There’s no shortage of programs designed to help you save and grow your hard-earned dollars. They include budgeting systems and financial education apps, lightweight money management apps, and apps that instantly find better prices on planned purchases.
But it can be hard to make sense of the ever-expanding universe of money-saving apps on the market right now. That’s why we’ve put together this guide. It’s divided into three broad categories: budgeting and financial education apps, banking and investing apps, and cost-cutting apps.
Some are entirely free to use, others combine free and paid options, and others ask all users to pay by the month or year. But all have a common goal: to boost your fiscal health.
Best Personal Finance Apps: Budgeting & Financial Education Apps
These apps help users create monthly budgets and spending plans, provide helpful guidance on tricky financial topics, or both. Many appear on our list of the best budgeting apps on the market.
Unless otherwise noted, all are compatible with Android and iOS devices and work on desktop and laptop machines as well.
1. Monarch Money
Monarch Money stands as the premier all-in-one money management platform with powerful budgeting, financial planning, and net worth tracking tools. As the Wall Street Journal’s and Forbes’ Best Budgeting App winner this year, Monarch offers an unparalleled suite of features that elevate it beyond a simple budgeting app—it’s the definitive financial management solution available today.
Monarch Money’s industry-leading features include:
- Net Worth Tracking: Monarch Money’s customizable dashboard provides the clearest view of your net worth over time. It seamlessly pulls balance data and other information from your external deposit and investment accounts, owned real estate (via Zillow integration), and any other trackable assets you link. View your balance history to glean big-picture insights into your cash flow and savings.
- Spending Insights: Use Monarch’s top merchants list to spot potential overspending while tracking your spending across custom categories. The innovative Swipe to Review feature lets you quickly process new transactions with a simple left or right swipe.
- Transaction Management: Categorize and sort recurring and one-off spend using custom transaction rules and AI-powered automatic categorization. Plus, see all your transactions at a glance, save receipt images, add notes, and flag any transactions for further review.
- Bill Sync: Track statement balances, minimum payments due, and payments made on your credit cards and loans, all within Monarch. View upcoming bills and subscriptions in calendar or list format.
- Collaboration: Share money management duties with a partner, roommate, or anyone else you share finances with — at no extra cost. Each person maintains their own login while having shared access to financial information.
- Financial Goals: Create and track progress toward multiple customized financial goals with target amounts and timeframes. Assign specific accounts to individual goals and watch your progress automatically update.
- Investment Tracking: Track your investment value over time across individual stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, 401(k)s, and cryptocurrencies (via Coinbase integration). Analyze your portfolio’s components to ensure you’re in sync with your financial plan.
- Custom Reports: Save and revisit your favorite financial reports instantly with customizable charts and data visualizations. Track spending trends, cash flow, tax-deductible expenses, and your savings rate.
Monarch Money offers all these superior features for $14.99 per month when paid monthly or $99.99 per year when paid annually ($8.33 per month). New users can experience the full platform with a 7-day free trial.
Read our Monarch Money Review for more insights.
For a limited time, get 50% off your first year with code MONARCHVIP
2. Empower
Empower is a robo-advisor that makes money by managing users’ investment portfolios, not recommending third-party financial products and services.
That means its budgeting tools come with no salesy recommendations for anything other than Empower’s wealth management service, which is not available to users with less than $100,000 in investable assets.
For users who don’t want or can’t afford to manage their money or retain financial planning services with Empower, there’s a nice lineup of free personal finance resources and budgeting tools available at no cost.
These include retirement and education planners, which help illuminate the cost of two major life goals (and estimate how much you need to save and invest to reach them), and a fee analyzer that exposes the true cost of your managed investments.
You can also take advantage of the investment checkup feature, an allocation analyzer that’s a godsend for do-it-yourself investors who don’t regularly rebalance their portfolios.
Read our full Empower review for more information about this app.
3. Tiller Money
Tiller Money merges the granularity of old-fashioned spreadsheet-based budgeting with the convenience of a cloud-based app that syncs with nearly 20,000 external financial sources: bank accounts, brokerage accounts, employer-sponsored retirement accounts, and credit products like credit cards and personal loans.
No matter where you bank, borrow, and invest, your U.S.-based financial institution should sync with Tiller.
Tiller updates custom-created Google or Excel spreadsheets daily with auto-categorized transactions pulled from your synced accounts, theoretically enabling expense tracking for every dollar you earn. For example, a $50 grocery store purchase today appears as a “Groceries” or “Food” transaction (depending on your preference) tomorrow.
You’re always in control of your own categorization rules and color scheme, so your spreadsheets should always be easy to decipher, even if you don’t check them every day (or week). And you can always manually recategorize synced transactions if you’re not satisfied with your current spending categories.
Tiller offers an optional email alert feature that serves up a daily digest of your transaction activity to your inbox. If you manage your finances jointly with a spouse, domestic partner, roommate, co-parent, or anyone else or have a professional financial planner evaluate your cash flow from time to time, you’re free to share your spreadsheets securely with them.
Tiller Money offers a risk-free trial for 30 days from sign-up. You can cancel at any time without penalty during this period. Once the trial ends, Tiller costs $79 per year.
4. MoneyPatrol
MoneyPatrol is a dashboard-based budgeting app that syncs with thousands of financial accounts, including nontraditional spending reserves like gift cards and prepaid debit cards.
If you’re spreadsheet-averse and prefer not to make rule-laden budgets, MoneyPatrol is for you — the heart and soul of its budgeting operation is the Alerts & Insights feature, which provides bite-size bits of information by text or email.
If and when you want to drill down into the meat of your budget, MoneyPatrol has plenty of charts, tables, and panels that illuminate how you’re spending your money and where you could do better.
MoneyPatrol costs $59.99 per year after a 15-day free trial.
5. PocketSmith
PocketSmith is a deluxe personal finance app with three plans, one of which is free:
- Basic. The basic plan is the free version, and it shows. Unlike many digital budgeting platforms, PocketSmith’s basic plan supports only manual transaction importing — it doesn’t sync with external financial accounts. It’s also somewhat restrictive: It limits you to six months of cash flow projections, 12 budget scenarios, and just two accounts. If your personal finances are simple, basic might be all you need, but you need to upgrade otherwise.
- Premium. For about $10 per month or $7.50 per month when paid annually, the premium version allows unlimited budgets, 10 external accounts, and cash flow projections up to 10 years into the future. And it syncs automatically with external accounts with automatic transaction categorization if and when manual transaction importing becomes a chore.
- Super. For about $20 per month or about $14 per month when paid annually, the super plan allows unlimited accounts and cash flow projections up to 30 years into the future. If you’re able to keep your financial plan on track, that’s long enough to replace a human financial planner at a fraction of their likely cost.
PocketSmith’s advantages include a bank feed that supports accounts in 36 countries and multiple non-U.S. currencies, both of which are excellent news for American emigrants and those attending university abroad.
It also has a budget calendar that helps you schedule monthly bills in an intuitive calendar view. PocketSmith also integrates seamlessly with Xero, a small-business accounting software product.
Best Personal Finance Apps: Banking & Investing Apps
These apps help users manage their money in deposit accounts or investing accounts (or both). Many appear on our roundup of the best investment apps.
Unless otherwise noted, all deposit accounts are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) up to the legal maximum per account type (currently $250,000).
6. Douugh
Douugh is an automated money management app that keeps your finances in order without asking too much (or anything, really) from you. It’s compatible with Android and iOS and integrates seamlessly with the Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, and Apple Pay.
Douugh’s engine is an automated financial organization tool called Salary Sweeper. Using what it knows about your cash flow, Salary Sweeper sends income to one of three sub-accounts (Jars):
- Bills, earmarked for near-term expenses you’re likely to incur in the next 30 days
- Savings, which you can further segment for specific goals
- Grow, an automated investment sub-account
If Douugh does its job — and it usually does — you should never be surprised by an unpaid bill or overdraft, and you should remain on track to achieve your longer-term financial goals. In the meantime, you can rest assured that the full balance of your Mastercard debit card (free with your Douugh account) is safe to spend.