Unroll.me alternative
Unroll.me is free, but its parent company has a documented history of monetizing inbox data, including a 2017 New York Times story about purchase receipts being sold to a competitor. Premail is also free for personal inboxes and never sees any of your mail in the first place. It runs as a desktop app on your machine.
Free for personal inboxes. No account required.
Updated
Why people switch to Premail
Premail has no servers processing your private data. We do not see your messages, do not log metadata, and do not sell anything derived from your mail. Free for personal inboxes does not mean we monetize the inbox.
Unroll.me batches subscriptions into a daily Rollup. Premail actually filters: it archives cold email and recruiter spam before you see it, moves receipts to a Commerce folder, trashes confirmed spam, and lets you write plain-English rules for anything else.
There is no signup, no email address collected, and no Premail-side profile. Download the app, connect your inbox with OAuth or an app-specific password, and start filtering. Credentials live in your OS keychain, not on our servers.
Side by side
| Feature | Premail Local desktop app · Zero data collection | Unroll.me Cloud service · Free, ad-supported model |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox content processed on your machineUnroll.me connects to your mailbox from its servers. Premail runs entirely on your computer. | ||
| Vendor monetizes inbox-derived dataUnroll.me's parent company has previously sold de-identified inbox data, including receipts. See its current privacy policy for the latest terms. | Historically yes | |
| Free for personal inboxes | ||
| No account or signup required | ||
| AI runs on your computer (optional Ollama) | ||
| Bring-your-own AI key | ||
| Bulk unsubscribe | ||
| Daily digest rollup of subscriptionsPremail archives or files individual messages rather than batching into a rollup. | ||
| Filters incoming cold email, recruiter spam, AI-generated outreach | ||
| Plain-English custom rules | ||
| Quarantine folder and adjustable confidence per rule | ||
| Auto-organize receipts, shipping, travel, security alerts | ||
| Open audit log of every action | ||
| Works with Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud | Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL | |
| Available on Mac, Windows, Linux | Web + mobile only |
Pricing
Unroll.Me does not sell a subscription. Its own site offers only a free sign-up, with no paid plan advertised.
Free tier, then one flat price regardless of how many inboxes you connect
Free, no paid tier
Unroll.Me pricing read from their own pricing page and verified . Prices change, so check the source before deciding.
Premail is not the only option, and pretending otherwise would not help you decide. These are the alternatives people actually weigh up against Unroll.me, with prices read from each vendor's own pricing page.
| App | Price | Runs on | How it makes money |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premail | Free for up to 2 personal inboxes, then $9/mo, $79/yr, or $99 once | Your own computer | Paid licences |
| Clean Email | $9.99/mo, or $29.99/yr | Cloud | Subscriptions |
| Cleanfox | Free | Cloud | Sells data, by its own description |
| Mailstrom | $9/mo, or $59.95/yr | Cloud | Subscriptions |
| SaneBox | $9.49/mo, or $5.42/mo billed annually | Cloud | Subscriptions |
Best for: Filtering mail before you read it, without a service holding your mailbox
Runs as a desktop app alongside the email client you already use, applying rules you write in plain English. Nothing passes through a Premail server, and one price covers every inbox you connect. It only works while your computer is on, so overnight triage on a phone is a genuine reason to pick something else here.
Best for: The most complete cleanup toolkit across several mailboxes
Clean Email includes every feature at every tier and prices purely on how many mailboxes you connect.
Best for: A fast free cleanup, if its funding model suits you
Cleanfox is free and states on its own homepage that it sells data for statistical purposes to stay that way. That is their description of their model, not an accusation.
Best for: Genuinely enormous backlogs, bundled by sender and size
Mailstrom tiers on three axes at once: how many accounts, how large a mailbox it will process, and how many smart filters you get.
Best for: Triage that keeps running while your computer is off
Every SaneBox tier caps how many email accounts it covers, so a second inbox means a higher tier rather than a second connection.
Pick Unroll.me if
You only want a free, hands-off daily Rollup of newsletters and you are not concerned about the historic privacy criticism of Unroll.me's parent company.
Pick Premail if
You want unsubscribe and inbox cleanup without giving a third-party server access to your mailbox, and you want real filtering (not just rollup) for cold email, recruiters, spam, and anything else.
FAQ
Is Unroll.me really still a privacy concern?
It was famously called out in 2017 when its parent company sold Lyft receipts data to Uber. Unroll.me has since updated its privacy practices, but the business model still depends on access to your inbox. If you would rather no third party have that access at all, a local-only tool like Premail is a better fit.
Is Premail really free?
Yes, for personal inboxes on consumer domains like gmail.com, icloud.com, and outlook.com. Pro adds professional inboxes, unlimited custom rules, and Reputation Shield. There is no ad-supported tier and no data monetization.
Does Premail unsubscribe in bulk like Unroll.me?
Yes. The Subscriptions tab scans your inbox, groups messages by sender, and unsubscribes in bulk for you. You choose whether old messages get archived, trashed, or left alone. Premail clicks the unsubscribe link so you do not have to.
How does Premail filter incoming mail?
Premail watches your inbox and runs each new message through your active rules. Built-in rules handle cold email, recruiters, AI-generated outreach, conference spam, newsletters, marketing, and more. You can write your own rules in plain English and pick what action to take (archive, trash, move to folder, quarantine).
What email clients does Premail work with?
All of them. Apple Mail, Gmail in the browser, Outlook, Thunderbird, Spark, Superhuman, anything. Premail acts on the inbox directly, so it does not care which client you read your mail in.
Where does Premail store my credentials?
Gmail and Outlook tokens, plus your iCloud app-specific password, live in your local OS keychain. They never leave your machine. Premail has no servers handling credentials.
Also considering
Free for personal inboxes. No Premail account, no servers touching your email. Works alongside the email client you already use on Mac, Windows, and Linux.