Best Personal Finance Apps
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Updated on May 1, 2023
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Managing your money isn’t the easiest thing to do. Now that many of us no longer balance a checkbook, tracking expenses and keeping up with the bank balance can be difficult. Personal finance apps connect with your bank account and help you keep up with your spending. These apps can show you which categories you spend the most in, track, and, sometimes allow you to make upcoming bill payments, as well as keep up with your credit score and investment portfolio.
The best personal finance apps provide several features for managing your overall finances. This includes email reminders, bill due dates, track subscriptions, shared wallets, and more. All the apps on our list are available on both iOS and Android, so you can utilize them no matter which smartphone you have.
Best Personal Finance Apps of 2024
- Best Overall: Mint
- Best for Debt Payoff: You Need a Budget
- Best for Wealth Management: Empower (Formerly Personal Capital)
- Best for Bill Payment: Prism
- Best for Shared Expenses: Spendee
- Best for Budgeting: EveryDollar
- Best Visuals: Mobills
Best Personal Finance Apps
Best Personal Finance Apps
- Our Top Picks
- Mint
- You Need a Budget
- Empower (Formerly Personal Capital)
- Prism
- Spendee
- EveryDollar
- Mobills
- See More (4)
Best Overall : Mint
Why We Chose It
Mint earns our choice as the best overall app because its array of features lets you keep track of your spending and monitor your credit health for free.
Pros & Cons
- Mint is free
- Simple bill tracking
- Handy spending categorization
- Users may find the ads annoying
Mint, Intuit’s personal finance app, is a popular app that provides your complete financial picture in one place. Once you link your credit and debit cards to your account, Mint pulls your transactions, categorizes them, and shows how you spend your money. You can keep track of your bills and spending and create a budget you can stick to.
The site provides access to your credit score for free, and you can get a breakdown of the factors contributing to your score to stay on top of your credit health. Plus, you can track your investments and manage utility payments.
Best for Debt Payoff : You Need a Budget
Why We Chose It
You Need a Budget, also known as YNAB, is designed specifically for budgeting; its tools for tracking income and expenses earned it a spot on our list as the best for debt payoff.
Pros & Cons
- Free trial available
- Detailed budgeting and spending reports
- Relatively high monthly cost
- Multiple features may overwhelm new users
YNAB is a personal finance app built around its Four Rules. The rules not only help you build a better budget but also help you gain control of your spending:
- Give every dollar a job.
- Embrace your true expenses.
- Roll with the punches.
- Age your money.
Import transactions from your checking account and apply them to each budget category to get an accurate picture of your spending. You can keep a balanced budget by adjusting budget categories if you accidentally overspend (or under-budgeted for a certain category). Detailed reports show you how your spending is progressing throughout the month and help you spot where you can improve your spending.
According to YNAB, the average new user saves $600 in the first two months and more than $6,000 in the first year. You can try the app for free for the first 34 days. After that, you’ll pay $99 if you choose a yearly plan or $14.99 per month.
Best for Wealth Management : Empower (Formerly Personal Capital)
- Cost: Budgeting tool is free; wealth management fee of 0.89% on up to $1,000,000 balance
- Bank Sync: Yes
- Free Trial: No
Why We Chose It
We chose Empower as the best for wealth management because it looks at your entire financial picture, including investments, as opposed to just tracking bank accounts.
Pros & Cons
- Has an investment component
- Access to financial advisors
- Wealth management fees are relatively high
- May be overwhelming if you’re looking for a simple budgeting tool
Empower is a personal finance and wealth management app that allows you to manage your assets and investments along with your everyday spending accounts. While you can connect to your bank account to track spending and create a monthly budget, the app really shines in helping you track and optimize your investments. You can track your portfolio by account, asset class, or individual security.
With built-in intelligence available on the tablet and mobile versions of the app, you can discover opportunities for diversification, risk management, and discover any hidden fees you may be paying. Comparing your own portfolio to major market benchmarks allows you to determine whether you’re on track to meet your investment goals.
Empower also provides registered financial advisors who can provide you with customized advice tailored to your goals.
Best for Bill Payment : Prism
Why We Chose It
Prism is our pick as the best option for bill payment because that’s its focus, and the app does it well with thousands of billers. Plus, it’s free.
Pros & Cons
- Handy payment due date reminders
- Full picture of your accounts in one app
- Limited features; bill pay only
Prism shows all your bills and financial accounts in a single app, giving you a complete picture of your finances. The app has more than 11,000 billers, including larger banks and even smaller utility companies. Add your bills to the app, and Prism automatically tracks your bills and sends due-date reminders to help you prevent late payments.
You can use the app to make payments by scheduling them the same day or several days in advance. This eliminates the need to log into multiple accounts to your pay bills.
Best for Shared Expenses : Spendee
- Cost: Free, with optional paid upgrade
- Bank Sync: With Premium plan only
- Free Trial: Yes
Why We Chose It
Spendee is designed to be shared by multiple members of a household, and that’s why we chose it as the best for shared expenses. This can be useful for couples who need to keep track of joint accounts.
Pros & Cons
- Handy spending categorization
- Easily accessible by family members or roommates
- Free plan has limited features
- Bank account sync only available with Premium plan
Many other personal finance apps are for individual use. But Spendee allows you to create wallets with friends and family that you can use to manage shared expenses for a household budget.
You can import your bank transactions and let the app categorize them to tally how you’re spending money each month. You can also manually add cash expenses for a more accurate picture of where your money goes. And if you’re concerned about going over budget, you can set amounts for each spending category and track your progress toward the budgeted amount.
Additionally, Spendee’s bill tracker functionality ensures you remember to pay each of your bills and avoid late payment penalties. If you’re going on a trip or another special event, you can create a category specifically for that event to track your spending and keep yourself on budget.
While Spendee offers a free version, it has limited features compared with its paid versions. Those who want to sync the app with their bank account will need to pay for the Premium version, which costs $22.99/year.