The developer of RegCleaner, jv16 PowerTools, Uninstalr, WinFindr, Startup Timer, ScreenshotX, System Examiner and Windows Update Fixer.
DISCLAIMER: We make one of the products in the tables below, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make that easy: our method is published up front, we used whatever each competitor was charging on the day rather than their list prices, and we have shown the comparisons where we lose. We lost several of them.
Buying a PC cleaner should be simple. It is not. Every vendor slices its licenses differently, several publish a renewal rate only after you have clicked through two pages, and a few run a discount that has been running so long it is really just the price.
So we sat down and read all of it in September 2026. Every pricing page, every set of terms, several EULAs. Here is what we found, including the parts that do not flatter us.
Table of Contents
How we compared the prices
Comparing prices in this category is harder than it should be. Every vendor slices its licenses differently, some publish a renewal rate only after you click through, and a few run a “discount” that has been running so long it is just the price.
So rather than cherry-pick, we fixed one scenario and applied it to everyone:
- A household with 5 Windows PCs, over 10 years. Five, because that is what one jv16 license covers.
- The cheapest tier each vendor offers that actually covers 5 devices. If their tiers only come in threes, that means buying two licenses, because that is what you would really have to do.
- Year one at the introductory rate, years two onward at the renewal rate. Both are real prices. They just apply at different times.
- The price on the vendor’s site today, discounts included. In this category the crossed out number is usually decoration, and a discount that never ends is just the price. So we used what you would actually be charged if you bought today, even where that made a competitor look cheaper than their own list price suggests.
- Every price checked on the vendor’s own site on the same day on September 16th, 2026.
Where a vendor’s own pages contradict each other, we say so instead of picking the number that suits us.
PC optimization software prices, side by side
| Product | Price today | Devices | Pricing model | Major updates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| jv16 PowerTools | $69 one time | 5 | Lifetime | Free, no upgrade fee |
| Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2026 | $15 one time | 1 | Perpetual, per version | Not included. No published upgrade price; the next edition is a separate purchase |
| Wise Care 365 Pro | $29.96/yr, or $67.46 lifetime | 3 | Subscription or lifetime | Included, but their EULA promises no specific updates |
| Advanced SystemCare 19 Pro | $29.99/yr | 5 | Subscription | License expires with the term |
| AVG TuneUp | $34.99 first year, then $79.99 ** † | 10 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| CCleaner Professional Plus | $39.95 first year, then $64.95 * | 3 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| Glary Utilities Pro | $39.95/yr | 3 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| iolo System Mechanic | $43.94 first year, then $54.95 ** | 10 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| CCleaner Professional | $44.95/yr | 1 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| Norton Utilities Ultimate | $49.99 first year, then $69.99 *** | 10 | Subscription | While subscribed |
| Auslogics BoostSpeed Pro | $50.96/yr ** | 3 | Subscription | While subscribed |
All prices checked on the vendors’ own sites on September 16th, 2026.
* Renews at the undiscounted price, and cancellation requires at least 35 days’ notice before the period begins.
** Terms state the subscription renews at this rate or the then current price, meaning the renewal price can change and may be higher than the rate you signed up at.
*** Same clause as above. Norton bills annual renewals up to 35 days early, but gives a full refund on any annual charge within 60 days of it being taken.
† AVG has announced this renewal price rises to $84.99 on October 8th, 2026.
Within eleven products, nine of them are subscriptions. The yearly figures look small next to a one-time payment model. They stop looking small the moment you use the software for more than a year.
What PC optimization software costs a five PC household
| What you pay in… | Licenses needed | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 | Year 10 | Ten year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| jv16 PowerTools | 1 × 5 devices | $69 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $69 |
| Ashampoo WinOptimizer | 5 × 1 PC | $75 | $0, or $75 per new edition | same | same | $75 to ~$375 |
| Wise Care 365 Pro (lifetime)* | 2 × 3 PCs | $134.92 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $134.92 |
| Advanced SystemCare 19 Pro | 1 × 5 PCs | $29.99 | $29.99 | $29.99 | $29.99 | ~$300 |
| iolo System Mechanic | 1 × 10 PCs | $43.94 | $54.95 | $54.95 | $54.95 | ~$538 |
| Norton Utilities Ultimate | 1 × 10 devices | $49.99 | $69.99 | $69.99 | $69.99 | ~$680 |
| AVG TuneUp | 1 × 10 devices | $34.99 | $79.99 | $79.99 | $79.99 | ~$755 |
| Glary Utilities Pro | 2 × 3 PCs | $79.90 | $79.90 | $79.90 | $79.90 | ~$799 |
| Auslogics BoostSpeed Pro | 2 × 3 PCs | $101.92 | $101.92 | $101.92 | $101.92 | ~$1,019 |
| CCleaner Professional Plus | 2 × 3 PCs | $79.90 | $129.90 | $129.90 | $129.90 | ~$1,249 |
* Wise Care also sells a yearly subscription at $29.96 for three PCs. We have used their lifetime option instead, because over this period it is far cheaper for them: two lifetime licences cost $134.92 once, where two subscriptions would run to roughly $599 across ten years.
You pay us once if you buy our Lifetime license. Year three, year five, year ten, you pay nothing, because there is nothing left to pay. Seven of the ten are still charging.
Notice how many rows say “2 ×”. Three device licenses are the norm here, and a five PC household does not fit them, so you end up buying six devices worth of coverage in order to use five. That is not a trick anyone is playing on you deliberately. It is just what happens when licensing is designed around price tiers rather than around households.
Ashampoo deserves a fair hearing, because they are doing something closer to what we do than anyone else on this list. Their checkout says one time payment, no time limit, and it means it. Nothing auto renews and nothing expires.
The catch is not the model, it is the arithmetic: their licence covers a single PC, so a five machine household needs five of them. At today’s price that is $75, six dollars more than us, and that is before anyone upgrades to anything. After that it depends on whether you mind falling behind. Never buy another edition and you are done at $75, which is a genuinely good deal and the closest anyone here gets to us. Pick up the new edition every couple of years and you are nearer $375 across the decade. We have shown both numbers.
The row worth staring at is CCleaner. Their first year looks like one of the cheaper subscriptions on the list. Their ten year total is the most expensive thing on this page, and by a distance.
There is a detail in their own lineup that makes the mechanism plain. CCleaner Professional covers one device at $44.95 and is not discounted. Professional Plus covers three devices at $39.95 and is. The three device product is the cheaper of the two, which only makes sense for as long as the discount lasts. And because Professional carries no discount, its undiscounted price is simply the price you already paid, so nothing jumps at renewal. The only tier that does not increase is the one that was never discounted.
Put plainly: the discount is not a saving that carries forward. It is the thing that creates the increase.
In fairness, none of this is hidden. It is in their terms, and it is also in the small print on the checkout page itself, a couple of lines above the button: each subscription is continuous, you will be charged the undiscounted price then in effect for each period, and cancelling requires at least 35 days’ notice before the next period begins. It is all there. It is just not in the number, and the number is the part anyone reads.
Spread across ten years, that one $69 payment from us averages out to $6.90 a year, and it keeps getting cheaper for as long as you keep using it. Norton Utilities Ultimate renews at $69.99 every single year, which is to say Norton charges more for one year than we charge for the rest of your life.
We should be straight about where we lose. Wise Care sells a lifetime licence at $67.46 covering three PCs, so on a three machine household they undercut us by a dollar and a half. That is a real loss and not a rounding error we have buried. Ashampoo is the near miss rather than the loss: $75 for five machines against our $69, and a separate purchase each time a new edition arrives.
Advanced SystemCare is the closest thing to a like for like comparison, because it is the only other product here that covers five devices on one license. Theirs costs $29.99 a year. Ours costs $69 once. So for two years you spend less with them: $29.99 by the end of year one, $59.98 by the end of year two, against our $69. Year three is where it flips. They reach $89.97 and we are still at $69, and from there the gap only widens.
Cost per device over ten years
Same five PC households, same ten years, divided by the machines you actually use.
I am going to be straight about this one, because it is the comparison where we do not win every column.
| Per device, year 1 | Per device, year 2 onward | Per device over 10 years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| jv16 PowerTools | $13.80 once | $0 | $13.80 |
| Ashampoo WinOptimizer | $15.00 | $0 until the next edition | $15 to ~$75 |
| Wise Care 365 Pro (lifetime) | $26.98 once | $0 | $26.98 |
| Advanced SystemCare 19 Pro | $6.00 | $6.00/yr | ~$60 |
| iolo System Mechanic | $8.79 | $10.99/yr | ~$108 |
| Norton Utilities Ultimate | $10.00 | $14.00/yr | ~$136 |
| AVG TuneUp | $7.00 | $16.00/yr | ~$151 |
| Glary Utilities Pro | $15.98 | $15.98/yr | ~$160 |
| Auslogics BoostSpeed Pro | $20.38 | $20.38/yr | ~$204 |
| CCleaner Professional Plus | $15.98 | ~$25.98/yr | ~$250 |
In year one we lose this comparison, and not narrowly. Advanced SystemCare works out at six dollars a machine, AVG seven, iolo $8.79, Norton ten. We are $13.80. Those are real numbers and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If you only plan to use a PC cleaner for twelve months, buy one of those instead, genuinely, with our blessing.
Now look at the last column. Ten years in, Norton has cost $136 per device and AVG $160, because those numbers come back every year until you stop paying. AVG is the clearest illustration of the pattern: seven dollars a machine to get you through the door, seventeen a machine every year after that. Ours stops at $13.80 and stays there. Averaged over the decade that is about $1.38 per device, per year.
The cheap first year is the offer. The nine years afterwards are the business model.
What the subscription terms actually say
I am not going to tell you what to think about any of these companies. I am just going to describe the mechanics, because almost nobody reads them until the charge appears. Everything below is from the vendors’ own terms, checked in September 2026 and linked at the bottom.
Renewal above the price you paid
Several of these advertise a low first year and then renew higher. iolo is $43.94 to start and $54.95 after. Norton is $49.99 to start and $69.99 after. AVG is $34.99 to start and $79.99 after, a jump of well over double. To their credit, Norton and AVG both publish those renewal figures on their own pricing pages, so a careful buyer can see what year two costs before committing.
iolo’s sits in the Offer Details text at checkout rather than beside the price. CCleaner is the outlier: their footnote tells you that you will be charged the undiscounted price, without ever naming what that price is.
The renewal price is not a promise either
This is the one I would not have found without going looking. AVG’s policy says the fee for your next subscription period will be charged at the then current published price.
iolo uses nearly identical wording. Norton says renewal prices may be higher than the initial price and are subject to change. Auslogics’ EULA says that unless you cancel, they renew each term by directly charging your account the then current renewal price.
Read those again. The renewal number you agreed to is not the number you are guaranteed to pay. It is what they happen to charge today, and they have reserved the right to charge something else tomorrow.
To be fair to iolo, Norton, Auslogics and AVG, all four commit to emailing annual subscribers before the renewal charge, and most of them to stating the price that will be billed. AVG’s version is the most generous on paper: their auto renewal terms say they will notify annual subscribers up to 65 days ahead of the anniversary, naming the fee due for the next period. Set against charging up to 35 days early, that still leaves a window to act, although both of those figures are ceilings rather than guarantees. That is a meaningful safeguard and more than the bare clause implies. It still leaves the price itself outside your control; it just means you are told what it will be.
Here is that clause doing its job
As we write this, AVG has a page live announcing renewal price rises across eighteen products, all effective October 8th, 2026. AVG TuneUp for one PC goes from $65.99 to $69.99. The ten device version, the one in our tables, goes from $79.99 to $84.99. Our tables use the $79.99 that applies as we publish, so on October 8th every AVG figure above becomes wrong, in AVG’s favor.
If you are already a subscriber, you do not get a say. The clause you accepted at checkout already agreed on your behalf, and your card gets charged the new figure unless you cancel first. To be fair to AVG, they published the page. Plenty of companies would not have.
The discount does not carry over
CCleaner goes further than “the price may change”. Their terms, repeated in the small print at checkout, say you will be charged the undiscounted price then in effect for each period. Read that carefully: not the price you paid, the undiscounted one. Their Professional Plus is $39.95 for the first year and $64.95 after, and that is not a price increase. That is the contract working exactly as written. It is also why they finish last in our ten year table despite having one of the cheaper first years.
We found Glary, and the whole picture changed
Glary Utilities sells through Cleverbridge. So does CCleaner. Same payment platform, same checkout software, same set of available options.
Here is Glary’s checkout, in full: the subscription renews automatically at the price and frequency shown in the cart above, and you can cancel anytime, effective at the end of the current subscription period.
That is it. The price you see is the price it renews at. Cancel whenever you like.
Now put CCleaner’s next to it. Same platform: you will be charged the undiscounted price then in effect, and you must cancel at least 35 days before the next period begins.
The two of them are using the same checkout provider to say opposite things. Which means none of this is technical, none of it is imposed by the payment processor, and none of it is “just how subscriptions work”. It is a set of choices, made product by product, and one of these companies made the customer-friendly version of every single one.
The same goes for the rest of the platforms
Wise Care 365 and Advanced SystemCare sell through 2Checkout, whose terms run further in the customer’s favor again: their shopper terms say they will notify you in advance of any change to a recurring charge and seek your consent to continue, and if you do not consent, you cancel (7.8). Consumers get reminder notices before each renewal setting out what you paid last time, the minimum you will be liable for, and how to stop it, with an additional reminder at least fifteen days ahead where renewals are annual (7.6 and 7.7). And you can cancel any time before the renewal date (7.4). Section 8 adds a fourteen day withdrawal right that applies again at each annual renewal, not just at first purchase.
Cleverbridge, which handles CCleaner, Glary and Ashampoo, sits a step behind that. Their terms let them adjust subscription prices at reasonable discretion, but only in line with their own costs, and they are obliged to pass on decreases as well as increases. They undertake to tell you about any price change in time to cancel before the new price is billed. Notice rather than consent, but a long way from reserving the right to charge whatever the price happens to be that day.
One caveat, because it matters for CCleaner specifically: a renewal arriving at the undiscounted rate is not a price change. It is the price you agreed to when you took a discounted first term. So Cleverbridge’s notice obligation does not apply to it, and nothing in the platform’s terms touches CCleaner’s own 35 day cancellation requirement. Glary’s checkout demonstrates that CCleaner could have written it differently. They did not.
Paying again for the next version
Ashampoo is the one competitor here doing something genuinely close to what we do. Their checkout says one time payment, no time limit, and it means it. Nothing renews, nothing expires, nothing gets cancelled out from under you. If that is all you need, buy it, it is good value.
Two differences worth knowing. A license covers one PC, so five machines means five purchases, and there is no multi license option at checkout. And each year’s edition is a new product rather than an update to yours: we could not find a published upgrade price for WinOptimizer 2026 anywhere on their public site. It may exist for existing customers by email or inside an account area; we only know that a prospective buyer cannot see it. Your copy keeps working forever. The next edition is a separate purchase, at a price you cannot see before you buy the current one.
Money back guarantees, and what they actually cover
We are not the winner here. Glary offers ninety days, the longest on the list. WiseCleaner and Norton both offer sixty. We offer thirty. Credit where it is due.
The length is not the whole story though, in either direction. Glary’s ninety days applies to seven listed circumstances, and “a customer suddenly changes his mind after purchase” is explicitly excluded from refunds. Ours is thirty days, no questions asked, change of mind included. Longer window, narrower grounds, versus shorter window, no grounds required. Pick whichever suits you; just know which one you are buying.
Norton offers sixty days on annual subscriptions, and crucially that applies to every renewal charge, not just the first purchase. Stopping the renewal is self service from your account page. That is twice our window and the least friction of anyone here. Auslogics offers thirty days, and their policy is explicit that renewal charges carry the same guarantee as new purchases, which is the same principle as Norton’s.
iolo offers thirty days too, and this is where we gave up trying to pin something down. They publish two documents about refunds. Their EULA, dated June 2026, says refunds for standalone software are granted only to customers who contact them by phone. Their sales and refund policy, dated June 2025, says telephone or email, requires an explanation of dissatisfaction, and states that refunds are made less a 15% processing fee, less any discounts or rebates applied, with taxes and fees not refunded.
We are not going to tell you which one governs. The newer document says it supersedes earlier ones; the older one is still published and a customer reading it would reasonably rely on it. What we can say is that someone deciding whether to buy has no way to work out whether their thirty day refund is a full refund or a refund minus fifteen percent, or whether an email will do. Both pages are live. They do not agree.
One more thing from Glary’s refund policy, which is worth noting because it is the only place they publish it: they will refund an auto renewal if you did not realize the subscription renewed and did not receive their reminder email. That is a decent position to take. It is also the only public document of theirs that reveals subscriptions auto renew at all, since their EULA and terms of use, both last updated in April 2018, do not mention subscriptions anywhere.
Losing the software when you stop paying
For everything on the subscription rows, the term ending means the licence ending. You are renting.
Prices that are not really prices
Discounts of 60 to 80 percent run more or less permanently here, to the point where the crossed out number carries no information at all. Ashampoo’s page shows $15 against a struck through $30. Auslogics lands on $50.96, Wise Care on $29.96.
Those are not prices anyone sat down and chose; they are what a percentage discount does to a number. We used the discounted figures throughout, which makes several competitors look cheaper against us than their own list prices would, because that is what you would actually be charged today. While we were reading Auslogics’ license agreement, a popup appeared offering us an exclusive discount. Whatever that timer is measuring, it is not time, and the discount at the end of it is not going anywhere.
That is the clearest illustration we found of what the crossed out numbers in this category are for. And yes, we discount too. Everybody in this table discounts. That is rather the point. The difference we would claim is only that our discounts come off a price people actually pay.
None of this is illegal, and none of it is unusual. It is simply the standard shape of the business, and it is the reason we picked a different shape.
Where we stand in all this
We make jv16 PowerTools, the first row of every table above. Weigh everything here accordingly.
What we can offer in place of asking you to trust us is method. We fixed the scenario before running the numbers rather than after. We used each vendor’s actual price on the day, discounts included, which makes most of them look cheaper against us than their list prices would. We took renewal rates from their own terms rather than from review sites. And we reported the places we lose: four of the nine competitors cost less than us in year one, and Wise Care’s lifetime licence undercuts us outright on a three machine household. Every figure is linked below.
We are not innocent of most of what is described above, either. We have sold this software three different ways over the years. In the early Macecraft days we sold per edition licences, where each new version meant a small upgrade fee, and we stopped that around 2016. We introduced a subscription in 2017 and sold it until July 2025, when we discontinued it. The one constant since 2011 has been the lifetime license, which we have sold alongside the other models ever since, and every one of those licenses is still honored.
So we are not writing this as a company that worked it out early. We are writing it as one that tried the same models everyone else is using and eventually kept only the one we could defend.
And for completeness, since someone will otherwise point it out: our own price goes from $49 to $69 on November 1st, 2026. Anyone who already owns a license pays nothing, now or ever. That is the difference between our price change and the ones described above, and it is not a difference of character. It is structural. A lifetime license can only ever reach people who have not bought yet. A subscription can reach back and charge you again at a number you never agreed to, and in two cases here you have to catch it 35 days early to stop it.
Sources
Every price and clause above was checked on the vendor’s own site on September 16th, 2026.
Terms, EULAs and policies
- Ashampoo EULA: https://www.ashampoo.com/en-us/eul/7206
- WiseCleaner EULA: https://www.wisecleaner.com/eula.html
- Glarysoft EULA: https://www.glarysoft.com/inf/eula/
- Glarysoft Terms of Use: https://www.glarysoft.com/inf/termsofuse/
- Glarysoft Refund Policy: https://www.glarysoft.com/inf/refund-policy/
- Auslogics EULA (clause 2.2 on renewal pricing): https://www.auslogics.com/en/eula/
- Auslogics Refund Policy: https://www.auslogics.com/en/refunds/
- iolo / RealDefense EULA (section X on payment, billing and refunds; posted 3 June 2026): https://www.iolo.com/company/legal/eula/
- iolo / RealDefense Sales and Refund Policy (section 4 on refunds; posted 3 June 2025): https://www.iolo.com/company/legal/sales-policy/
- Norton Cancellation and Refund Policy (DocID kb20100113164023EN, last modified 09/07/2026): https://www.norton.com/return-policy
- AVG announced renewal price changes: https://www.avg.com/en-ww/pricing-changes
- AVG terms for auto-renewal and pricing: shown in an in-page dialog at checkout with no linkable URL. Screenshot on file, captured September 2026.
- 2Checkout / Verifone shopper terms, sections 7.2, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8 and 8 (Wise Care, Advanced SystemCare), last updated 10 March 2025: https://www.2co.com/terms.html
- Cleverbridge terms (CCleaner, Glary, Ashampoo):
https://secure.ccleaner.com/502/?scope=optandc&id=1ChFpBrVAa
https://secure.glarysoft.com/1539/?scope=optandc&uiredirect=false&id=8HjbZmRsHL
https://shop.ashampoo.com/10/?scope=optandc&id=U0jcQdGqxt
Pricing pages
- Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2026: https://www.ashampoo.com/en-us/winoptimizer-2026
- Wise Care 365 Pro: https://www.wisecleaner.com/order.html
- Advanced SystemCare 19 Pro: https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarepro.php
- AVG TuneUp: https://www.avg.com/en-ww/avg-pctuneup#pc
- CCleaner Professional Plus: https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner
- Glary Utilities Pro: https://www.glarysoft.com/store/
- iolo System Mechanic: https://www.iolo.com/products/system-mechanic/
- CCleaner Professional: https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner
- Norton Utilities Ultimate: https://us.norton.com/products/norton-utilities-ultimate
- Auslogics BoostSpeed Pro: https://www.auslogics.com/en/software/boost-speed/
Checkout text
Our own checkout. We sell through Polar, which acts as a merchant of record. Buyers accept our terms, which cover the license, and Polar’s buyer terms, which cover payment and billing.
Found an error? Tell us and we will fix it and say what changed.