SaneBox vs Clean Email

SaneBox is for people who want new mail sorted for them every day, by the sender and subject, without changing mail apps. Clean Email is for people who want to clear out the mail they already have, in bulk, and unsubscribe from lists. Pick SaneBox to keep your Inbox short from here on, and Clean Email to dig out of a full mailbox. For iCloud, Gmail or Outlook on a computer, Alrighty is a third option that does the stopping inside your mail app.

Both are services, not mail apps. They connect to your mailbox and work on it from their own servers, so you keep reading mail in Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail or anything else. The facts below come from each company's own pages as of November 2026. Alrighty is our app, and it comes after the two are compared.

What is the difference between SaneBox and Clean Email?

SaneBox files new mail as it arrives. Clean Email cleans up the mail already there, and runs rules you set on new mail.

SaneBox moves mail it thinks can wait into folders in your own mailbox, such as @SaneLater, based on headers "(sender, subject, etc.)" (SaneBox). It learns from you: "Moving an email back to your Inbox 'retrains' SaneBox for future messages." Because the folders live on your mail server, "you can access them from any device or email client."

Clean Email groups the mail you have by sender and type so you can delete, archive or unsubscribe from thousands of messages at once. Its tagline is "Clean your inbox of emails you don't need. Then keep it clean" (Clean Email). The "keep it clean" part is Auto Clean: rules you write that "apply selected rules and actions to emails arriving to your mailbox without any manual work." You write those rules yourself.

SaneBox vs Clean Email at a glance

	Alrighty	SaneBox	Clean Email
What it is	A desktop mail app	A sorting service for the mailbox you have	A cleaning service for the mailbox you have
Runs on	Mac (Apple silicon), Windows, Linux	Any mail app on any device	iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, web
Accounts	iCloud, Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft 365	Gmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail, IMAP, Exchange	Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, Fastmail, IMAP
Price	14-day trial with no card, then Free or Pro	From $9.49 a month or $65 a year; no free plan	Free up to 1,000 messages; paid from $9.99 a month
What it reads	Copy on your computer; Clean up sends a few emails per sender to its server	Headers only, unless you turn on AI	Metadata indexed on its servers; bodies when you preview
Unwanted mail	Stop mail unsubscribes and keeps the sender out	SaneBlackHole files a sender's mail, then trashes it after 7 days	Unsubscriber sends requests and blocks lists that ignore them
Old mail	Select and delete in the app	Email Deep Clean	Bulk actions on grouped mail
AI	Signed in, reply drafts and Clean up run by themselves; your own AI is off until you turn it on	Optional summaries and drafts	Cleaning Suggestions; an AI assistant only if you connect one

Is SaneBox or Clean Email cheaper?

Clean Email is cheaper to start, because it has a free tier and SaneBox doesn't. For one account, the monthly prices are close: $9.49 for SaneBox Snack and $9.99 for Clean Email.

SaneBox. Its pricing page holds three plans. The amounts load after the page opens, so they don't show in every browser:

• Snack, one account and a few features: $9.49 a month, $65 a year, or $109 for two years.
• Lunch, two accounts and more features: $15.99 a month, $109 a year, or $179 for two years.
• Dinner, four accounts and every feature: $42.99 a month, $319 a year, or $529 for two years.

The account counts come from its plans help page. A separate help page says plans "start at just $7 per month" (SaneBox). There is no free plan. The trial is 7 days with no credit card on its home page and plans help page, but that same help page says "two weeks."

Clean Email. A free account "lets you clean up to 1,000 email messages at no cost to you," and a 14-day trial of every Premium feature, "plus 25 unsubscribe actions," needs no card (help). Paid plans cover 1, 5 or 10 accounts (plans), and run "From $9.99/month per 1 account to $99.99/year for 10 accounts, all features included on every paid plan" by Clean Email's own figures (Clean Email).

The plan structure is the bigger difference. SaneBox's cheaper plans hold back features. Clean Email gives every paid plan every feature and charges by the number of accounts.

Which one unsubscribes you from lists?

Clean Email unsubscribes as its main job. SaneBox mostly files a sender away, with unsubscribing as an option.

Clean Email. "Clean Email will send unsubscribe requests on your behalf," and it can block "mailing lists and senders who do not respect such requests" (Clean Email). For lists you want to keep, it offers "Read Later, Pause, or Keep Newest."

SaneBox. Drag a message to @SaneBlackHole, and SaneBox will "always send future emails from that sender straight to SaneBlackHole." "After 7 days, SaneBox moves them to your Trash folder" (SaneBox). A setting "allows you to automatically unsubscribe from mailing lists by training them to SaneBlackHole," and its page doesn't say whether that setting starts on. Its home page also says it "Unsubscribes you from unwanted senders in one click" (SaneBox).

If the goal is fewer emails sent to you, Clean Email is built for that. If the goal is fewer emails in front of you, SaneBox's folders do it with less effort.

Which is better for clearing out old email?

Clean Email. Bulk cleanup is the center of the product: it groups years of mail by sender and lets you act on all of it, from a phone or the web.

SaneBox has a tool for this too. Email Deep Clean scans for mail older than a date you pick, groups it by sender, and lets you "filter by size, date, and type" before you move a sender's mail to the Trash (SaneBox). Its help page doesn't say which plans include it. It's one tool on SaneBox's Tools page, where Clean Email's whole app is built around this job.

Does SaneBox or Clean Email read your emails?

Both read the headers of your mail from their servers. SaneBox says it reads only headers unless you turn on AI. Clean Email keeps an index of your mailbox and opens a body when you ask for a preview.

SaneBox. "We only access the envelope and header data associated with your emails," and "All email resides on the customer's email server and is never held on SaneBox servers" (privacy). If you turn on its AI features, "SaneBox may now process the body content of your emails," but "We never store the full body of your emails after processing is complete" and "We never use your email content to train AI models." Data is deleted when you cancel, and activity logs older than 30 days are removed.

Clean Email. It "accesses email metadata, including sender and recipient details, subjects, dates, folders, labels," and when you ask for a full preview, "we also retrieve and process the selected message body so it can be displayed" (privacy). Indexed data "is automatically deleted from our servers 45 days after your last login," as long as no subscription is active.

Neither sells your data, by its own words. SaneBox says "we do not sell your personal data in any manner," and Clean Email says "We will never sell or rent your email address."

Do SaneBox and Clean Email work on iPhone and Mac?

Yes, in different ways. SaneBox has nothing to install: its folders appear in whatever mail app you use, on any device. Clean Email has its own apps: it "works across iPhone and iPad, Android, Mac, and the web" (Clean Email).

So with SaneBox you train it by moving mail in the app you already use, on your phone or your Mac. With Clean Email you open its app or website when you want to clean.

Does either one have AI?

SaneBox has more of it, and it's optional. Its home page lists SaneDrafts ("Instant email drafts to review and send"), SaneSummary, Digest Plus and SaneNoReplies Plus (SaneBox). Its privacy policy says these are "entirely optional and clearly marked in the product."

Clean Email lists Cleaning Suggestions and doesn't make AI a headline feature. Its privacy policy covers connecting an AI assistant such as ChatGPT to your Clean Email account, and says it shares nothing with one "unless" you connect and authorize it (privacy).

Alrighty: a third option on your computer

If you read mail on a computer with iCloud, Gmail or Outlook, Alrighty does the stopping inside the mail app itself, instead of in a service that connects to your mailbox.

• Stop mail unsubscribes in every way the message offers (one-click, an email to the list, or the list's page), archives the sender's mail, and moves their new mail out as it arrives. It only contacts senders whose mail passed DMARC and wasn't marked as spam, so a scammer never learns your address is live.
• Clean up lists the senders you probably don't want, such as scams, cold outreach and newsletters you never open, so you can stop them all at once.
• Groups sort new mail with AI on Pro and during the trial, which is the closest match to SaneLater. Filters move a kind of mail you describe, like cold sales, to Archive.

What it reads. Your mail stays with your provider, and Alrighty keeps its copy and search index on your computer. Your passwords and tokens stay on your computer, where SaneBox and Clean Email both hold access to your mailbox on their servers. Clean up does send mail out: each sender's address, three facts the receiving server found, and up to 3 of their newest emails (up to 2,000 characters each) go to Alrighty's server, which asks Jev from TypeSafe AI to sort them. Signed in, Clean up runs in the background, and opening a reply starts a suggested draft through OpenAI. Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.

Price. A 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro. Free has a small monthly AI allowance and no sorting into groups.

What it can't do. It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, but has no iPhone, Android or web app. It takes iCloud, Gmail and Outlook only, not Yahoo, AOL, Fastmail or other IMAP accounts, which both SaneBox and Clean Email handle. It doesn't screen first-time senders, and it has no daily digest. You switch mail apps to use it, and it's new, with no long track record.

Which should you pick?

• You read mail on a computer with iCloud, Gmail or Outlook, and want senders stopped in the app you read in, with your logins kept on your computer: Alrighty.
• You want new mail sorted every day without changing apps or devices: SaneBox.
• You want reminders, snooze and AI summaries alongside the sorting: SaneBox.
• You have years of old mail to clear out: Clean Email.
• You want to leave mailing lists, not just file them: Clean Email.
• You want to start free, or cover five or ten accounts on one plan: Clean Email.

For more on each one, see SaneBox alternatives and Clean Email alternatives. For every cleaner side by side, see the best email cleaner app. For Alrighty against Clean Email alone, see Alrighty vs Clean Email.

Questions

Can I use SaneBox and Clean Email together?

Yes. Both work on your mailbox from their servers, so nothing stops you connecting both. Clean Email's Auto Clean rules and SaneBox's folders would then both move new mail, so pick one to sort and use the other only for cleanup.

Does SaneBox delete my emails?

Its help pages describe two cases. Mail from a sender you trained to SaneBlackHole moves to your Trash after 7 days, or sooner if the folder passes SaneBox's limits. Email Deep Clean moves the old mail you pick to the Trash. Mail SaneBox files to @SaneLater and its other folders stays in your mailbox.

Is Clean Email or SaneBox better for Gmail?

Both take Gmail. SaneBox suits a Gmail inbox that fills up every day, since it files new mail by itself. Clean Email suits a Gmail account full of old newsletters you want to delete and leave.

What happens to my mail if I cancel SaneBox?

Your mail stays where it is. SaneBox says all email "resides on the customer's email server," and that it deletes the personal data you gave it as soon as you cancel. Our SaneBox alternatives page covers what to do with the Sane folders afterward.