5 Best Apps to Delete Duplicate Photos on an iPhone (Free & Paid)

Taking multiple shots to capture that perfect moment is a habit many of us share, and for good reason. But the problem with this habit is that all those “just in case” photos end up hogging precious storage space on our iPhones and cluttering our photo galleries. Fortunately, there are excellent apps to delete duplicate photos on iPhone with ease, and I’ve narrowed them down to the top five best free and paid options for you.

1. Clever Cleaner: AI CleanUp App

It didn’t take long after its release for Clever Cleaner app to become my favorite free app to clean up duplicate photos. Unlike many other similar apps that claim to be free but hide essential features behind paywalls, Clever Cleaner is genuinely 100% free—no ads, no pop-ups, and no hidden limitations whatsoever.

Despite its completely free and unrestricted nature, Clever Cleaner implements advanced AI algorithms to detect both exact duplicates and visually similar photos with impressive accuracy and efficiency. During my testing, it scanned my entire photo library of over 12,000 photos faster than any other app I tried. After scanning, it presented me with a comprehensive overview of all found duplicates, allowing me to either review duplicates manually or use the Smart Cleanup button to let the AI automatically select the best photo from each duplicate set.

All duplicates deleted using Clever Cleaner go to a Trash folder, so you can change your mind later and undelete any with a few simple taps. Beyond duplicate detection, Clever Cleaner can identify screenshots, help you manage Live Photos (those moving images that capture 1.5 seconds of video before and after the shot), and reveal the largest media files on your device. All these features are organized into four main tabs, and the entire user interface is modern and designed with the latest user experience recommendations in mind.

Price: Completely free with no in-app purchases or subscription fees.

2. Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner

Unlike Clever Cleaner and CleanMyPhone, Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner is more than an app to get rid of duplicate photos because it can handle not just duplicate photos but also your contacts.

As far as Cleanup’s photo cleaning capabilities go, the app’s simple yet effective swipe-based interface (right to keep, left to remove) and intelligently analyzes your photos to suggest which ones to keep based on factors like focus quality, facial expressions, and whether subjects are looking at the camera.

As user G5gold notes in their App Store review, “This app makes finding and eliminating similar and duplicate photos much easier than it would be if I were just scrolling through the thousands in my library.” That said, some users have reported that the deletion process can be inconsistent, requiring multiple attempts to remove selected photos. I haven’t experienced these issues myself during testing, but it’s worth mentioning that your mileage may vary.

The contact merging feature is nice, but I suspect that many people who are reading this article won’t care much about it. If you’re among them, then you might instead care about the handy widgets that come with the app and give you a nice overview of your current storage space utilization, as well as one-click access to the Cleanup app itself.

Price: Free with a 7-day trial, then $29.99/year or various weekly subscription options starting at $3.99.

3. Clean Your Photos for iPhone

Clean Your Photos for iPhone is another multipurpose app that can handle not just photo duplicates but also videos, contacts, and even calendar events. Included with this best photo cleaner app for iPhone is also a battery monitor feature, but it feels more like an afterthought than a genuinely useful addition.

To stand out in the large sea of iPhone cleaning apps, Clean Your Photos for iPhone offers some unique media-cleaning features like the ability to compress photos and videos without quality loss and a handy large file finder that helps you quickly identify storage hogs.

During my testing, the duplicate detection worked reliably enough, though I found the constant barrage of pop-ups asking for reviews after virtually every action incredibly annoying—something I didn’t experience with any other app on this list.

Price: Free to try. A subscription or lifetime license ($39.99) required to unlock all functionality.

4. Duplicate Cleaner App

Duplicate Cleaner App is a straightforward free duplicate photo cleaner that’s surprisingly thorough at finding duplicates that other apps miss, it can sometimes be overly aggressive in what it considers “similar” photos. For example, during my testing, it frequently flagged photos taken at different times of the same location as duplicates, even when they featured different people or lighting conditions.

I also found the thumbnail previews to be a bit too small for comfortable viewing, which can make it tricky to make quick decisions about which photos to keep. This only adds to the frustration when dealing with similar-but-not-identical photos, as you often need to tap each thumbnail to view it full screen before making a decision—a process that quickly becomes tedious when going through hundreds of photos.

The app hasn’t seen any major feature updates in quite a while, with recent versions mostly focusing on bug fixes. However, if you’re simply looking for a reliable free app to clean up duplicate photos, Duplicate Cleaner App still does its job well enough, especially considering it doesn’t show any ads despite being completely free.

Price: Completely free with no in-app purchases or subscription fees.

5. Remo Duplicate Photos Remover

The main reason why Remo Duplicate Photos Remover lands in last place on my list of the best apps to delete duplicate photos on iPhone is the fact that it hasn’t been updated since 2021. While this free duplicate photo cleaner still functions, its dated interface and potential compatibility issues with newer iOS versions make it hard to recommend as a top choice.

The lack of updates also seems to be reflected in Remo’s accuracy, which has been the topic of several negative reviews. As user InIphonehell notes, “Out of at least 700 duplicate Live Photos the app only found 8 duplicates.” While the developer suggests this might be due to how iOS handles certain types of photos, I found similar inconsistencies in my testing with regular photos as well. What’s more, scanning takes much, much, much longer than it does with the other cleaners I’ve tested.

That said, one positive aspect of the app’s lack of updates is its compatibility with older iOS versions – it runs even on iOS 9. So if you happen to have an ancient iPhone filled with duplicate photos that you need to clean up, this free app to remove duplicate photos might be exactly what you need.

Price: Completely free with no in-app purchases or subscriptions required.

Can You Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone Without an App?

Yes, you can delete duplicate photos on iPhone without an app through the built-in Duplicates album feature that Apple . While it’s a welcome addition to iOS, it comes with several significant limitations compared to dedicated solutions.

iOS’s duplicate detection can identify both exact copies with different metadata and photos that appear identical but have different resolutions or file formats. However, what the best app to delete duplicate photos on iPhone can do better is identify similar photos taken in burst mode or slightly different angles of the same subject – photos that aren’t technically duplicates but still take up unnecessary space.

Another limitation is that iOS’s duplicate detection happens in the background and can take quite some time to complete. In contrast, a dedicated photo cleaner app for iPhone can scan your entire library in minutes. The native feature also doesn’t give you any control over the scanning process, and it displays all found duplicates together without any categorization.

That said, since it’s already on your device, you might want to try it before investing in a dedicated solution. Here’s how to use the built-in duplicate photo detection:

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone
2. Scroll down until you see the Utilities section.
3. Tap on Duplicates.
4. Go through the found duplicates.
5. Tap Merge next to each pair of duplicates to keep the highest quality version and delete the others.

FAQ