What are the best financial/budgeting apps?

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18

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Considered

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6 hrs

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16 Options Considered

Best financial/budgeting apps	Price	Last Updated
-- Personal Capital	-	Apr 15, 2022
-- GNUCash	-	Apr 23, 2022
-- Money Manager EX	-	Mar 2, 2022
-- Goodbudget	-	Jan 1, 2022
-- Mint	-	Feb 14, 2021

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score 21 · Answer 1

Personal Capital

Top Pro

Easy and flexible to organize the categories

Top Con

Too slow about refreshing and synchronizing accounts and transactions

CourteousCreidhne's Experience

most like financial planning apps, with least adds See More

See All

score 9 · Answer 2

GNUCash

Top Pro

Simple

Top Con

Report customization is complex and difficult

Setting the options for existing reports requires use of a multi-tab interface with poor usability. Creating new reports requires programming that will be beyond the abilities (or desire to spend time and effort) of many users. See More

HumorousIshum's Experience

When MMEX broke on me and I lost years of data [a HUGE bummer, because I absolutely LOVED it!!], I looked at every personal finance software and ended up with GNUCash. It's been very stable, and I just had to do a clean install and while I wan't able to import the data which I had exported from within the program, I WAS able to restore the backup file I had also made. See More

Top Pro

Robust

Top Con

Auto Download and Import transactions doesn't work

SensibleMastorpaz's Experience

Impossible to setup online access to download recent transactions. See More

Top Pro

Double entry bookkeeping

Top Pro

Support for multiple currencies

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Pro

Flexible

Top Pro

Small business accounting

Top Pro

Investment support

Top Pro

Double entry accounting

By fully using the double entry accounting features in GnuCash, you can know (for example) not only that you spent $25 at Hugemart but that you spent $13 on groceries, $2 on disinfecting wipes, and $5 on motor oil. Later on, you can use data from that transaction and others to find out how much you're spending each month on food, home supplies, and car maintenance, along with other expense categories. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform and free

GnnuCash supports Linux, OSX and Windows and is also free on those platforms. See More

Top Pro

Easily set up

GnuCash walks the user through setting up their accounts making setup extremely easy for new users. See More

Top Pro

Auto backup

GnuCash has auto backup settings so users can set it and forget it. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 3

Money Manager EX

Top Pro

It tracks money as it comes in and goes out

Money Manager EX will tell you how much your investments have earned, when your bills are due, etc. Every time money comes in or goes out, you'll know it. See More

Top Con

Kind of old UI

Alexis's Experience

Very nice and useful program if you wan't to track your financing, being an ordinary guy, and not some crazy buisnessman with hundreds transactions every day. It comes with a server for allowing you to use it in any browser -for quick/dirty only- recording of transactions (it needs to be set up though). It is only a tiiiny bit restricting, for example Expenses have a category depth of two. Main category and subcategory. Also payees don't have categories, or tags or something. Other than that, I'm absolutely pleased. See More

Top Pro

The user interface is very intuitive

Top Pro

Free and open-source

Top Pro

Simple, easy to use interface

Top Pro

You can import spreadsheets from Excel

Even though you're unable to pay bills or make deposits/withdrawals this way, you can get a good look at what your finances are looking like even if you haven't used the program before. See More

See All

score 10 · Answer 4

Goodbudget

Add Video or Image

score 5 · Answer 5

Mint

Top Pro

Fast sync

Super fast about refreshing and synchronizing accounts and transactions. See More

Top Con

Too many ads

It shows too many Ads and offers that will confuse the user. See More

Yanis's Experience

That fresh tast again ! ^ ^ See More

Top Pro

Alerts

Mint can be set to alert you to various events such as upcoming bills, or low balances on any accounts. It can be set to alert you from the app, through email or by text message. In addition you can sign up to recieve monthly emails about your money and ways to improve your budget. See More

Top Con

Struggles to update transactions since Quicken took over

LikablePhrike's Experience

Have used this for over 5 years, and find it does all I want in tracking my income, outflow and syncing all bank and credit card balances See More

Top Pro

All accounts in one place

Mint can handle banking accounts, saving accounts, credit cards, etc. It consolidates all your accounts together so you do not need to put work into following multiple accounts. See More

Top Con

The budgeting part has too many bugs

Top Pro

Organizes budget into categories

Mint splits your spending into different categories, such as gas or fast food, so you can see where you're spending too much money or how much you need to budget for. See More

Top Con

Not International

Only works for US & Canada banks. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 6

YNAB

Top Pro

Online web app

Top Con

Subscription based

Instead of a one-time purchase, you will need a subscription to use YNAB after the free trial. Subscriptions can be bought annually for $83.99, which is about $6.99 per month. See More

Yanis's Experience

Another great one here. See More

Top Pro

Mobile apps for easy expense tracking

Top Pro

Provides a method for budgeting

Provides a 4 step method for budgeting money, that really makes budgeting simple and powerful. See More

Top Pro

Free trials available

YNAB lets you try it's software free for just over a month. This gives you a bit of flexibility when doing a monthly budget - 4 extra days to review your budget and determine whether YNAB helped out enough to justify the $5 price. If you're a student, you can get an additional 12 months for free (for a total of 13 months) and after that you can get 10% off yearly subscriptions. See More

Top Pro

Easy to manage and flex budgets

I've tried several including Quicken desktop app and I just like the way YNAB works. It is easy to learn and actually works as advertised. See More

Top Pro

Understands human beings and reality

It allows you to move around budget allocations. Sometimes you just need to spend that extra money in one category and take it out of another budget without losing control of the overall budget. It's flexible, clever and understands life. See More

Top Pro

Free online workshops

YNAB regularly offers live workshops on a variety of different topics. These workshops include time for Q&A which is very helpful. See More

Top Pro

Frequent updates

The YNAB team does a great job of offering rapid response times to support requests, listening to user feedback and implementing commonly requested features into the app via frequent updates as well providing live financial workshops on a daily basis at no additional charge. All of these features make the subscription model well worth the cost to me. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 7

Moneydance

Top Pro

Good selection of importable formats

Moneydance supports a good selection of formats, even ones that Quicken no longer does. See More

Top Con

Costs money

Unlike most applications for Linux Moneydance does cost money, $49 to be exact. So while it is the most robust option available to Linux users, it will cost to be able to use it. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Moneydance is a cross platform app so for those that use multiple operating systems it will be much easier to import and export information to each OS running the same financial application. See More

Top Con

Import tags all transactions on import under the same default category

Upon import of financial info, all transactions will be set to the same default category meaning the user will have to go back and change the category by hand to the correct one. See More

Top Pro

Good bulk editing of transactions

Simple find and replace feature. See More

Top Pro

License is one cost, not subscription based

Top Pro

Seamless reconciliation

Top Pro

Good and flexible reporting

Top Pro

Imports security prices from Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance

Top Pro

Has a mobile version to add transactions

Top Pro

Works with most file transfer types

Moneydance supports a good selection of formats, even ones that Quicken no longer does. QFX, QIF, CSV, TXT, etc. See More

Top Pro

Free trial version

Moneydance offers a free trial version so users can test the software before they decide to purchase. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 8

Mint Bills

Top Pro

Secure

Check uses bank level security as well as other security features such as PIN-locking and data wiping. They are also monitored by outside companies such as Norton and TRUSTe. See More

Top Con

Only for US and Canada

Is only for US and Canada, after signup it asks for the users zip code, and there is no way to skip it. See More

Top Pro

Auto-pays bills

Checks main feature is that it will make sure your bills are always paid on time. You can set up many different accounts, all you have to do is set when the bill should be payed and Check will take care of the rest. See More

Top Pro

Extensive list of usable accounts

Checks auto bill paying feature is comparable with a very large list of accounts. It can even manage mortgages and utilities. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 9

Ledgerist

Top Con

No Automation

Ledgerist won't automatically update your transactions. You must manually update it each time you make a transaction. See More

Top Pro

Organize transactions

Ledgerist can sort and organize your transactions by naming them or adding notes. You can then use this to find out where and how much of your money is being spent. See More

Top Con

No Account Integration

Ledgerist does not allow you to import accounts. This means you will not have any data from before you started updating the app. See More

Top Pro

Multiple Accounts

Ledgerist allows you to manage multiple accounts at the same time. This way you can keep track of your checking account and credit card and any other accounts within the same app. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 10

Financisto

Top Pro

Support different currency, transfer will show the rate

Top Con

Weak in providing a graphic view on expenses

Bar chart is basic. Line Chart doesn't show much. Never able to get the Pie Chart working. See More

Top Pro

Supports multiple accounts in different currency or categories

e.g. Cash, Bank Accounts, Credit Cards etc. Allows you to reset quota for Credit Cards, perfect for tracking expense to meet credit card welcome offer. See More

Top Con

Takes time to setup your own categories and budgets

Top Pro

Budget allows select from various categories, tag, project, recurring duration

Top Pro

Free to build customized categories, location, projects

See All

score 3 · Answer 11

MoneyWiz

Top Con

Accounts synchronizing issues

The software will not do synchronizing for the accounts unless the user asked for it. The accounts and transaction synchronizing it take long time. See More

Top Pro

Budgets

Set up budgets and MoneyWiz will automatically monitor transactions and assign them to the proper budgets. Envelope budgeting is also available. See More

Top Pro

Usage reports

Tons of reports will give you a perspective on your spendings and earnings, that you never had before! MoneyWiz also allows you to build custom reports based on what you want to know about your money. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 12

Quicken

Top Pro

Mature and feature rich

Top Con

Data is locked into proprietary format

Edward339's Experience

I spent more then 20 days trying to find good Financial manager software that fit my needs, all what I have tried has problems or missed features, finally I purchased Quicken and I deleted all the other softwares such as Mint and others. The software is not cheap and they don't offer free version for trial, but they do offer money back up to 30 days. The software on Mac is reliable and stable, strong code, fast actions, no any bugs, full features that other software has. It's not cheap but you get what you pay for, and you buy peace of mind. See More

Top Pro

Data is stored locally

You can keep your data locally and work offline, however, you need to be online to activate and go through the Quicken servers to download your data. See More

Top Con

Has lots of feature bloat

Top Pro

Good bank support (USA)

Supports many banks and financial organizers. See More

Top Con

No free trial option

You MUST buy the software to try it, but there is a 30 days money back guarantee if the user doesn't like it. See More

Top Pro

Budgeting support

Easy to plan your budget financial life for 12 months. See More

Top Con

Expensive comparing to other softwares

Top Pro

Full control of the categories

Add, remove, rename, and organize any categories in fast and easy way. See More

Top Pro

Billing support

Ability to add many billers. Know your bills for current month and the rest of the year. Pay bills through the software or schedule auto pay. See More

Top Pro

Fast synchronizing

Very fast about synchronizing and refreshing accounts and transactions. See More

See All

Answer 13

You Need A Budget

Top Pro

Fantastic support, community, and training options

score 1 · Answer 14

Truebill

Top Pro

Scans accounts to identify subscriptions and helps you cancel them, saving you money.

Top Pro

Automatically contribute to savings account for you.

Top Pro

Weekly and Monthly reporting on spending habits

Top Pro

Granular break down of spending

See All

score 1 · Answer 15

Mvelopes

Top Pro

Reach your financial goals

Top Pro

Accumulate savings

Top Pro

Get out of debt faster

See All

score 1 · Answer 16

Cashcash

Top Con

Can only import CSV files or manually enter transactions

Top Pro

Powerful filtering feature

You can explore your transactions in the same way as Kibana or Grafana. See More

TranquilAnput's Experience

I wanted a more user-friendly app than GnuCash and at the same time still being able to have a fine grained control over my finances. See More

Top Con

No sync with the cloud

Top Pro

Simple visual UI

See All

score 1 · Answer 17

16 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Personal Capital

My Recommendation for Personal Capital

Easy and flexible to organize the categories

Too slow about refreshing and synchronizing accounts and transactions

My Recommendation for GNUCash

My Recommendation for GNUCash

Simple

Report customization is complex and difficult

Robust

Auto Download and Import transactions doesn't work

Double entry bookkeeping

Support for multiple currencies

Free and open source

Flexible

Small business accounting

Investment support

Double entry accounting

Multi-platform and free

Easily set up

Auto backup

My Recommendation for Money Manager EX

My Recommendation for Money Manager EX

It tracks money as it comes in and goes out

Kind of old UI

The user interface is very intuitive

Free and open-source

Simple, easy to use interface

You can import spreadsheets from Excel

My Recommendation for Goodbudget

My Recommendation for Goodbudget

My Recommendation for Mint

My Recommendation for Mint

Fast sync

Too many ads

Alerts

Struggles to update transactions since Quicken took over

All accounts in one place

The budgeting part has too many bugs

Organizes budget into categories

Not International

My Recommendation for YNAB

My Recommendation for YNAB

Online web app

Subscription based

Mobile apps for easy expense tracking

Provides a method for budgeting

Free trials available

Easy to manage and flex budgets

Understands human beings and reality

Free online workshops

Frequent updates

My Recommendation for Moneydance

My Recommendation for Moneydance

Good selection of importable formats

Costs money

Cross platform

Import tags all transactions on import under the same default category

Good bulk editing of transactions

License is one cost, not subscription based

Seamless reconciliation

Good and flexible reporting

Imports security prices from Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance

Has a mobile version to add transactions

Works with most file transfer types

Free trial version

My Recommendation for Mint Bills

My Recommendation for Mint Bills

Secure

Only for US and Canada

Auto-pays bills

Extensive list of usable accounts

My Recommendation for Ledgerist

My Recommendation for Ledgerist

No Automation

Organize transactions

No Account Integration

Multiple Accounts

My Recommendation for Financisto

My Recommendation for Financisto