How Sunflower compares
Every disk analyzer for the Mac walks the file tree and draws the result. The differences start where the file tree stops explaining things: the System Data macOS will not break down, and the space an app leaves behind after you delete it.
| Sunflower | DaisyDisk | GrandPerspective | OmniDiskSweeper | macOS Storage settings | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | US$9.99, one-time, for up to five Macs | Free from its own website; US$2.99 on the Mac App Store | Free | Built into macOS |
| How it shows the disk | Rings, treemap or list, plus Largest, Kinds and Untouched views of any folder | Sunburst rings | Treemap | A list, largest to smallest | Category bars in Storage settings |
| System Data | Named rows for snapshots, caches, backups and derived data, each with a size and a reclaim action; what it cannot attribute is one labelled slice | A "hidden space" item that opens into purgeable space, other volumes and "still hidden"; no per-item breakdown | Not shown | Not shown | One number, no breakdown |
| What apps left behind | Every app sized by bundle plus its support folders, caches and containers; uninstalling takes all of it | Not a feature | Not a feature | Not a feature | Not a feature |
| Deleting | To the Trash, after one confirmation naming every item; system paths cannot be deleted at all | From a collector, in one action; permanent rather than to the Trash, with a five-second window to cancel | Per file or folder, to the Trash; off by default and switched on in Preferences | Per item, to the Trash | Recommendations (Store in iCloud, Optimize Storage, Empty Trash automatically) and a More Info list per category |
| Requires | macOS 15 or later, Apple Silicon | macOS 10.13 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon | macOS 14 or later from its website; macOS 11 or later on the App Store | macOS 11 to macOS 26 | Any supported Mac |
Where Sunflower is not the right choice
DaisyDisk has spent years polishing one sunburst screen, and its hidden-space item gives a coarse split of what macOS hides. If that screen is all you want, buy it. Sunflower needs macOS 15 and Apple Silicon; the other three run on older Macs and on Intel. And Sunflower has no duplicate finder, no startup-item manager and no "clean my Mac" button. It does one job.
Where it is the right choice
Sunflower answers two questions the others leave open: what the System Data number is made of, and what an app that Finder sizes at 1 GB costs you once its leftovers count. It is free. What System Data is made of covers the first question in detail.
DaisyDisk, GrandPerspective and OmniDiskSweeper belong to their own developers. If a row here is out of date, tell the developer and the correction goes up within days.