Apple App Picks

Finance

Best Budget Apps for 2026

Five money apps we'd actually trust with our checking account.

We tested for three weeks before we wrote this. No review units, no affiliate compensation, no sponsorship.

Mint shutting down in 2024 was a real loss. There was nothing quite like it — free, broadly capable, the default starting point for personal-finance tracking. The post-Mint era has split into a few clear lanes: Copilot at the design-forward premium end, YNAB for envelope discipline, Monarch as the closest spiritual successor to Mint, Tiller for spreadsheet people, and Wallet for the increasingly large group of users who just want their iPhone to show them what they spent.

After about a year of using the post-Mint landscape in earnest, Copilot is the one we’d recommend to most people, with caveats. Here’s the rest of the list.

How we tested

Two of us ran every app on this list against a real checking account, two real credit cards, and a real brokerage for at least eight weeks. We compared auto-categorization accuracy by hand-correcting the first 100 transactions in each app and tracking how much the second 100 needed correcting. We bought subscriptions at retail. We have no affiliate relationships with any of these developers.

1. Copilot — Top Pick

Best for: someone who wants the best-designed money app and is willing to pay for it.

Copilot is the budgeting app we open most. The interface is the cleanest in the category, the auto-categorization is the most accurate of any app we’ve tested (and it gets meaningfully better after two weeks of training), and the spending visualizations are the kind you actually look at instead of scrolling past. The “compared to last month” feature is small but excellent — every time you open the app you see how the current month is tracking against the same point last month.

The case against Copilot is the price. $95/year is in the upper end of the category. If you’d realistically check the app once a month, you don’t need this. If you’d open it daily, the daily cost is so trivial it’s not worth a second thought.

Pros:

• Best-designed money app on iOS
• Most accurate auto-categorization of any app we tested
• “Compared to last month” framing is genuinely useful

Cons:

• $95/year is on the high end
• iOS/macOS only
• Investment tracking is functional but not its strength

Pricing: $95/year. No real free tier (15-day trial).

2. YNAB — Best for Discipline

Best for: people who want budgeting rules to push back on them.

YNAB (You Need a Budget) is an opinionated envelope-budgeting system, not a passive tracker. Every dollar gets a job. Overspending in one envelope means manually moving money from another. There is no “soft” mode. Used as designed, YNAB is the most behavior-changing money app on this list — and the behavior change is the entire product.

The downsides are that the discipline is the point, so if you don’t want to do the daily ritual, YNAB will judge you. The price ($14.99/month or $109/year) is steep. The iPhone app is fine but the app’s strength is the web app at a desk. We respect YNAB enormously and recommend it to a specific kind of person, but most people who try it bounce off within a month.

Pros:

• Genuinely changes behavior if you stick with it
• Clear, opinionated philosophy
• Excellent educational content

Cons:

• Demands daily participation
• Expensive
• iPhone app is secondary to the web app

Pricing: $14.99/month or $109/year. 34-day trial.

3. Monarch — Best Mint Successor

Best for: ex-Mint users who want a familiar landing place.

Monarch is the app that captured most of the Mint refugee population in 2024, and it is genuinely the closest direct successor in spirit. Multi-account aggregation, net-worth tracking, light goal-setting, and a relaxed “look at it weekly” cadence. The categorization is fine — not as good as Copilot’s, better than Mint’s was at the end. The household-sharing features are a real differentiator if you budget with a partner.

The case against is that it’s noticeably less polished than Copilot, the iOS app feels a generation behind the web app, and the price ($99/year) is in the same range as the better-designed Copilot.

Pros:

• Closest spiritual Mint successor
• Solid household / partner sharing
• Net-worth tracking is well done

Cons:

• Less polished than Copilot
• iOS app trails the web app
• Auto-categorization is a step behind

Pricing: $14.99/month or $99/year.

4. Tiller — Best for Spreadsheet People

Best for: anyone who already runs their finances in Google Sheets or Excel.

Tiller is for the surprisingly persistent group of people who want budgeting in a spreadsheet, with bank-feed automation. Tiller pulls daily transactions from your accounts into a Google Sheet (or Excel), and you build whatever budget structure you want on top. If you have a perfect spreadsheet you’ve maintained for ten years, Tiller is the answer to “how do I keep this without manual entry.”

The downside is that Tiller is not a polished iOS app — it’s a service that keeps your spreadsheet up to date. If you don’t already love spreadsheets, you will not love Tiller.

Pros:

• Bank-feed automation directly into your spreadsheet
• Maximum flexibility — you build whatever you want
• Privacy-friendly (your data lives in your spreadsheet)

Cons:

• Spreadsheet-first, not iOS-first
• Setup requires comfort with formulas
• The mobile experience is “Sheets app” not a real app

Pricing: $79/year. 30-day trial.

5. Wallet — Best Free Option

Best for: people who want zero-effort spend visibility on their iPhone.

Apple’s own Wallet has quietly become a competent spending tracker. If you have an Apple Card, the categorization is excellent. If you use Apple Pay broadly, you get a useful weekly/monthly summary directly on the lock screen. It is not a budget app — it doesn’t budget — but it is a free, on-device, no-credentials-needed spend tracker, and that’s enough for a lot of people.

The downside: Wallet only knows what Apple knows. If you spend with a non-Apple card, swipe a chip, or pay in cash, Wallet doesn’t see it.

Pros:

• Free, ships with iOS
• No third-party credentials required
• Excellent categorization for Apple Card spend

Cons:

• Only sees Apple Card / Apple Pay spend
• Not a budget tool — purely a tracker
• No multi-account aggregation

Pricing: Free.

Quick Comparison Table

Verdict