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If you’re tired of YNAB’s price increases, you’ll find cheaper options to track your money. Check out these budgeting apps if you don’t want to use spreadsheets and other manual finance trackers. You’ll learn about features, pricing, and more.
1NerdWallet
NerdWalletis a comprehensive budgeting app that offers weekly insights and allows you to connect your bank account. You can get a financial health score if you don’t know what your current state is, and the app can also show you monthly cash flows to ensure that you don’t dip into the red.
When using NerdWallet, you can access a dashboard with weekly insights. Here, you’ll find handy quick tips—such as how to make budgeting easier. You can also get an automatically-calculated 50/30/20 budget based on your monthly income.
Besides seeing your cash flow for the current month, you can look at how your cash flow compares to other months. Moreover, you can see a list of upcoming bills in the mobile app. A pie chart showing your monthly spending categories is also available.
Other handy NerdWallet features include tracking your net worth and credit score. The website has a huge library of resources related to insurance, making money, optimizing rewards, and more. NerdWallet also has a cost-of-living calculator; it’s one of manytools to estimate the cost of living in various cities.
Download:NerdWallet foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
NerdWallet Pricing
NerdWallet has a basic free account to track your income and expenses. However, you can also upgrade to NerdWallet+ for $49 per year. Here, you can get several rewards that’ll help you spend less money on things you were going to buy anyway.
Spendeeis one of the bestways to track and manage your subscriptions, and it’s also an ideal tool if you want to budget effectively. The app has a simpleAdd a New Budgetfeature that lets you choose whether you want it to apply daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. It’s also possible to set a one-time budget if you’d prefer.
You can see how much of your budget you have left, and there’s a percentage meter to make it clearer. It’s possible to add your income from several sources, such as a job or business. It basically works as a personal version of business bookkeeping software, and it’s a handy alternative topersonal finance Excel spreadsheets for managing your money.
Spendee breaks down your income based on its source, and you’ll see the same for your expenses as well. Of all the apps on this list, I think it has the best free version. The web and mobile apps are well-designed and easy to navigate, and it’s very easy to add incoming and outgoing money.
Download:Spendee foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
Spendee Pricing
Below is a breakdown of Spendee Plus and Premium’s pricing:
Spendee Plus
Spendee Premium
3EveryDollar
EveryDollarwas created by Dave Ramsey’s team and is another simple, easy-to-use budgeting alternative to YNAB. The free version lets you manually add your income and expenses, and you’ll see how much money you have left to spend. You can go into significant detail with your expenses and add aspects such as:
If you only need a basic tracker, the free version has most of the features you need. you’re able to usefree Notion budget templates to track your expenses and savings, but EveryDollar is arguably an easier option.
Download:EveryDollar foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
EveryDollar Pricing
EveryDollar’s premium plans have several helpful features, such as paycheck planning, goal-setting, and the option to ask a coach questions. Moreover, you can connect your bank account. You have two options: Premium and Ramsey+.
Here’s how much EveryDollar Premium costs:
EveryDollar Premium Monthly
EveryDollar Premium Annual
Ramsey+’s pricing is as follows:
Three Months
Six Months
you’re able to get a 14-day free EveryDollar Premium and/or Ramsey+ trial if you want to try either first.
4Monarch Money
Monarch Moneyonly has a paid plan, but you can get a seven-day free trial to test the app before committing to a paid subscription. You can get overviews of your income, expenses, and how much is left in your budget via a simple interface. To help you prepare for upcoming months, you can also create forecasts and set goals.
When using Monarch Money, you have access to a comprehensive cash flow section. Here, you’ll find your savings rate in addition to your income and expenses. The information can be presented in several forms, such as graphs.
you’re able to customize the Monarch Money dashboard to show only what interests you. Toggles include:
It’s possible to add bank accounts from several financial institutions, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and Capital One. You can also add an account manually if you can’t find your banking provider.
Download:Monarch Money foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
Monarch Money Pricing
Monarch Monthly
Monarch Annual
When I first felt like I needed to get my finances together in 2018, I used a mobile-only bank to set a strict boundary with how much “fun” money I could spend. And if you want to budget, I suggest usingRevolutfor the same reason.
Though primarily a banking app, Revolut has a helpful, free, and simple budgeting feature. The app automatically tracks how much money you’ve spent in the app each month, and it’ll automatically categorize each transaction. You can add a custom budget and even set specific budgets within different categories, such as entertainment, travel, groceries, and shopping.
Revolut has a cash flow feature that shows where your money has gone, and you can break it down by the week, month, year, and for six months. Revolut has premium plans with other benefits, such as complimentary card delivery, but I don’t think that you need these for budgeting.
Download:Revolut foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
Budgeting is much easier when you use an app, and you don’t even need to pay for a subscription if you’re happy to manually add your income and expenses. However, if you’re prone to not tracking expenses when it doesn’t suit you, it’s much better to pay for features like bank account synchronization. You should look at ways to increase your income over time because you can only reduce your expenses so much, but if you’re at point zero, these apps will help you track your finances.
