MagnifyMoney 
If you’re trying to stick to a budget or just manage your money better, there are plenty of apps designed to track your finances and promote better saving and spending habits. Budgeting apps sometimes have different features, but they all essentially work to give you a better idea of where your money is going.
MagnifyMoney reviewed several apps and determined the best budgeting apps for specific needs. We emphasized apps that are broadly useful and accessible for most people, with priority given to those that are free to use.
Cost: Free
MagnifyMoney’s choice as the best overall budgeting app is Mint, one of the most popular and well-established apps in the space. Mint has built-in integrations for automatically syncing information from savings accounts and other kinds of accounts, and it allows users to customize their budget with a degree of flexibility that’s not always available with other budgeting tools. Importantly, it’s free. Mint generates revenue with third-party advertisements.
Users can choose to classify their budgets and savings goals however they want, and Mint records all transactions for them. Mint provides users with useful and accessible historical data and helps track your spending — it’s simple to use but provides comprehensive information. Mint also sends users notifications for budget updates and suspicious financial activity.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Completely free for all features | Occasional data synchronization issues |
| Budget and goal flexibility | Not geared for complex investments |
| Benchmarks for financial goals | |
| Credit monitoring, including credit-score tracking |
Among the best apps for budgeting, Mint offers the deepest and most robust tools for budgeting with custom goals and categories. It’s the best choice for most users, including and especially those who are new to tracking budgets and financial goals.
Cost: $14.99 a month or $99 a year
Free trial: 34 days
You Need A Budget (YNAB) has a different philosophy than many other budgeting apps: instead of budgeting based on expected expenses, YNAB sets budgets based on income with an approach called zero-based budgeting. YNAB preemptively assigns each dollar of income to either an expense or a payment toward savings, investments or debts. The potential costs of exceeding budgets become a bit more tangible: every dollar is accounted for somewhere, so any excessive spending in one area will directly impact another.
YNAB claims to save you money over the course of the year, but the annual price tag of $99 may scare off some potential users.
The zero-based budgeting approach has given YNAB a dedicated user base. For those who are willing to try a more stringent budget, YNAB offers a lot of instructional resources and customer service. They also have the ability for you to synchronize balances and transactions as well as manually reconcile that data with your own numbers.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Emphasis on zero-based budgeting | Costs at least $99 per year |
| Free trial period to try the technique | No tools for tracking investments |
| Good flexibility for budget categories |
You Need A Budget may not be for everyone, but for those who are able to commit to a zero-based budgeting strategy to pay off debt or boost their savings, YNAB offers a more rigorous way to stick to those goals.
Cost: Free (or $7.99 per month, $34.99 per year or $79.99 lifetime for premium)
PocketGuard’s services are based around an algorithm called the In My Pocket feature, which identifies how much money users can spend on a daily basis depending on factors like income, bill payments, debt obligations, budget goals and recent spending habits. It’s built around day-to-day diligence in sticking to your budgeting goals and geared toward reinforcing saving habits.
Its most simple features are available for free, but members can set specialized plans for debt payments, customize their budget categories, export transactions, view all historical data and create as many categories and budgets as they want. Some of those features are available for free with other apps.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Intuitive platform for daily budgets | Not all PocketGuard services are free |
| Provides users basic budgeting for free | Some users report technical issues |
| Helps find better deals on cable, phone and other bill payments |
By calculating how much money users can spend each day, PocketGuard is designed to help curb overspending. It tracks your income, expenses and savings for free, but some services like category customization and debt payoff plans are part of a premium service called PocketGuard Plus.
Cost: Free
Personal Capital is available as an app or as an online platform, and while there are some premium investing services, the budgeting tools are free. Their budgeting services can be more detailed and comprehensive than most other budgeting apps — information syncs automatically from financial institutions, but there are no options for manually reconciling the information if there’s a mistake.
Among the tools offered by Personal Capital for investing are a net worth tracker, a portfolio fee analyzer and a retirement planner. There are also some educational resources available to investors on the platform. Their free services entice customers for investment advising, but Personal Capital has a strong suite of services for free — it’s a solid choice for investment-focused budgeters.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free wealth management tools | Not primarily a budgeting tool |
| Geared toward retirement planning | No manual transactions |
| Analyzes fees for your portfolio |
Personal Capital is an investing platform at heart, but its expense and budget tracking tools are an excellent free service as well. It’s the best budget app for users who want the ability to manage and track more complex investments as part of their bigger financial picture.
Cost: Free
There are some apps specifically designed for couples, and Honeydue is built for couples to track their money together. Honeydue shows the balances across accounts, tells you how you split expenses, tracks when bills are due (and who’s supposed to pay them) and allows users to chat with each other in the app. There’s also a free option for a joint bank account held by a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured bank.
Budgets can be viewed together or separately in the app, and like most budgeting services, Honeydue alerts users when a budget is exceeded or when a bill is due. Honeydue merges information for both partners, and it’s the best budget app for couples who want to manage their money together.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Automatically syncs with bank accounts | Sometimes slow in syncing data according to users |
| Offers options for which accounts to share | Limited collaboration on savings goals |
| Features a joint bank account for users |
Honeydue is a standout among budgeting apps designed for couples: users and their partners can jointly check transactions, track accounts and coordinate bill payments on the platform. It’s the best free app in this category, and it has robust tools for tracking a couple’s finances.
Cost: Free (or $8 per month or $70 per year for premium)
Goodbudget is a straightforward envelope budgeting app. Envelope budgeting is based around putting a month’s worth of cash in an envelope labeled for a specific budget category. Once that money’s gone, the budget’s been reached, and if there’s some money left over, there’s some extra disposable income for expenses outside of the budget.
Goodbudget is a tool that brings that dynamic into an app and online platform. There are no integrations with financial institutions — every purchase must be entered manually. It’s a good tool for couples or for families with kids who are learning to budget because it easily accommodates multiple users.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Some free features | Doesn’t link with financial institutions |
| Good for couples to budget together | Premium features needed for more envelopes |
| Tracks debt payment progress |
The envelope budgeting method is more of an old-school way to track your finances.Though most people don’t rely on cash or envelopes for budgeting anymore, apps like Goodbudget have stepped up as a 21st-century solution.
There are several other useful budgeting apps beyond those that MagnifyMoney selected as the best for specific categories. Here are some of the apps that were considered but ultimately not chosen as the best:
| App | Cost | Key feature |
|---|---|---|
| Mint | Free | Flexibility in creating budgets and goals |
| You Need a Budget (YNAB) | $99 per year | Zero-based budgeting system |
| PocketGuard | $34.99 per year* | Daily budgets to limit overspending |
| Personal Capital | Free | Robust investment tracking tools |
| Honeydue | Free | Budgeting designed for couples |
| Goodbudget | $70 per year* | Modern envelope budgeting platform |
There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing a budgeting app, including cost, available features, customization options and its approach to the budget process, whether that’s zero-based budgeting, envelope budgeting or a more common approach.
Budgeting apps can’t force you to stop spending money, but they’re a great way to track your progress and set goals and benchmarks for yourself. If you stick to the plan, those budgeting apps can work wonders.
MagnifyMoney chose Mint as the best free budgeting app because it offers quite a bit of flexibility and depth despite being an entirely free platform. In addition, Mint was our choice for the best overall budget app among all free or paid options.
User preference really determines what’s the easiest budgeting app. Most apps offer synchronization with banks and financial institutions to streamline the process and provide users with digestible information on their platforms.
Alex Cook
