Best Expense Tracker Apps in 2026 (Free & Paid)

We tested the apps filling the gap Mint left: what they cost, what they do well, and which type of spender each one actually fits.

The landscape after Mint

Intuit folding Mint into Credit Karma left a genuine gap: free automatic budgeting with real categorization. The market split into paid successors (Monarch, Copilot), a strict method app (YNAB), and the free-but-manual route of spreadsheets and browser trackers like ours. Each fills a different need — the mistake is paying annually for the wrong one on day one.

Monarch Money — the Mint successor

Closest to what Mint was: bank connections, rules-based auto-categorization, goals, and a roadmap that has shipped steadily since 2024. subscription or annual plan with a 30-day trial. Best for households that want automation and will pay for it.

YNAB — the behavior changer

Zero-based budgeting where every dollar gets a job. Steeper learning curve, devoted community, and the strongest evidence of actually changing spending behavior. subscription or annual plan, free for students a year. Choose it if the goal is changing habits, not just viewing them.

Copilot — the Apple-household pick

subscription, best-in-class iOS and iPadOS experience, beautiful visualizations. Choose it if your financial life lives on Apple devices.

The free route — tracker plus spreadsheet

A browser tracker (like ours) plus a sheets template covers categorization and monthly review for $0, with the privacy benefit that nothing connects to your bank. The trade-off is manual entry — about ten seconds per purchase.

How to choose in one sitting

Match the tool to the problem you actually have. Many accounts, hours of transactions, want it gone: Monarch automates it for the price of two takeaways a month. Spending that responds to method and structure: YNAB, with its learning curve treated as the feature it is. Apple household that will actually open a beautiful app: Copilot. One or two cards, cash spending, privacy-first, or recovering from a subscription that outlived its usefulness: the free tracker on our homepage, run daily, reviewed weekly, exported monthly. Price the paid options honestly, too — a year of any subscription is a hundred-plus dollars, which is real money inside the budget the app is supposed to be helping you run.

The trial that decides it

Whichever paid app tempts you, the trial is only diagnostic if you feed it your real month: connect the accounts, live four normal weeks, and read the reports every Sunday the way you would if it were paid. A trial run on idealized behavior tells you what the app can do; a trial run on your actual October tells you what you will do — and those are different products. If the reports went unread on week three of a free trial, they will go unread on week three of a subscription, and the honest answer is the free tracker plus a weekly review you will actually keep.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a truly free Mint replacement?

Not with automatic bank connections — the free route is manual tracking (like ours) plus a spreadsheet.

Which app has a family plan?

YNAB’s subscription covers the household; Monarch charges per profile after the first.