferences, is end-to-end encrypted and stored securely in iCloud, and is private to your account.

Although Triage is fairly bare-bones in what it offers compared to its competitors, it is a truly unique inbox cleaner app that works well for its intended audience of younger adults who want to quickly clear out the clutter. It is also compatible with most major IMAP email organizers, like Gmail, iCloud, and others.

Final Thoughts

One of the best email management tips you will find is using an email cleaner app to help you sort, filter, and remove unneeded messages from your mailbox. Luckily, all of the tools we compared in this review do just that. Now it’s time to decide which features, pricing, and platforms look most appealing to you so you can start decluttering your email and spending less time in your inbox each day.