10 Best Budgeting Apps to Get Your Finances Under Control

Managing your money can be challenging. Thankfully, you have a few great tools at your disposal. Some people prefer the traditional method of keeping track of their budget on a piece of paper, while others use a budgeting app on their phones.

These apps make tracking your spending easier, giving you a more accurate idea of where you can cut back to save money.

There are many budgeting applications on the market, each with unique features to set it apart from the others.

What is a Budgeting App?

A budgeting app is an application that helps you track all of your personal finances. It allows you to manage your savings, pay off debt, invest, or combine these personal finance areas. Budgeting apps are different from accounting software for businesses which they use to track their income and expenses.

When you use a budgeting app, you can sync it with your bank accounts and other financial accounts to see a real-time overview of your spending and income. Many people have no idea how much money they spend every month, making changes more complex, so tracking their spending allows them to easily make changes in their budget.

Both free and subscription-based apps have benefits and drawbacks. If you’re willing to pay a little bit of money for an app, you might find that a premium app is worth the cost if you keep your budgeting app for the long term and change your financial habits for the better and reach your goals.  

Best Budgeting Apps

1) You Need a Budget (YNAB)

YNAB is a budgeting app that has a variety of options for the entry of transactions. They can be manually entered, synced with your accounts, or imported from a file. 

When you sign up, you create your first budget. Every dollar you earn is allocated to a purpose, like your mortgage payment or electricity. The goal is to get at least one month ahead, so you’re spending money earned in the past. YNAB offers extensive educational resources and customer support to help you stay on track.

The cost of this app is $84 per year, or you can pay $11.99 per month. The company offers a free 34-day trial. 

2) Mint

Mint is a helpful app that automatically organizes your spending by category. If you want to keep your finances under control, then Mint is an excellent app for you. You can see all of your accounts in one place, track expenses daily, and see totals at a glance. Mint also allows users to track monthly bills and stay on top of due dates to avoid penalties.

Mint is free and offers and easy way to manage your finances. You can set up bill payments and reminders, track investments, and access your TransUnion credit score. 

3) Personal Capital

Personal Capital is a free app and the best if you want to build wealth. It gives you a complete picture of your money. The free app syncs with your bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts. It’s an excellent tool for tracking your money. 

The budgeting features of Personal Capital are not as robust as Mint, but you can still use them to see your income and expenses. You can’t set goals, but you can still create a budget. You can also compare your current budget with previous budgets.

4) Mvelopes

Mvelopes is a personal finance app and website that help you manage your money better. It’s an updated version of the classic cash envelope budgeting method, and its goal is to help you manage your spending. You can set your monthly budget, then allocate money to specific categories. If you go over a certain amount in a category, Mvelopes will send you a text alert.

This app consists of three paid tiers:

Basic: $6 per month includes unlimited digital envelopes, syncing to unlimited accounts, automatic transaction importing, account balance monitoring, and live chat support.

Premier: $9.95 per month includes the same features of the basic plan plus online courses, a debt reduction center, assistance with initial setup, and telephone support. 

Plus: $19 per month includes everything in the first two tiers plus quarterly coaching, a personalized money plan, and priority support.

Mvelopes allows you to customize each envelope, and it syncs every transaction. You can set up a funding plan for your envelopes. It knows how often you get paid and for how much. Then, it deducts from the balance of each envelope with each transaction import.

5) Honeyfi

Honeyfi is actually a budgeting app for couples, but it’s also for singles. It’s easy to sign up, and you can each use your own email accounts. Honeyfi is missing a web-based budgeting option, but the capabilities of the app more than make up for it.

Honeyfi automatically creates your budget for you based on your past spending. Once you link your bank accounts, it will also show you all of your transactions. You can easily change the budget by clicking on the header.

The price of Honeyfi is $60 per year and offers a 30-day free trial.

6) EveryDollar

EveryDollar is a simple budgeting app. It’s not designed to be a personal finance app that monitors stocks or pays bills.

There is both a free version and a paid version. 

The free version doesn’t allow you to download transactions directly from your bank account. However, by entering in all your transactions manually, you’re able to gain a strong understanding of your spending habits.

The paid version offers extras such as the ability to connect EveryDollar to your bank account, monitoring your account balances, and viewing transactions auto-populated in EveryDollar.

The paid version is $129.99 per year and comes with a 14-day free trial.

7) Goodbudget

Goodbudget is similar to Mvelopes because it also runs on the cash envelope method. 

This app lets you take your leftover cash from this month and put it toward next month’s budget. It also tracks your spending for each envelope as well as the entire month as a whole.

The disadvantage to Goodbudget is the lack of integration with your bank account because you can’t sync your transactions with the paid version. The only thing it shows is your account balance.

The cost for this app is $60 per year.

8) PocketGuard

PocketGuard is a budgeting app that shows users how much money they have left over after their monthly expenses and bills. This is the perfect app for those wanting to save more money every month by knowing exactly how much they have left over at the end of the month, instead of just guessing based on how much is already spent.

PocketGuard uses a pie chart feature. These charts are designed to show you exactly how much each expense category represents to make it easier for you to track where your money goes. Each pie chart can be customized with personal spending categories. 

PocketGuard offers a free version; however, if you want to export transactions, add unlimited goals and categories, and split transactions into different categories, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version.

The paid version offers three options. You can pay $7.99 per month, $79.99 annually, or a one-time lifetime membership of $99.99. 

9) Wally

Budgeting with others? Wally is a digital money-management app that you can use to track expenses and set saving goals with your spouse, family, or others. 

There are different add-ons you can buy for this app. You can get an annual subscription for $24.99. It’s a great deal compared to other apps with yearly plans.

10) Simplifi 

The app Simplifi by Quicken is a great way to manage your money. It gives you real-time updates if you’re over budget and lets you see where your money goes. It also tracks all of your payments and subscriptions, even those you don’t use anymore.

Simplifi is a top choice for cash flow management. This app is a great option for tracking how much you can spend between paychecks. Simplifi offers a free 30-day trial. After that, you can pay $2.99 per month (billed annually at $35.99) or if you choose not to pay up front, it costs $3.99 per month.  

Final Thoughts on Budgeting Apps

The best budgeting app for you is one that makes budgeting easy and the app is easy to use. It can connect to your accounts and help you manage your money, and it should also be educational.