head to head · open source
Pearcleaner vs memories
Pearcleaner has 14,669 GitHub stars, 377 forks, 84 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. memories has 3,840 stars, 169 forks, 473 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pearcleaner leads on adoption by 282% (14,669 vs 3,840 stars). Pearcleaner is written in Swift under a custom or non-standard licence; memories is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Pearcleaner has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, memories 4%. memories was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Pearcleaner | memories | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Swift | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-06-22 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 377 | ⑂ 169 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pearcleaner if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick memories if
- You want the memories feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and memories fits your workflow better
About Pearcleaner
Pearcleaner is a free, source available, fair code licensed macOS application written in Swift and listed under Productivity & Utilities / System Cleanup & Optimization. It is described as a Mac app cleaner inspired by Freemacsoft's AppCleaner and by Sun Knudsen's Privacy Guides post about an app cleaner script. The project's homepage is hosted at itsalin.com, and the repository states that this is the only legitimate website owned by the author.
read the full Pearcleaner overview →
About memories
Memories is a fast, modern photo management suite that runs as a Nextcloud app, built for people who host their own Nextcloud instance and want a timeline first photo and video library without handing their media to a commercial cloud service.
read the full memories overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pearcleaner or memories more popular?
Pearcleaner has 14,669 GitHub stars and memories has 3,840. Pearcleaner has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pearcleaner and memories free?
Both are open source. Pearcleaner has no licence declared in this registry, and memories is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Pearcleaner and memories?
Pearcleaner is written in Swift and memories in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Pearcleaner or memories?
Choose Pearcleaner if you want the larger community (14,669 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose memories if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.