When comparing Money Lover - Money Manager vs YNAB, the Slant community recommends Money Lover - Money Manager for most people. In the question“What are the best personal finance tracker apps for iPhone?” Money Lover - Money Manager is ranked 2nd while YNAB is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Money Lover - Money Manager is:
Money Lover is not connected to the users bank accounts. By not being connected that means users have to manually input (at least once) their recurring transactions or singular transactions..
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Pros
Pro Ability to add manual transactions
Money Lover is not connected to the users bank accounts. By not being connected that means users have to manually input (at least once) their recurring transactions or singular transactions..
Pro Useful graphs and charts
Money Lover offers the normal pie chart of your spending and also bar graphs to help you identify trends in your net income.
Pro Option to add details with each transaction
Similar applications to Money Lover only offer a few details to add when inputting a new transaction but Money Lover offers a lot more besides the normal category and title. Money Lover allows you to add notes, contacts, a picture, location, and reminders.
Pro Supports everyone
Money Lover is completely independent of all financial institution so anyone in any country can use Money Lover.
Pro Elegant interface
Elegant and user-friendly interface.
Pro No connections to your banking accounts or investments
Money Lover is completely independent of your financial institution. This is great for those that are worried about sharing their bank account details but of course this is less convenient.
Pro Provides a method for budgeting
Provides a 4 step method for budgeting money, that really makes budgeting simple and powerful.
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.
Pro Online web app
Pro Mobile apps for easy expense tracking
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cons
Con No budget for all wallets
You can't set one budget to all wallets. For example: if you have 9 wallets in your family, then you need to have 9 budgets for food, 9 budgets for clothes and so on.

Con Difficult to update debt
There is no guideline for updating debt. Every debt goes to the wallet including Mortgage Bond. When updating the opening balance of (for example) the Mortgage Bond, it appears in the bank balance as part of the total positive balance.
Con No import
Cannot import data from my previous app. Transitioning to Money Lover became a very time-consuming task.
Con You have to pay for icons
When buying premium, you should get all features. Unfortunately, you still have to pay for icons.
Con No support for credit card accounts
Con Basic app is free but with advertisements
The free version of Money Lover includes small banner advertisements at the bottom of the application. They aren't too intrusive but they can be annoying. Removing the advertisements is a $2.00 in app purchase. Getting the whole Money Lover experience requires an upgrade from the basic application to the premium application without advertisements and the ability to have more than one wallet, a budget plan, and an event plan for a $4.99 in app purchase.
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.
Con Data is stored in the Cloud
All budget data is stored in the cloud on AWS servers which are most likely based in the United States. HOWEVER, there is an option to save budget data locally as well.
Con Learning curve
There is a learning curve to the YNAB method.
