CCleaner has been the default answer to "how do I clean up my PC" for two decades, but it's not the only option, and for a lot of people it's no longer the best one: a registry cleaner with real risk and little benefit, a paid tier pushed harder each year, and features that increasingly nudge toward an upsell. Here are three free alternatives worth knowing about, and what each one actually does best.
PurgeCore starts from a different question than CCleaner: not "what can I clean" but "what's actually using my space." It combines disk space analysis (largest files and folders, storage by category), a duplicate finder that matches files by content, browser cleanup for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, a program uninstaller, startup manager, RAM check, DNS cache flush, and battery health reporting on laptops, all with every deletion going to the Recycle Bin and a green/orange/red risk indicator before anything happens. There's no registry cleaner by design, and no paid tier at all.
Best for: people who want disk analysis and cleanup together in one place, without a registry cleaner or upsell prompts. Full comparison with CCleaner →
BleachBit has been open source since 2008, with hundreds of application-specific cleaners extendable through community-maintained definitions. It can securely overwrite deleted files so they're not recoverable, useful if you're disposing of a drive. It doesn't do disk space analysis or duplicate finding, it's a cleaner first.
Best for: privacy-focused users who want to inspect exactly what a cleaner does, or specifically need files erased for good rather than recoverable. Full comparison with BleachBit →
WinDirStat has answered "where did my disk space go" since 2003 with its treemap visualization, every file drawn as a rectangle sized to its weight. It's simple, fast, and still actively maintained, but it's a visualizer more than a cleaner: no duplicate finder, no browser cleanup, no startup manager.
Best for: a quick, no-frills visual answer to where your space went, especially for IT professionals troubleshooting someone else's machine. Full comparison with WinDirStat →
If you want one tool that covers disk analysis, duplicates, browser cleanup, and basic PC maintenance without a registry cleaner or paid tier, PurgeCore covers the most ground. If open source and secure deletion matter most to you, BleachBit. If you just want the clearest visual picture of what's eating your disk, WinDirStat. None of the three will try to sell you anything.
Want to see what's actually using your space before deciding what to clean? That's the first screen PurgeCore shows you.
Free forever, no account, no trial.
Download for WindowsNo commercial code-signing certificate yet, so Windows may show a brief "unknown publisher" warning on first run. The source is public on GitHub, and each release is published with a SHA-256 checksum you can verify.