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When you need help keeping track of your finances, your first instinct might be to try a budgeting app—and for good reason! These apps can display your whole financial picture in one place, help you understand your cash flow, and illuminate your spending trends. There are many great options out there so we reviewed a handful of the most popular tools to help you choose.
Monarch Money
Price: 7-day free trial; $99 annually or $14.99 monthly
Monarch Money has all of the core features of a comprehensive budgeting app plus a few features that set it apart from its competitors. On the desktop version, Monarch’s “recurring” feature has a larger calendar view than other budgeting tools. This allows you to see the name and amount of each bill on a full monthly calendar. For most other apps with smaller calendars, you have to hover over a date to see that day’s bills and amounts. When you click on a recurring expense, Monarch will display your transactions from recent months which allows you to quickly compare how much you’re spending on those recurring bills that change month-to-month such as your utilities.
Monarch’s “cashflow” feature makes it easy to see at a glance how your income compares to your monthly expenses. It also calculates your savings rate which we think is a nice touch! However, there is no easy way to see a weekly categorized breakdown of your spending.
Quicken Simplifi
Price: $5.99 per month, billed annually
Simplifi’s standout feature is the ability to budget for as many or as few categories as you want and show you how much you have left to spend both monthly and daily. (While we’d prefer they also have a weekly amount, it’s not hard to do the math yourself.) This is much more flexible than other budgets that require you to allocate every single dollar. Simplifi also allows you to hone in on specific spending categories with its “watchlist” feature. The watchlist displays your average monthly and year-to-date spending on any category you want to focus on alongside your spending in that category so far in the month.
Copilot
Price: $95 annually
Copilot is a comprehensive tracking and budgeting app for Apple users. Copilot’s strong suit is the technology that it uses to identify your spending trends including recurring transactions and average spending by category. Its ability to identify your recurring charges helps you track how much you’ve already paid in bills that month and how much you have left. It also makes it easy to stay up to date on which transactions need to be reviewed. Copilot can even analyze your spending patterns to suggest changes to your spending category goal amounts that will keep you within budget, which is a useful tool for new budgeters.
Rocket Money
Price: Free basic version; “Pay what it’s worth” for premium starting at $6 per month
Rocket Money is best known for helping you identify and cancel subscriptions (now only included in its premium version) but it is actually a standout choice for tracking your spending. It defaults to tracking your spending monthly but makes it simple to switch to a weekly view. Even better, Rocket Money has a button you can click to exclude bills from your total, allowing you to focus on what you are actually trying to track: your variable expenses. It’s worth noting that Rocket Money only has a budgeting feature on its app, not its website. Like Simplifi, you have the option to budget for limited categories and the remainder of your spending budget will default to the category of “everything else.” It also highlights what you have left to spend for the month and breaks it down per day.
Weekly
Price: $8.99 per month or $54.99 annually
Weekly hones in on a weekly view of your spending (surprise, surprise). You input your income and recurring monthly bills with due dates and Weekly will tell you how much is “safe-to-spend” on other expenses each week. It also prompts you to review each expense one by one and apply it to your safe-to-spend balance or a specific fund. You can mark it as “recurring” or instruct Weekly to ignore it. This helps to ensure that everything gets categorized exactly as you want it. Note that Weekly is only available for Apple devices.
