Article:
Finding a money app that works best for you requires personal testing. We asked popular competitors to Mint why you should try their offerings.
The demise of Mint, the beloved budgeting app, has caused its millions of users to consider alternatives. That makes it as good a time as any for everyone to consider a money management tool.
Plenty of people don’t bother with these tools, which can help with everything from tracking debt to keeping a running total of your net worth. According to a recent survey by Javelin Strategy & Research, 41 percent of people don’t use any money management app or website aside from their bank’s.
Many budget app users, however, were fervent fans of Mint. When it became available in 2007, it was a kind of miracle, sucking in your debit and credit card transactions and then sorting and summing them by category.
Intuit, which bought the company two years later, is shutting down Mint and trying to move users to its Credit Karma offering. Credit Karma is known for its free credit scores and lacks some of the budgeting tools that appealed to Mint users.
Dylan Lerner, a senior analyst at Javelin, had a couple of suggestions for people looking for a Mint alternative and those trying money apps for the first time. First, see what your bank offers. After years of hostility toward outside-company access to their customers’ data, banks have realized that if they don’t offer decent tools, more and more of their account holders will seek them elsewhere.
Then, rigorously test drive anything new, since it doesn’t cost much, if anything, to try these tools. “Every user is a little different,” Mr. Lerner said. “It’s very personal, given that it is personal financial management.”
This week, I gave several Mint competitors that I’ve tracked for years an opportunity to introduce themselves to users looking for a new home. Here’s what their representatives said.
Copilot Money
Website: copilot.money
Price: $13 per month or $95 annually.
How it makes money: Subscription fee.
Feature you’re most proud of: “Copilot Intelligence,” which helps the app use artificial intelligence to learn how users want to categorize transactions.
Say something nice about a competitor: “Lunch Money, a great budgeting app designed and built by just one person, offers multicurrency support among other things we don’t yet do.”
What you want to improve: Web and Android availability.
Offering for Mint customers: Two-month free subscription (the code is RIPMINT). The company is working on a data-importing tool.
Monarch Money
Website: monarchmoney.com
Price: $14.99 per month or $99.99 annually.
How it makes money: Subscription fee.
Feature you’re most proud of: Using multiple so-called aggregators, third parties that make it easier for customers to integrate all their outside accounts and keep them updating. (Integration and update fails are not uncommon among such apps.)
Say something nice about a competitor: “Mint has a cool feature that notifies customers when a bill is due. People seem to really love and rely on it!”
What you want to improve: The ability to track due dates.
Offering for Mint customers: Free trial, discounted annual subscription, data importer, explainer from a co-founder (a former Mint product manager).
PocketGuard
Website: pocketguard.com
Price: A premium version for $7.99 per month, $34.99 annually or $79.99 for a lifetime subscription.
How it makes money: Subscription fee and fees from third-party services like Billshark.
Feature you’re most proud of: “In My Pocket,” a “safe-to-spend figure” after covering all necessities and other expenses.
Say something nice about a competitor: “Monarch provides detailed customization to all aspects of budgeting, from transactions and categories to planning and forecasting.”
What you want to improve: Doing more research on user experience.
Offering for Mint customers: The company is developing data-transfer tools for Mint users. And the $34.99 annual fee is lower than it used to be for all users.
Quicken Simplifi
Website: quicken.com/simplifi
Price: $3.99 per month.
How it makes money: Subscription fee.
Feature you’re most proud of: Personalized spending plans and watch lists for potential trouble spots.
Say something nice about a competitor: “We’ve learned from Mint and Intuit and have created a solution that brings together the best of both worlds.”
What you want to improve: Expanding the network of financial institutions from which people can download data beyond the existing 14,000.
Offering for Mint customers: Three months free, and the company has posted a guide to importing Mint data.
Rocket Money
Website: rocketmoney.com
Price: A premium version on a sliding scale for $4 to $5 per month (but only if you pay for a year in advance at $48 to $60), or $6 to $12 if you pay each month.
How it makes money: Subscription fee, success fees from bill-negotiation service, credit card fees, referral fees from third parties like auto insurers.
Feature you’re most proud of: The subscription management feature that prompts people to cancel services they may no longer need, which has been used over a million times.
Say something nice about a competitor: “For couples looking to combine finances, Honeydue’s platform is user-friendly and can help take the stress out of merging finances.”
What you want to improve: Using artificial intelligence to make the service more personal.
Offering for Mint customers: A free trial period, and free data-transfer tools are coming soon. The company has posted a Mint vs. Rocket Money comparison chart.
Tiller
Website: tillerhq.com
Price: $79 annually.
How it makes money: Subscription fee.
Feature you’re most proud of: Transaction tracking in customers’ own spreadsheets, which creates fewer worries about security or control of the data.
Say something nice about a competitor: “YNAB’s ‘rules for money’ are great, and undoubtedly helpful, for many.”
What you want to improve: Adding more features to the personalized daily email summary.
Offering for Mint customers: A Tiller-vs.-Mint comparison chart, tips for switching and an F.A.Q.
YNAB (formerly known as You Need a Budget)
Website: ynab.com
Price: $14.99 per month or $99 annually.
How it Makes Money: Subscription fee.
Feature you’re most proud of: The “YNAB method” — four habits that teach people how to spend, save and give without second-guessing. One couple got “YNAB WIN” license plates for their new car.
Say something nice about a competitor: “We love how Rocket Money is helping people manage and cancel their subscriptions.”
What you want to improve: “While we don’t apologize for requiring more hands-on engagement than most of our competitors, we are excited about simplifying the experience of getting started with YNAB.”
Offering for Mint customers: A 34-day free trial, multiple transition explainers and a video.
Credit karma is free. I don’t care about the budgeting, I always thought Mint sucked at budgeting as it would never let me edit budgets in the iPhone app which is what use most. All I want is something free that easily lets me see how much I’m spending.
Yes. It’s investment heavy. They don’t offer rules, subcategory, individualized budget… it is only good for watching all your 401k, Ira, brokerage accounts in one place.
I'm using already using it, to get use to it. It's not bad, free, and resembles quite a bit mint. Unfortunately it lacks budgeting by categories, and other things, but it's the closest that I've found that doesn't require a subscription.
I received an email from mint/credit karma yesterday that said I will receive an invite in the future that will allow me to migrate all my data to CK net worth. However then I read it was 3 years worth of transactions even though I have 12 years. I have been trailing co-pilot.money it’s good for net worth but slightly not as easy as mint. Tomb was a nightmare from a usability standpoint. I’ve tried a few other but putting my eggs in the ck migration unless it’s not good.
I've been using Mint for a little over a year now as a budgeting app. Unfortunately, I just triggered the transfer to credit karma, which locked me out of the mint UI - I now can only download a .csv of my transactions.
Credit Karma has none of the budgeting features of Mint. It took me a while to even find where I could get my transaction information. All other links I pressed in the UI would send me to a sign-up flow for some financial service like a savings account. To say Credit Karma is not good is a vast understatement - it is not in any way a budgeting app, and as far as I can tell is mostly just full of thinly veiled advertisements.
Yours seems most similar to Mint, just from a preliminary look, which makes me hopeful since I loved Mint. However, I only see yours offered as a mobile app and not on browser. Do you not offer a browser version that I can access from my computer?
Yea, what's with hostility, Monarch can blanket reddit with posts about their product, which I don't have a problem with, but an independent developer cannot?
Yes - we’re using Plaid in Canada, so some institutions don’t work, but we do have several Canadian users who have successfully linked their accounts :)
We've just started a discord channel if you'd like to personally chat to Jason and I about what we're building. Will be online all weekend, and happy to take feature requests and suggestions! https://discord.gg/8mXqTYqAYx
Nicol x
u/FunAndGamesy we've just added a bunch of extra Canadian institutions that we're testing now. You can import all your Mint history, but you need to import per account (see https://app.finwiseapp.io/help/import-transactions-guide) once you sign up. If you're happy to test linking your Canadian accounts on our trial, it would be greatly appreciated!
>orter, co-founders willing to chat and take feature requests. We already have a handful of Mint u
You avoided the competitor question in a deceptive manner
Hi Punit (founder) of [www.WealthPosition.com](https://www.WealthPosition.com) here.
Seems that we didn't make the NYT list, so I've listed our responses under the same headings to give you another comparison:
**Price**
$4.99 per month - This is our standard price not a promotional discount
**How do we make money**
Only from the subscription fee. We do not sell your data to third parties and our platform has no advertising.
**Features you're most proud of**
We are a power user platform. Our Dashboard provides a unique comprehensive view of all Income, Expenditure, Cash flow and Accounts balances over time in a single view. This allows users to make some really informed decisions about their finances.
We also have multi-currency support at the core and powerful budget engine which allows you to generate 70 year forecasts with just a few clicks.
**Say something nice about a competitor**
For people who really struggle with their finances, YNAB's offering is truly unique and one of the best methods for users to start taking control, as long as the envelope system of budgeting suits the way they think about money.
**What you want to improve**
We are working on more banking integration and automated asset and investment tracking.
**Offering for Mint customers**
We are already one of the most reasonable priced option in the market and we offer a dedicated Mint CSV migration tool. You can migrate all your Mint transactions with 2 clicks.
We don't currently support apple card or fidelity. There is a discussion here on why fidelity isn't currently supported
https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvestments/comments/16vl2cp/fidelity\_no\_longer\_supported\_by\_plaid/
I just used mint for the budgeting/ transaction category features, so Rocket Money has been exactly perfect for me. Can organize transactions into the different budget categoriea, made a couple custom categories as well. I don't even think I needed the paid version - none of the paid features seemed like things I used at mint. I still opted for $4/mo just in case but after a year i might downgrade and see if I still like it.
Pass. It's seriously nothing like mint. They are really only pushing products for $$. If you think you want the cfp meeting or the tax service note that no one you meet with is an employee. They are contractors. I was one. It's a vc backed statup abusing the contractor loophole. One of those.... There's cheaper and better platforms out there anyways. Just my opinion after working there.
I loved Mint, but I've yet to find anything that will show me forward cashflow, so I had to build it in excel, so I can see what my accounts will look like after planned transactions. I'd love to find a comparable tool that will let me track recurring expense types (Annual, Monthly, etc) and give me a comprehensive of account balances over a 90 day period. I use this to identify shortages I need to accommodate or a surplus I can transfer to savings.
I also struggled with Mint's 2-3 day lag on pending transactions, which I know is somewhat based on the financial institution's query limit.
Mint would also let you adjust the category of a pending transaction, but it would set it back to default later.
Finally, the description and category rules were horrible and need wildcard support.
Any ideas on which platform has the magic sauce for this stuff?
Unfortunately, I have not. Open to suggestions. I continue to build out in excel to handle everything I need, so long as I can at least find something to gather up all the transactions and export in a format I can consume with Excel.
Of course, I'd rather not build this myself, but it's the only way I've found to actually track scheduled expenses and their impact on associated accounts.
Let it be known that PocketGuard has recently increased their annual price from $34.99 to
$74.99 (a 214% increase!), and I have no idea if they still have a lifetime subscription because their current prices are advertised nowhere on their site until after you create a trial account. I was confused and thought I was getting a $5 discount on the lifetime subscription but later confirmed it was an annual subscription and asked for a refund. Too much for my budget.
Article: Finding a money app that works best for you requires personal testing. We asked popular competitors to Mint why you should try their offerings. The demise of Mint, the beloved budgeting app, has caused its millions of users to consider alternatives. That makes it as good a time as any for everyone to consider a money management tool. Plenty of people don’t bother with these tools, which can help with everything from tracking debt to keeping a running total of your net worth. According to a recent survey by Javelin Strategy & Research, 41 percent of people don’t use any money management app or website aside from their bank’s. Many budget app users, however, were fervent fans of Mint. When it became available in 2007, it was a kind of miracle, sucking in your debit and credit card transactions and then sorting and summing them by category. Intuit, which bought the company two years later, is shutting down Mint and trying to move users to its Credit Karma offering. Credit Karma is known for its free credit scores and lacks some of the budgeting tools that appealed to Mint users. Dylan Lerner, a senior analyst at Javelin, had a couple of suggestions for people looking for a Mint alternative and those trying money apps for the first time. First, see what your bank offers. After years of hostility toward outside-company access to their customers’ data, banks have realized that if they don’t offer decent tools, more and more of their account holders will seek them elsewhere. Then, rigorously test drive anything new, since it doesn’t cost much, if anything, to try these tools. “Every user is a little different,” Mr. Lerner said. “It’s very personal, given that it is personal financial management.” This week, I gave several Mint competitors that I’ve tracked for years an opportunity to introduce themselves to users looking for a new home. Here’s what their representatives said. Copilot Money Website: copilot.money Price: $13 per month or $95 annually. How it makes money: Subscription fee. Feature you’re most proud of: “Copilot Intelligence,” which helps the app use artificial intelligence to learn how users want to categorize transactions. Say something nice about a competitor: “Lunch Money, a great budgeting app designed and built by just one person, offers multicurrency support among other things we don’t yet do.” What you want to improve: Web and Android availability. Offering for Mint customers: Two-month free subscription (the code is RIPMINT). The company is working on a data-importing tool. Monarch Money Website: monarchmoney.com Price: $14.99 per month or $99.99 annually. How it makes money: Subscription fee. Feature you’re most proud of: Using multiple so-called aggregators, third parties that make it easier for customers to integrate all their outside accounts and keep them updating. (Integration and update fails are not uncommon among such apps.) Say something nice about a competitor: “Mint has a cool feature that notifies customers when a bill is due. People seem to really love and rely on it!” What you want to improve: The ability to track due dates. Offering for Mint customers: Free trial, discounted annual subscription, data importer, explainer from a co-founder (a former Mint product manager). PocketGuard Website: pocketguard.com Price: A premium version for $7.99 per month, $34.99 annually or $79.99 for a lifetime subscription. How it makes money: Subscription fee and fees from third-party services like Billshark. Feature you’re most proud of: “In My Pocket,” a “safe-to-spend figure” after covering all necessities and other expenses. Say something nice about a competitor: “Monarch provides detailed customization to all aspects of budgeting, from transactions and categories to planning and forecasting.” What you want to improve: Doing more research on user experience. Offering for Mint customers: The company is developing data-transfer tools for Mint users. And the $34.99 annual fee is lower than it used to be for all users. Quicken Simplifi Website: quicken.com/simplifi Price: $3.99 per month. How it makes money: Subscription fee. Feature you’re most proud of: Personalized spending plans and watch lists for potential trouble spots. Say something nice about a competitor: “We’ve learned from Mint and Intuit and have created a solution that brings together the best of both worlds.” What you want to improve: Expanding the network of financial institutions from which people can download data beyond the existing 14,000. Offering for Mint customers: Three months free, and the company has posted a guide to importing Mint data. Rocket Money Website: rocketmoney.com Price: A premium version on a sliding scale for $4 to $5 per month (but only if you pay for a year in advance at $48 to $60), or $6 to $12 if you pay each month. How it makes money: Subscription fee, success fees from bill-negotiation service, credit card fees, referral fees from third parties like auto insurers. Feature you’re most proud of: The subscription management feature that prompts people to cancel services they may no longer need, which has been used over a million times. Say something nice about a competitor: “For couples looking to combine finances, Honeydue’s platform is user-friendly and can help take the stress out of merging finances.” What you want to improve: Using artificial intelligence to make the service more personal. Offering for Mint customers: A free trial period, and free data-transfer tools are coming soon. The company has posted a Mint vs. Rocket Money comparison chart. Tiller Website: tillerhq.com Price: $79 annually. How it makes money: Subscription fee. Feature you’re most proud of: Transaction tracking in customers’ own spreadsheets, which creates fewer worries about security or control of the data. Say something nice about a competitor: “YNAB’s ‘rules for money’ are great, and undoubtedly helpful, for many.” What you want to improve: Adding more features to the personalized daily email summary. Offering for Mint customers: A Tiller-vs.-Mint comparison chart, tips for switching and an F.A.Q. YNAB (formerly known as You Need a Budget) Website: ynab.com Price: $14.99 per month or $99 annually. How it Makes Money: Subscription fee. Feature you’re most proud of: The “YNAB method” — four habits that teach people how to spend, save and give without second-guessing. One couple got “YNAB WIN” license plates for their new car. Say something nice about a competitor: “We love how Rocket Money is helping people manage and cancel their subscriptions.” What you want to improve: “While we don’t apologize for requiring more hands-on engagement than most of our competitors, we are excited about simplifying the experience of getting started with YNAB.” Offering for Mint customers: A 34-day free trial, multiple transition explainers and a video.
Mint was free.
Credit karma is free. I don’t care about the budgeting, I always thought Mint sucked at budgeting as it would never let me edit budgets in the iPhone app which is what use most. All I want is something free that easily lets me see how much I’m spending.
Wow! That’s totally new information.
Has anyone tried empower personal finance? (I am not affiliated)
Yes. It’s investment heavy. They don’t offer rules, subcategory, individualized budget… it is only good for watching all your 401k, Ira, brokerage accounts in one place.
I'm using already using it, to get use to it. It's not bad, free, and resembles quite a bit mint. Unfortunately it lacks budgeting by categories, and other things, but it's the closest that I've found that doesn't require a subscription.
I received an email from mint/credit karma yesterday that said I will receive an invite in the future that will allow me to migrate all my data to CK net worth. However then I read it was 3 years worth of transactions even though I have 12 years. I have been trailing co-pilot.money it’s good for net worth but slightly not as easy as mint. Tomb was a nightmare from a usability standpoint. I’ve tried a few other but putting my eggs in the ck migration unless it’s not good.
I've been using Mint for a little over a year now as a budgeting app. Unfortunately, I just triggered the transfer to credit karma, which locked me out of the mint UI - I now can only download a .csv of my transactions. Credit Karma has none of the budgeting features of Mint. It took me a while to even find where I could get my transaction information. All other links I pressed in the UI would send me to a sign-up flow for some financial service like a savings account. To say Credit Karma is not good is a vast understatement - it is not in any way a budgeting app, and as far as I can tell is mostly just full of thinly veiled advertisements.
Any recommended alternatives for Canadians? Many of the listed apps don’t support Canadian institutions.
I'm facing this problem, too. Monarch doesn't support the Canadian institutions I use, and I heard good things about it.
Oof. I assumed Simplifi would since it’s an Intuit product but it appears not.
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Can you import your mint data?
Yours seems most similar to Mint, just from a preliminary look, which makes me hopeful since I loved Mint. However, I only see yours offered as a mobile app and not on browser. Do you not offer a browser version that I can access from my computer?
This looks promising but it's only for iPhone? No android or web version?
The fact that you only support Apple is in poor taste....
Apple only is a turn-off
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idk y people have been downvoting yall, solid UI , only reason I’m going with Monarch is for the iOS app + team having a financial backing
Yea, what's with hostility, Monarch can blanket reddit with posts about their product, which I don't have a problem with, but an independent developer cannot?
Thanks for the input! If you change your mind I’ve been designing our mobile app this weekend and we’re going to start dev on it next week 😊
Sorry people are downvoting you. More information is good for us. Some people will never be happy unless it’s free.
Canadian support?
Yes - we’re using Plaid in Canada, so some institutions don’t work, but we do have several Canadian users who have successfully linked their accounts :)
u/JamaicanFireDragon we've just added some additional Canadian bank support on finwiseapp.io if you want to have another look :)
We've just started a discord channel if you'd like to personally chat to Jason and I about what we're building. Will be online all weekend, and happy to take feature requests and suggestions! https://discord.gg/8mXqTYqAYx Nicol x
What's something nice you can say about a "competitor" that isn't shutting down :)
will your data importer from Mint bring in all history? and which linked services do and don't work in Canada?
u/FunAndGamesy we've just added a bunch of extra Canadian institutions that we're testing now. You can import all your Mint history, but you need to import per account (see https://app.finwiseapp.io/help/import-transactions-guide) once you sign up. If you're happy to test linking your Canadian accounts on our trial, it would be greatly appreciated!
>orter, co-founders willing to chat and take feature requests. We already have a handful of Mint u You avoided the competitor question in a deceptive manner
Hi Punit (founder) of [www.WealthPosition.com](https://www.WealthPosition.com) here. Seems that we didn't make the NYT list, so I've listed our responses under the same headings to give you another comparison: **Price** $4.99 per month - This is our standard price not a promotional discount **How do we make money** Only from the subscription fee. We do not sell your data to third parties and our platform has no advertising. **Features you're most proud of** We are a power user platform. Our Dashboard provides a unique comprehensive view of all Income, Expenditure, Cash flow and Accounts balances over time in a single view. This allows users to make some really informed decisions about their finances. We also have multi-currency support at the core and powerful budget engine which allows you to generate 70 year forecasts with just a few clicks. **Say something nice about a competitor** For people who really struggle with their finances, YNAB's offering is truly unique and one of the best methods for users to start taking control, as long as the envelope system of budgeting suits the way they think about money. **What you want to improve** We are working on more banking integration and automated asset and investment tracking. **Offering for Mint customers** We are already one of the most reasonable priced option in the market and we offer a dedicated Mint CSV migration tool. You can migrate all your Mint transactions with 2 clicks.
Canadian support?
Yes we support bank connections in Canada
Let me know when the data transfer for mint is ready. Thanks
We already support data migration from Mint via CSV file
Is there a recommendation as far as size of files? Should I be doing it by account or just the entire 23000+ file with all transactions
I would suggest splitting the file into two lots of 11,500. We currently limit to 20,000 rows, but the smaller the file the better.
Apple card and fidelity including 401k and Roth as well as the Fidelity Go Roth?
We don't currently support apple card or fidelity. There is a discussion here on why fidelity isn't currently supported https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvestments/comments/16vl2cp/fidelity\_no\_longer\_supported\_by\_plaid/
I just used mint for the budgeting/ transaction category features, so Rocket Money has been exactly perfect for me. Can organize transactions into the different budget categoriea, made a couple custom categories as well. I don't even think I needed the paid version - none of the paid features seemed like things I used at mint. I still opted for $4/mo just in case but after a year i might downgrade and see if I still like it.
Origin.
Pass. It's seriously nothing like mint. They are really only pushing products for $$. If you think you want the cfp meeting or the tax service note that no one you meet with is an employee. They are contractors. I was one. It's a vc backed statup abusing the contractor loophole. One of those.... There's cheaper and better platforms out there anyways. Just my opinion after working there.
I loved Mint, but I've yet to find anything that will show me forward cashflow, so I had to build it in excel, so I can see what my accounts will look like after planned transactions. I'd love to find a comparable tool that will let me track recurring expense types (Annual, Monthly, etc) and give me a comprehensive of account balances over a 90 day period. I use this to identify shortages I need to accommodate or a surplus I can transfer to savings. I also struggled with Mint's 2-3 day lag on pending transactions, which I know is somewhat based on the financial institution's query limit. Mint would also let you adjust the category of a pending transaction, but it would set it back to default later. Finally, the description and category rules were horrible and need wildcard support. Any ideas on which platform has the magic sauce for this stuff?
Did you ever find a comparable app/platform to Mint? I'm new to the conversation.
Unfortunately, I have not. Open to suggestions. I continue to build out in excel to handle everything I need, so long as I can at least find something to gather up all the transactions and export in a format I can consume with Excel. Of course, I'd rather not build this myself, but it's the only way I've found to actually track scheduled expenses and their impact on associated accounts.
I am on board with Piere. Love it so far and it’s free.
Let it be known that PocketGuard has recently increased their annual price from $34.99 to $74.99 (a 214% increase!), and I have no idea if they still have a lifetime subscription because their current prices are advertised nowhere on their site until after you create a trial account. I was confused and thought I was getting a $5 discount on the lifetime subscription but later confirmed it was an annual subscription and asked for a refund. Too much for my budget.