Is there a free anti-virus for iPhone?

Lexinatx wrote:

does anyone know of or recommend a good antivirus cleaner for iPhone?

You don’t need that.

As you will have read the above replies and found those lacking, you are seemingly then an exceptionally high-risk target and someone worth targeting with tooling built upon exploits worth multiple millions of dollars. Each. As such, your exceedingly high value means you are a candidate for specific and tailored security advice tailored to your situation. You might be an investigative journalist, political dissident, senior in private or public entity, with access to sensitive or classified data, with access to great wealth, or other such. This all based in available information on exploit usage,

Or if not, then to rephrase and re-state the above replies and discussion, there are no app cleaners, because what access an app cleaner needs to access to “clean” is the same access malware needs to access to “malware”. It’s blocked.

There are add-on security tools, though those too cannot scan or clean, and those can intercept your network connections and related metadata. Some of the better-known add-on anti-malware tools for Apple platforms have been caught (and fined) for collecting personally-identified web browsing data and web purchasing data, and welling it. Some of the other apps are heavily advertised, and those can badly solve a problem that basically hasn’t existed for a decade or so, but badly solve that non-problem in a way perfect for collecting metadata for resale.

iOS includes a built-in malware scanner, built-in malware removal tools, an administrative and technical process which scans the apps for questionable or problematic API usage and related, defenses that prevent accessing components and services that the app shouldn’t access (see above), a well-funded security bug bounty program, with an reviewing-related process that increases the costs and difficulties for malware authors, and with built-in telemetry data for detecting new issues. Among other details.

We ourselves are more often the target, not our devices. Phishing and spear-phishing, password re-use, failure to use two-factor, shoulder surfing, cons and scams, and other shenanigans are far more common than are viruses. Viruses basically don’t exist for iPhone or iPad. Or macOS, for that matter. Deliberately-installed adware or add-on anti-malware doing malware-like things is unfortunately common, too.

What to do? Have a look at the following document:

• Personal Safety User Guide - Apple Support

Run Safety Check as described there. Review and act upon the Apple-generated security recommendations (Settings > Passwords > Security Recommendations) , too. Etc. add-on tools? Those add-ons can introduce problems and can create privacy leaks and can add vulnerabilities as often as they can prevent problems. Maybe more so.