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Budgeting can already feel difficult, but with the right budget app, you should be able to track your spending habits, find ways to spend less and save more, or budget effectively as a couple.
In our search for the best budgeting apps, we made sure our top picks are easy to use. We also considered what might be important to different people when sticking to a budget.
If you're looking for additional tools to help you with your financial goals, you also might want to look through our guide on the best personal finance software.
Best Budgeting Apps
- Mint app
- Honeydue app
- Qapital Goals Account
- Rocket Money
Check out our picks for best budgeting apps, and read more about how we chose the winners.
Compare the Best Budgeting Apps
The Best Budgeting Apps FAQs
In most cases, the best budgeting app for beginners will be one that makes budgeting easy — this means it has an easy-to-use interface and links to your accounts, so you don't have to enter every transaction manually. It can also be good to have an app that teaches you about money. For these reasons, the best budgeting app for beginners right now is Mint.
The Mint Classic Plan is free to download and use. Mint links to your bank account and monitors multiple aspects of your finances, including your income, spending, investments, credit score, and net worth. If you're in a couple, our top pick in Honeydue which is also free to download.
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Mint app
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Honeydue app
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Qapital Goals Account
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Rocket Money
Best Budgeting App Reviews
Best Budgeting App Overall
The Mint app is owned by Intuit, the financial software company that also owns TurboTax and Quickbooks.
Mint's Classic plan is a well-rounded tool for understanding your finances on a large scale. You'll start by linking your bank accounts to Mint for the app to create a budget based on your past spending habits. The app splits your expenses into categories such as shopping, bills, and transportation. You can easily change the settings yourself or create a new category — so Mint does all the hard work for you, but you still have some control.
Mint makes it easy to save for multiple goals. Create a goal, including your estimated costs and timeline, and Mint factors the plan into your budget.
In addition to showing your income, expenses, and savings goals, it displays factors like your credit score, investments, and net worth. Mint has also partnered with Billshark and offers a bill negotiation feature.
Pricing: $0 to $4.99; Mint's classic plan is free. If you want an ad-free experience, the budgeting app has a $0.99 per month ad-free plan and a premium plan that's $4.99 per month. The premium plan has the same features as the classic plan, plus tools that analyze your monthly spending and trends.
Look out for: Occasionally, Mint will place a transaction in one category (like transportation) when it should be in a different category (like bills). You do have the ability to reassign the transaction to another category within the app, though, or create your own category.
If you agree to use the bill negotiation feature, you'll be charged 40% of what Billshark saves you for the service period. Also, be aware that there's a one-time $9 fee if you opt for a payment plan instead of paying upfront.
If you want premium features that analyze your spending more closely, Mint also has a premium plan which has a $4.99 monthly fee. That said, the classic plan already has well-rounded features if your goal is to avoid fees.
Download: Apple | Google Play
Best Budgeting App for Couples
Honeydue is a budgeting app designed specifically for couples. The sign-up process is short and simple — you'll create an account by setting up your email, then invite your partner to Honeydue.
Honeydue allows you to see both your individual and shared finances in one place. You also have to option of setting limits to how much your partner can see. When you connect a bank account to the app, you may choose to share both balance and transaction information, share information only, or share no information.
With Honeydue, you can organize your finances by creating monthly bill reminders or discussing personal financial information through the app's chat feature.
If you would like an additional place to store money for a common goal, Honeydue also offers a joint bank account with debit cards called Honeydue Joint Cash. Your funds will secure at Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. The account also doesn't have monthly services fees or minimum balance requirements.
Pricing: Free
Look out for: You won't be able to access Honeydue through your computer; it's only available through a mobile app. Some of our other top picks have both online and mobile platforms for more convenience.
Download: Apple | Google Play
Best Budgeting App for Saving for Financial Goals
Qapital is a mobile app that can help you save and invest money either individually or as a couple. The Qapital Account is a bank account that is FDIC-insured through Lincoln Savings Bank and other partner banks.
Through Qapital, you'll be able to make unlimited personalized savings goals. The platform also has a unique savings feature called "Rules." Rules are Qapital's savings tools that you may apply to savings goals to encourage you to save in a variety of ways. For example, you could use the "52 Week Rule" to save $1,378 over the course of a year, or the "Set and Forget Rule" to deposit a specific amount of money into your Qapital account each week.
Pricing: 30-day free trial then Basic ($3 monthly), Complete ($6 monthly), or Premier Plan ($12 monthly)
Look out for: Qapital doesn't have a free plan. After the 30-day free trial, you'll have to select one of the monthly fee plans to continue using the platform. The biggest difference between the Basic, Complete, and Premier Plans is that the Complete and Premier Plans also allow you to invest, and the Premier Plan turns savings into a game with a tool called Money Missions.
Download: Apple | Google Play
Best Budgeting App for Reducing Bill Payments and Spending
Rocket Money
Rocket Money was previously known as TrueBill. In June 2022, TrueBill announced it would be changing its name to Rocket Money to better represent the app and its services. It should also be noted that Truebill had become a part of Rocket Companies in December 2021.
Rocket Money analyzes your bills and spending habits and reveals where in your budget you can save money.
The app's standout feature is Bill Negotiation. You'll upload a copy of your bill, and Rocket Money will determine whether you can get the same service with the company for a lower price. Rocket Money may also help you get refunds if you're charged bank overdraft fees or late fees.
Rocket Money has both a free plan and a premium plan. The premium plan includes concierge services, which review your bills and subscriptions to help you cancel or get refunds for these services on your behalf. It also includes premium customer chat, unlimited budgets, customizable budget categories, a savings account, real-time updated syncing, and a credit score report.
Pricing: You may choose how much to pay each month through a sliding scale. Rocket Money has a free plan that's $0. If you would like the premium plan, then pricing varies from $3 per month to $12 per month, depending on the price you think is fair. If you choose the $3 or $4 monthly plan options, you'll be billed annually instead of monthly.
Look out for: When Rocket Money negotiates a bill, you'll have to pay a percentage (you may choose any amount from 30% to 60%) of whatever it will save you for the year. If you plan to change your internet, cable, phone, or wireless provider in the next year, you could end up losing money.
Download: Apple | Google Play
Other Apps That Didn't Make the Cut and Why
- Oportun App: Oportun wasn't one of our top picks because it has a $5 monthly subscription fee after a 30-day free trial. Our top picks have free plans or plans with lower fees. Oportun might still be worth considering if you have an Oportun personal loan or credit card, though, since you'll get one free year of membership for the app.
- Trim: Trim is a good online budgeting platform if you'd like to lower bill payments and get free cancellation services. However, it doesn't help request bank refunds like Rocket Money does.
- Simplifi by Quicken: Simplifi allows you to create a detailed monthly spending and savings plan, but it doesn't have a free version available which is why we selected Mint as our top pick overall. There are monthly fee plans or annual fee plans with a 30-day free trial.
- Zeta: Zeta is a mobile app for couples. It may be worth considering if you want a budgeting platform that also has a desktop version. It wasn't our top pick because Honeydue has an easier sign-up process and a more straightforward user interface.
- Monarch Money: This app makes it easy to save for individual goals. However, Monarch Money only offers a 7-day free trial. After that, you'll have to pay $14.99 per month or $99.99 annually, which isn't as good of a deal as what you'd get with Qapital.
- You Need a Budget: This app is designed to help you get out of debt and stop living paycheck-to-paycheck — but it takes a long time to set up, has an elaborate interface, and costs $11.99 per month.
- Wally: Wally helps you track your spending by taking pictures of receipts, but it isn't available in the Google Play store.
- PocketGuard: It's easy to visualize your spending with this app, but the charts and graphs aren't always accurate if PocketGuard doesn't categorize your transactions correctly.
- MVelopes: When you link your bank account to MVelopes, it provides a digital version of the "envelope method" in which you track your spending by keeping money in separate envelopes based on the category — but you'll spend at least $6 per month for the most basic version.
- GoodBudget: GoodBudget offers a free version of the "envelope method," but it doesn't link to your bank account, so you have to be disciplined enough to enter every transaction manually.
- EveryDollar: EveryDollar's free version helps you track expenses and set goals, but it doesn't monitor your net worth or credit score like Mint does.
- CountAbout: One feature of CountAbout is that you can import data from Mint — but considering Mint is free, and CountAbout's most basic plan costs $9.99 per year, you're better off just downloading Mint.
- PocketSmith: You may like PocketSmith if you want a forecast of your net worth. But its interface isn't quite as intuitive as those of our top picks.
App Trustworthiness and BBB Ratings
We include ratings from the Better Business Bureau to evaluate how financial institutions address customer issues and handle transparency.
| Company | BBB rating |
| Intuit (Mint's parent company) | NR |
| Honeydue | F |
| Rocket Money | B |
| Qapital | F |
Intuit has a NR (No Rating) grade from the BBB because it is responding to previously closed customer complaints.
Honeydue has an F rating because it hasn't responded to three customer complaints and it hasn't been in operation for a long time. Qapital has an F rating because it has received over 100 customer complaints on the BBB website, has failed to respond to a few customer complaints, and has one unresolved customer complaint.
Rocket Money has a B rating due to a high volume of customer complaints.
A good BBB rating won't guarantee you'll have a good relationship with a company. You also might want to read customer reviews or talk to current customers before making your decision.
Intuit does have some public issues surrounding its tax-filing software, TurboTax.
In May 2022, Intuit was required to pay over $5.4 million to New York residents in a settlement that said the company made free tax filing hard to access for people who qualified. In March 2022, the Federal Trade Commission also sued Intuit, stating the company had deceptive advertising regarding its free tax filing options. These scandals pertain to Intuit's TurboTax, not Mint.
Why You Should Trust Us: Experts' Advice on the Best Budgeting Apps
We consulted banking and financial planning experts to inform these picks and provide their advice on finding the budgeting app for your needs.
Here's what they had to say about budgeting apps. (Some text may be lightly edited for clarity.)
What should I look for in a budgeting app?
Mykail James, MBA, certified financial education instructor, BoujieBudgets.com:
"My best tip for people who are looking to start using a budgeting app is to figure out what you're missing in your financial system. For example, if you are a person who knows that you want to stick to a zero-based budget, and you've been doing that manually, but you need maybe a little bit more help with the organization, then you can center your focus on searching for apps specifically solve your problem."
Sophia Acevedo, certified educator in personal finance, banking reporter, Personal Finance Insider:
"I would look for features that would help me with my goals. Like if I'm trying to curb spending, I would look for a budgeting app that helps me minimize payments in certain spending areas."
How do I know if a budgeting app is right for me?
Mykail James, MBA, CFEI:
"Give it time. Every budgeting app is going to feel uncomfortable during the first month. Give it at least three months before deciding if it's not something for you. Actively try and use it before considering a switch."
Sophia Acevedo, CEPF:
"I would first try out the free version and see how it works. Some budgeting apps are entirely free, while others have different plans at a variety of price points. If possible, I would try to avoid paying a fee entirely."
Methodology: How Did We Choose the Best Budgeting Apps?
Personal Finance Insider's mission is to help smart people make the best decisions with their money. We understand that "best" is often subjective, so in addition to highlighting the clear benefits of a financial product, we outline the limitations, too.
Research is an important part of choosing a budgeting app that fits your needs. First, we compiled a list of 18 popular budgeting apps available in both the Google Play Store and Apple Store.
Then, we reviewed each budgeting app for a week. To determine our top picks, we reviewed the initial sign-up process, pricing, budgeting tools, and user experience. We also considered whether each app accomplished everything it advertised, and how regular users reviewed the product on the Apple and Google Play store.
Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Read our editorial standards.
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