is there a tool to unsubscribe from emails?

If you use Gmail and want nothing extra

Gmail's Manage subscriptions is a page inside Gmail, on the web and in the Android and iPhone apps, that lists your active email subscriptions in one place. Unsubscribing from a sender there removes you from all of that sender's active mailing lists, per Google, and you do not connect another company to your inbox.

That clears your inbox, but the emails are only half of it, because plenty of subscriptions bill you without sending a single message. If you want to see those, an app that finds your subscriptions is the next step. In the UK, Emma and Snoop link to your bank through open banking and pick out the recurring payments, and some banks, Monzo included, list them for you. Rocket Money only works with US banks.

The catch is availability. Google says the feature is gradually rolling out and may not be available to you yet, and it can take a few days for a sender to stop. Until it reaches you, the one-at-a-time Unsubscribe button may be all you have.

If you use iCloud Mail

iCloud Mail Cleanup does a similar job on Apple's side. Apple says it recommends senders in the Updates and Promotions categories to unsubscribe from in bulk, and can move their future messages to the Trash. It works on any device with iCloud Mail turned on.

What you give up is range. It is for iCloud Mail only, and Apple says it may not be available in all languages. If your newsletters arrive in another account, it will not help with those.

If senders ignore your unsubscribe requests

Clean Email is a paid inbox cleaner. Its Unsubscriber sends unsubscribe requests for you and blocks lists and senders that do not respect them, including ones without an unsubscribe link. It has apps for the web, iPhone, Android and Mac.

You pay for it. It is a subscription, and its plan prices load by script, so we could not read them, and its UK App Store in-app purchases do not say what period each covers. The site offers "Try for Free", but what the trial covers is not stated on the pages we read.

If you want a one-off clear-out without a subscription

Leave Me Alone lists all your newsletters in one place and unsubscribes with a single click. You can unsubscribe from 10 emails free, with no credit card required. After that, its Seven Day Pass is a one-off $19 payment for 7 days of unlimited unsubscribing on 2 email accounts.

The cost is access: it needs to read your mail to find the subscription emails. Its monthly and yearly plan prices did not load in the page we read, so we cannot say what an ongoing plan costs.

If you want it free on your phone

Cleanfox is a free app for iPhone and Android that unsubscribes you from newsletters and deletes them. Its store listings say it works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud and other providers, and its UK Google Play listing describes it as a 100% free service.

What it costs you is a different kind of price. Its store listing says it is free because publisher Foxintelligence specialises in e-commerce market research and is paid for statistical studies on e-commerce. Its UK Google Play listing names the developer as Nielsen Consumer LLC, listed under the NielsenIQ name, while the UK App Store lists FOXINTEL.

When paying is worth it

The main split is this. Built-in tools keep your inbox with your email provider, while third-party cleaners need access to your mailbox. Leave Me Alone's privacy policy says it asks for permission to read mail to identify subscription emails.

Free is paid for somehow. Cleanfox says it is free because Foxintelligence is paid for statistical studies on e-commerce. Leave Me Alone says it charges so it can run a privacy-focused service. Both are worth knowing before you connect anything.

Pay when the built-in tools fall short, such as Gmail without Manage subscriptions yet, or senders that ignore your requests. For a one-off tidy, Leave Me Alone's $19 Seven Day Pass avoids an ongoing subscription.

Read the privacy side before you hand over access, because the three apps say different things.

Cleanfox's UK App Store privacy label says identifiers may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, and that emails, browsing history and contact info may be linked to you.

Clean Email's privacy policy says it will never sell or rent your email address or any personally identifiable or aggregated information, and will not use Gmail data for serving adverts. Leave Me Alone's privacy policy says it does not sell user data and will never read email content without your permission.

Those are promises in the companies' own policies, and we have not tested any of them.