All the budgeting apps

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Feel like I’ve tested every budgeting app under the sun over the past few months, and thought people might appreciate a single list of everything that’s out there, so here goes…!

Yolt

Emma

Cleo

Plum

Money Hub

Oval Money

NoMo
https://theidco.com/nomo/
“The honest cash flow tracker”

Chip
https://getchip.uk/
“Automatic saving”

Tink
https://tink.com/beta-uk

YNAB (USA)

Money Dashboard

Pocket Smith (NZ)

Anyone aware of any others?

p.s. there’s tonnes of discussion on these apps on Money management apps thread, but thought a single list in one place would be helpful

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Great list, Tom!

Are you still using all of them? Which one is the best, in your opinion?

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Great to have them all compiled in one place. It would be nice to know a couple of the ones you preferred and/or liked the least out of the list. I don’t really want to go through all of the different threads or have to try them all myself haha

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I feel like I’ve tried every one going. I just don’t find any of them really engaging or super useful.

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I don’t think I would call the ones I recognise in the list budgeting apps.

YNAB is a budgeting app.

I would refer to the apps I recognise in the list as account aggregators (Yolt, Emma, MoneyHub) and savings apps (Chip & Plum)

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I must say that that has been my opinion of the ones I have used. I sign up, get bored very quickly and then remove the app. It just happens over and over to the point that I have just stopped. I find it really overwhelming when there are so many people doing slight variations of the same thing.

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I suppose it depends what I want it for. I sort of want a money “centre”. One that:

  • Shows me my balances across my accounts
  • Gives me a breakdown of my spends
  • Gives me spending trends (ie. how much I spend on average per month on groceries etc)
  • Gives me end dates for my debts (where possible) and suggestions on how to get rid of them quicker
  • Gives me a daily budget to spend

I don’t do so well on many because I just don’t know what to budget for food or transport and I don’t care for things like baby clothes or clothing in general (how on Earth people budget for that I don’t know) or things like car tax etc.

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Ok, some top line thoughts from myself having used about half of them.

Yolt - was using this for a couple of months and really didn’t have any issues with it. It’s smart, intuitive and offers depth. I got frustrated with synching across my accounts though, so got tempted to try Emma (below).

Emma - I’ve been using this for the last month and really like it. I prefer the UI to Yolt, no issues with synching so far and appreciate the lightening fast support that I’ve had so far. Functionally, it’s a bit behind Yolt at the moment but, once the next app update comes out (hopefully a week or so?) to add custom categories and manual accounts, I think I’ll find it more intuitive to use.

Having said that, I’ve got it in my head that it was more of a pain to integrate my current account (Barclays - but in the process of going #fullmonzo!) but I may be wrong. I think that Yolt just needed me to login with Mobilesentry vs needing to put in Memorable Words and Online Banking codes with Emma.

Glad I persevered though because, as I say get the feeling though that this may be a long term solution for me.

Plum - I really wanted to try it, as I’ve heard good things. I just don’t like the fact that it’s controlled by Facebook Messenger. Partly because I don’t use Messenger but mainly because I don’t like the fact that presumably Facebook are collecting data on all my interactions. I’m happy to share data with suitable and relevant sources, but I just don’t feel comfortable with sharing more info with FB - especially around specific financial earnings when I’m not happy with the way they use data in the first place.

MoneyHub - I don’t get a whole lot of insight from this in comparison to Yolt/Emma. Integrations are limited and I feel that any kind of insights generated are based around trying to get me to switch providers

I haven’t used the others listed (but may well try), so can’t comment.

The only other app I’ve used is YNAB, which I’ve heard is highly recommended. They don’t integrate with UK institutions though which means I need to manually upload transactions. I know I should give it a go, but coupled with how I’m enjoying Emma at the moment, I’m being stubborn - I resent having to work harder to get transactions into the platform when paying the same (and not insignificant cost) to US subscribers.

Thoughts/comments/contradictions welcome!

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Completely agree, I’ve found this a lot. Often they can seem very impressive at first with beautiful design (e.g. Tink which i tried this week) but then you get bored and there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to go back

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This is a very fair point and a good distinction. Anything gets called a budgeting app these days, even apps to split bills or switch utilities provider (I remember the papers calling Monzo a ‘budgeting app’ not long ago)

I’ll stick YNAB on the list

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I agree too. Unfortunately the only way I trust to manage my budget across all accounts is by inputting transactions manually. For this I use Account Tracker Pro.

Obviously I’m missing out on potential “smart features” but I feel as a minimum, I want an app that does an effective job of consolidating all my accounts. I just don’t feel that I’ve found one that lives up to the job just yet.

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Surely they wouldn’t do such a thing :thinking:

Yeah I’m with you on this one, unfortunately I think it was the least useful one I tried

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Have to say I’ve not found one to stick with yet, but personally I think Emma / Yolt / Tink are my faves so far. They’re all really nicely designed and give you loads of features without too much effort

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Tried almost all of the above and gave up for one reason or another. Also;

Money Dashboard - I kept coming back to this and giving up. Then they updated their planner and I thought they’d cracked it but it is too cumbersome (for me) in daily use. The transfer feature in the planner is bonkers, it doesn’t transfer between accounts - you have to enter 2 transactions for each future transfer. No thanks. I’ve given up on it now.

pocketsmith- one few have heard of. Huge online financial aggregator/budgeting/forecasting service which is good and has a fantastic web interface, but the mobile app is shocking. Gave up on that too.

Still on YNAB, which has a fantastic mobile app but by design, is budgeting only. I need forecasting too, so I have to use it primarily on the web using Chrome with the Toolkit extension running. This at least gives a forecasted running balance total which is absolutely crucial for me. The simplistic and fast interface is what is keeping me using YNAB
The good thing is that I’ve got YNAB auto-entering any Monzo transactions via an external script so I’ve less and less to manually enter. It is primarily used for monitoring.

There’ll be an app that suits me out there, or maybe not yet but upcoming. I’m really hoping Monzo continue to develop fast and build-in the accurate forecasting tools which meet my needs. It’s not far off now to be fair but I need to see at least 1 month into the future after all my regular and repeating transactions have been plugged in.

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The auto-entering of transactions has been awesome! Saved me so much time. Hopefully the other features you need will be added in time.

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I tried Plum for a bit - and this was a big part of why I didn’t like it.

I think I cancelled it before anything was taken out.

In the end, I settled on the fact that, since I was using a “zero sum” budget system (YNAB) - it was just pointlessly hiding the true picture from me.

All the interactions were a bit faffy too.

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For me YNAB has been the one true saviour of my finances.

I used to have like 5 or 6 current accounts where I’d shuffle money around to hide it from myself. I guess Emma/Yolt/Others would give me a good overview of my spending with those - but ultimately were only hiding the true root causes of my problems -> I wasn’t actually budgeting.

With YNAB I’ve got a very clear breakdown and structure of all my spending, and it makes me confront all the things I need my money to do.

“What gets measured gets done” is a phrase I’ve been fond of, and YNAB allows me to apply that principle to my budget.

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I tried both Yolt and Emma. Really preferred Yolt in terms of the UI - Emma was a bit too full of emojis for my liking. I don’t use either these days.

Anyone tried Onedox?

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Ditto! Although don’t write off all the hard work you’ve put into taking control of your finances. I know people who have YNAB but don’t use it - it does require you to really give it some time.

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Currently using Onedox but it doesn’t support my contents insurance provider (Wrisk); or my gas and electricity (Solarplicity); or even Monzo.
It does support my mobile (3), water (Anglian), council tax, and tv licence.

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