01 The short version
DaisyDisk is genuinely good, and most people looking for an
alternative aren't unhappy with it. They want something cheaper,
something that runs on hardware DaisyDisk doesn't
prioritize, or something open source. Those are three different
problems with three different answers.
Below are the four alternatives we'd actually recommend,
including the free ones that might mean you don't need to buy
anything at all. We make one of them, and we'll be clear about
where ours is the wrong choice.
02 The alternatives worth knowing
Delve: $4.99 once, if you're on Apple Silicon
A native treemap and sunburst of your drive, rendered on
the GPU, that stays smooth across millions of files. It breaks out
on-disk size next to logical size with APFS clones and hardlinks
counted once, so the space it promises is the space you actually
get back. Staged removals go into a Collector you empty into the
Trash in one undoable action. Drag a folder onto the window to
scan it. $4.99 paid once, 14-day free trial, and it needs macOS 26
and an Apple Silicon Mac, the hard limit that rules it out for
some people entirely. Full
Delve vs DaisyDisk breakdown.
GrandPerspective: free and open source
The classic Mac treemap, still maintained, GPL-licensed, and it
runs on far older macOS and Intel Macs. If your objection to
DaisyDisk is the price or the closed source, start here before
you spend anything. It won't give you APFS-aware on-disk
accounting or a modern interface, but it draws an honest map for
free. Our
side-by-side.
OmniDiskSweeper: free, and gloriously boring
No map at all: a column list of your files sorted largest to
smallest, from The Omni Group. When you already know the problem
is one enormous file and you just want it gone, the list beats
any visualization. Free, tiny, runs on old macOS.
Compared here.
Disk Inventory X: the revived one
The original was the Mac's answer to WinDirStat and has sat at
version 1.3 since December 2019, which is a long time in macOS
years. A community rewrite in Swift and SwiftUI now runs natively
on Apple Silicon. Worth knowing about if you specifically want
the classic cushioned-treemap look for free, though you're
trusting a community fork rather than a vendor.
04 How to choose
If you want to spend nothing: GrandPerspective
for a map, OmniDiskSweeper for a list. Both are honest tools that
have been around longer than most paid ones.
If you're on an Intel Mac or older macOS: stay
with DaisyDisk, or use the two free options. Delve won't run for
you at all, and no amount of us liking our own app changes that.
If you scan cloud-storage accounts: DaisyDisk
does that and Delve doesn't.
If you're on Apple Silicon and want honest numbers:
this is where we'd argue for Delve. APFS makes the naive size
figure a lie. Clones and hardlinks get counted repeatedly, so a folder that claims 80 GB might return 12. Delve counts
them once, and shows both figures side by side. The
accounting details are
in the build notes.
Our honest recommendation
Try GrandPerspective first. It's free, and if a plain treemap
is all you needed, you've solved the problem for nothing.
If you want on-disk numbers you can trust, a sunburst and a
treemap of the same scan, and batch cleanup that's undoable,
Delve is $4.99 once with a 14-day trial, half
DaisyDisk's price, on a much narrower slice of hardware.