The 10 best expense tracker apps of 2026

Key takeaways

• Intuit shut Mint down in 2024, and the apps that replaced it run $75 to $110 a year, with automatic bank sync the feature most often paywalled.

• When choosing an expense tracker, consider which features actually matter, like automatic bank sync on the free tier, multi-currency support, and household or team sharing.

• The best expense tracker apps are Airwallex for business expense tracking, YNAB for zero-based budgeting, and Monarch for shared household budgets.

Intuit shut Mint down in 2024, leaving users searching for a replacement expense tracker app with fair prices and automatic bank sync. This guide compares the top 10 expense tracker apps on annual cost, free tier limits and budgeting method. Nine of the apps are for personal expense tracking and one, Airwallex, is specifically for business expense tracking.

Expense trackers at a glance

The 10 best expense tracker apps

Best for business expense tracking: Airwallex

Ideal for

Tracking business expenses rather than household ones, especially across more than one currency.

Our take

Airwallex offers the ideal business expense tracker app for businesses that need to track company spending, issue cards, assign approvals, and capture receipts.

Airwallex Expense Management handles all four use cases. Employees spend on Airwallex Corporate Cards in local currencies, receipts are captured and matched automatically, and the Expense Policy Agent approves what follows policy while flagging only the exceptions. Every other app here budgets household money, while Airwallex tracks money somebody else has to sign off on.

Pros

• The Explore plan costs $0 per user per month and includes up to 10 free Spend users.¹

• Collects and holds 20+ currencies, and spends in 60+ countries from balance with no foreign transaction fees.

• The Expense Policy Agent approves expenses that follow policy and flags only the exceptions, on the Grow and Accelerate plans.

• Bank feeds, expenses and bills sync with Xero and QuickBooks from the free Explore plan, adding NetSuite and Dynamics 365 Business Central on Grow and Accelerate.

• Employees photograph a receipt and the app reads it, fills in the details and categorizes the expense, while managers clear expenses and reimbursements from the same app.

Cons

• Not for personal use.

• No envelope system or defined budgeting system.

Best for zero-based budgeting: YNAB

Ideal for

Breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle with a proven budgeting method.

Our take

YNAB assigns every dollar a job before it gets spent, and the discipline the app helps you build is the product. That is also why it has the steepest learning curve here. People who stick with it tend to stay for years; people who want a passive spending report abandon the app quickly.

At $109 a year it is the most expensive of the mainstream annual plans here.² One subscription covers up to six people, though, which makes it competitive per head for a household. The 34-day trial runs without a card, and students get a free year with proof of enrollment.

Pros

• One subscription covers up to six people

• A 34-day trial with no card required

• Free workshops and an unusually active user community

Cons

• The steepest learning curve of any app here

• The method needs maintenance, so a skipped week compounds

• $109 a year, with no free tier

Best for shared household budgets: Monarch

Ideal for

Couples or households who need one dashboard both people will actually open.

Our take

Monarch pairs budgeting with investment and net worth tracking, and household sharing is built into the base plan rather than sold as an upgrade. It has become the default Mint replacement for couples, and the interface is the reason.

Core runs $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year. A Plus tier at $199 a year adds forecasting, advanced investment analysis and business-income tracking for people with a side hustle or rental property.³

Plus is annual only, and there is no free tier at all, just a seven-day trial.

Pros

• Household sharing included in the base plan

• Budgeting and net worth tracking in one dashboard

• Plus adds forecasting and business-income separation

Cons

• No free tier, only a seven-day trial

• Plus is annual-only at $199

• Rules and categorization need more setup than Copilot

Best for Apple users: Copilot Money

Ideal for

iPhone and Mac users who want categorization that learns from a user's habits

Our take

Copilot is the best-looking app in this category. That matters because the app people actually open is the one that works. Categorization learns from corrections instead of waiting for rules, and the integrations other apps handle badly, including Venmo, Apple Card and Coinbase, are handled directly.

One constraint is that there is no Android app, so a household on mixed devices is out before the trial even starts. At $95 a year with no free tier, it is also the most expensive way to find out whether an app fits.⁴

Pros

• Categorization that learns from corrections rather than rules

• Direct Venmo, Apple Card and Coinbase support

• Investment and net worth tracking, including property values

• A one-month free trial

Cons

• No Android app

• US financial institutions only

• $95 a year with no free tier to fall back on

Best for spending forecasts: Quicken Simplifi

Ideal for

Getting most of Monarch's feature set for about a quarter of the monthly price.

Our take

Simplifi projects what is safe to spend after bills, goals and expected income, and includes the investment and net worth tracking that Goodbudget and EveryDollar lack. At $3.99 a month billed annually in year one it is the cheapest full-featured app here.⁵

Two things matter before buying. Billing is annual only, so the monthly-equivalent pricing is presentational and there is no trial, only a 30-day refund window, and the renewal rate is $6.99 a month billed annually, roughly 75% above the intro price.

It is also the only app here that states its currency handling plainly: US and Canadian accounts, USD and CAD, one currency at a time.

Pros

• The cheapest full-featured paid app, especially in year one

• A forward-looking spending plan rather than retrospective reporting

• Investment and net worth tracking included

Cons

• Annual billing only, with no free trial

• Renewal costs about 75% more than the intro rate

• Persistent bank-sync complaints, and mobile lags the web app

Best for debt payoff: EveryDollar

Ideal for

Anyone working the Ramsey Baby Steps, or anyone who wants zero-based budgeting free.

Our take

The free tier is the most generous here for budgeting alone, with unlimited categories, unlimited months, sinking funds and transaction splitting. But bank connection is withheld, which means every transaction gets typed in by hand. For a lot of people that is the point, because manual entry is the friction that makes spending register.

Premium costs $17.99 a month or $79.99 a year, so monthly billing runs more than 2.7 times the annual rate.⁶ Premium also bundles live coaching that no competitor includes, which is a better reason to upgrade than the bank sync.

The method itself is locked to Ramsey's, with no investment tracking, no rewards-card-friendly workflow, and a steady push toward the wider Ramsey+ subscription.

Pros

• The free tier covers unlimited categories and unlimited months

• Zero-based budgeting implemented simply and strictly

• Premium includes live and one-on-one coaching

• A 14-day free trial on Premium

Cons

• Bank sync is paywalled entirely, so the free tier is manual only

• $17.99 monthly against $79.99 annually punishes anyone not committing for a year

• No investment tracking, and the method is not negotiable

Best for envelope budgeting: Goodbudget

Ideal for

Households splitting one budget across two people, and anyone with irregular income.

Our take

Goodbudget is the cash-envelope system as software, and it handles irregular income better than any zero-based app because envelopes carry forward without guilt.

And the free plan is usable, though tightly capped at 10 regular envelopes, one account, two devices and a year of history. Premium at $10 a month or $80 a year lifts all of that, extends history to seven years, and adds automatic bank sync for US banks, which is recent enough that older reviews still describe Goodbudget as manual-only.⁷

Pros

• The clearest envelope implementation available

• A permanent free plan rather than a trial

• Household sharing across devices

Cons

• An interface a decade behind Copilot or Monarch

• The free plan caps at one account and two devices

• No investment or net worth tracking

Best for net worth tracking: Empower Personal Dashboard

Ideal for

Watching net worth and investments without paying for it.

Our take

The dashboard is free with no paid tier and no feature paywall, and the investment tooling beats anything else here.⁸ The trade is well documented. Link enough assets and Empower's advisory arm will call, because the free product feeds a wealth-management business that starts at $250,000 in investable assets.

Pros

• Free permanently, with nothing held back

• Retirement planning, asset allocation and a fund fee analyzer

• Strong net worth aggregation across banking, brokerage, property and loans

Cons

• Weak budgeting, with no envelope or zero-based method

• Linking assets invites advisory sales calls

• Crude categorization with no rules engine

Best for subscription cancellation: Rocket Money

Ideal for

Finding and killing subscriptions without doing the legwork.

Our take

Rocket Money is the only app here that cancels subscriptions on the account holder's behalf, and the free tier already surfaces recurring charges and upcoming bills. Budgeting on the free plan is capped at three category budgets, so it works as a subscription auditor rather than a budgeting app.

Premium uses a sliding scale, typically $7 to $14 a month, though Rocket Money publishes no fixed number.⁹ A Premium+ tier at $15 a month adds an AI assistant and, more usefully, bill negotiation with no success fee. On Free and Premium, a successful negotiation costs 35% to 60% of the first year's savings.

Pros

• Cancels subscriptions on the account holder's behalf

• The free tier covers subscription and bill tracking

• Premium+ removes the bill negotiation success fee

Cons

• The free tier caps budgeting at three categories

• Monthly billing only, with no annual option

• Bill negotiation on lower tiers costs 35% to 60% of the first year's savings

Best for overspending control: PocketGuard

Ideal for

People who want a simple app that tells them whether they can afford a purchase at a given time.

Our take

PocketGuard's In My Pocket figure answers the only question most people ask an expense tracker, which is whether they can afford a purchase right now. It subtracts bills, goals and committed spending from income and shows what is left.

Recurring-bill detection is good, and a $149.99 lifetime license is an option almost nobody else offers.¹⁰

The reporting on this app is shallow next to Monarch or Simplifi, sync unreliability causes complaints, and PocketGuard does not publish what its free tier actually includes.

Pros

• In My Pocket is the clearest single-number answer in the category

• Strong recurring bill and subscription detection

• A $149.99 lifetime license

Cons

• Free tier limits are not published

• Frequent sync failures and miscategorized transactions

• Shallow reporting and customization

• No investment or net worth tracking

Methodology for choosing the best expense trackers

We reviewed each app against four criteria: what the free tier actually includes before a paywall appears, whether the budgeting method suits the way most people manage money, how reliably bank connections sync, and total annual cost rather than the monthly headline. Pricing and feature details were verified against each provider's own pricing page in September 2026.

A note on Airwallex's inclusion: Airwallex publishes this article. Airwallex Expense Management was scored against the same criteria as every other tool here, and its trade-offs are listed just as they are for competing tools.

How expense tracker apps work

Expense tracking shows where money has been spent, while budgeting decides where it goes next, and most apps follow the same sequence:

1. Bank and credit card accounts are connected, usually through Plaid or MX

2. Transactions import automatically, typically once or twice a day

3. The app categorizes each one, and learns from corrections

4. Spending is measured against whatever budget or spending plan has been set

5. Alerts fire when a category runs over, or when a subscription renews

So the apps that charge for step 1 (automatic sync), which is most of them, are asking for steps 1 through 3 to be done manually with data entry on their free plans.

How expense tracker app pricing works

Expense tracker app pricing can work in three different ways.

Free with a paywalled feature

EveryDollar, Goodbudget and Rocket Money all give away the budgeting features and charge for bank sync, extra envelopes, or cancellation handling. Empower Personal Dashboard is the outlier that charges for nothing and monetizes through wealth management fees instead.

Flat subscription

Copilot, YNAB, Monarch and Simplifi charge $75 to $110 a year. Watch out for the renewal, because Simplifi's second year costs about 75% more than its first, and watch the monthly rate, because EveryDollar's monthly rate is more than 2.7 times its annual equivalent.

Lifetime license

PocketGuard is the only expense tracker that sells a lifetime license, at $149.99, which pays for itself against its own annual plan in two years.

Expense tracker app checklist

Work through these checklist items before paying a subscription for an expense tracker.

• Does the free tier include bank sync, or is that the upgrade?

• What does year two cost, not year one?

• Is there a trial, or only a refund window?

• Does it run on both iOS and Android, if the household needs both?

• How many devices and accounts does the plan allow?

• Does it impose a budgeting method, and is that welcome?

• Does it track investments and net worth, or only spending?

• How does it handle a bank connection breaking, which it will?

Why Airwallex is the best expense tracker for business

Airwallex Expense Management is the best expense tracker app for business because it issues cards, routes approvals and captures receipts on a free Explore plan for up to 10 Spend users, and the Airwallex Business Account adds 20+ currencies with no foreign transaction fees. Read this guide on how Airwallex expense management works and how to track business expenses correctly to learn how to set up and use Airwallex Expense Management.

Frequently asked questions about expense tracker apps

What is the best free expense tracker app?

The best free expense tracker app for personal use is Empower Personal Dashboard, which charges nothing and withholds nothing. Its budgeting is weak, and EveryDollar and Goodbudget both have stronger free budgeting that stops short of automatic bank sync. For business, the best free option is Airwallex, whose Explore plan costs $0 and covers up to 10 Spend users with corporate cards and approvals no personal app offers.

Do expense tracker apps work with multiple currencies?

Expense tracker apps do not generally work with multiple currencies. Every personal app on this list is single-currency, and Simplifi is the only one that says so outright, supporting USD and CAD but tracking one currency at a time. Multi-currency tracking is a business feature, which is why Airwallex is on this list.

Can an expense tracker app help with taxes?

An expense tracker app can help with taxes by categorizing spending in ways that map to standard deduction categories and by keeping receipt images with transaction dates attached. That is enough for a personal return but not for a business one, which needs an audit trail and an export an accountant can reconcile.

What happened to Mint?

Intuit discontinued Mint in 2024 and directed users to Credit Karma, which tracks spending but does not budget. Monarch, Copilot and Simplifi have absorbed most of the people who left, and none of them are free.

Sources

1. https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/pricing

2. https://www.ynab.com/pricing

3. https://www.monarch.com

4. https://copilot.money/pricing

5. https://www.quicken.com/simplifi

6. https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ramseyplus/everydollar

7. https://goodbudget.com/signup

8. https://www.empower.com/tools

9. https://help.rocketmoney.com

10. https://pocketguard.com/pricing/