Guide · Choosing an app
The best Mint alternatives in 2026
Mint is gone, and the millions of people who relied on it have spent the time since hunting for somewhere to land. There's no shortage of contenders — but they're wildly different in method, cost, and how they treat your data. Here's an honest map of where to go next.
For over a decade Mint was the default answer to "which budgeting app should I use?" It was free, it pulled in your accounts automatically, and most people never looked further. Then Intuit pulled the plug — and left a lot of former users hunting for a genuine Mint alternative that fits how they actually manage money.
This guide walks through the strongest options in 2026: what each is good at, roughly what it costs, and how it handles your bank data. No single app wins for everyone, so the goal is to match a tool to your own priorities rather than crown a winner.
What happened to Mint
Intuit, the company behind Mint (and TurboTax and QuickBooks), shut the service down. Mint stopped operating in 2024, and Intuit pointed its users toward Credit Karma, another product it owns. The trouble is that Credit Karma is built around credit scores and offers, not around budgeting — so for anyone who wanted Mint for its spending categories, budgets and net-worth view, it wasn't a like-for-like replacement.
That gap is why so many people are still looking. A whole generation got comfortable with a free, automatic money management app and then had to start over. The upside: the space has become genuinely competitive since, with several strong tools taking very different approaches.
How to choose a replacement
Before comparing apps, it helps to know what you're optimising for. The best budgeting app for one person is the wrong one for another. A few questions worth asking:
- Budgeting method — do you want a strict system that assigns every dollar a job, or a lighter dashboard that just shows where the money went?
- Bank-linking — are you comfortable connecting your bank accounts, or would you rather import statements or enter things yourself?
- Privacy and data handling — how much do you care where your financial data is stored and who can see it?
- Net worth — do you want a full balance sheet of assets and liabilities, or just day-to-day spending?
- Import options — can you bring in CSV or PDF statements, or is automatic sync the only way in?
- Price — free, one-off, or an ongoing subscription you'll actually keep paying?
- Platforms — web, Android, iPhone, Mac? Some tools are locked to one ecosystem.
The best alternatives
Here are the tools most former Mint users end up considering — what each does well, who it suits, roughly what it costs, and how it handles your bank data.
Monarch Money
Monarch is the polished, do-everything successor a lot of ex-Mint users gravitate to. It links your accounts and tracks spending, budgets and net worth in one tidy interface, and it handles shared finances well, which makes it popular with couples. It's a paid subscription — roughly the low-teens per month, or around $100 a year — and it relies on third-party aggregators to pull in transactions automatically, so bank-linking is central to how it works.
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
YNAB isn't really a Mint clone — it's a method. Built around zero-based budgeting, it asks you to give every dollar a job before you spend it, which is fantastic for people who want to actively change their habits rather than just watch reports. That discipline is the point, and also the learning curve. It's a paid subscription in a similar range to Monarch (roughly the low-teens monthly or about $100 a year), and it supports both automatic bank-linking and manual entry, so you can use it either way.
Copilot
Copilot is a beautifully designed tracker with smart categorisation and a genuinely pleasant day-to-day experience. Its big catch is that it's Apple-only — iOS and Mac — so it's a non-starter if you're on Android or Windows. It's a paid subscription, and like most in this list it connects to your accounts through aggregators to import transactions automatically.
Empower
Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is the pick for people focused on investments and net worth rather than granular budgeting. It's free and strong at tracking portfolios and overall wealth. The trade-off is how it's funded: it's a front door for a wealth-management business, so expect outreach from advisors. It links your accounts through aggregators to stay current.
Rocket Money and PocketGuard
These two belong together as subscription and bill trackers. Rocket Money is best known for spotting recurring subscriptions and even helping cancel them, while PocketGuard focuses on how much you have left to spend after bills and goals. Both link to your bank to do their job, both have free tiers with paid upgrades, and both suit people whose main pain is leaky recurring charges rather than full-blown budgeting.
Actual Budget
Actual Budget is the choice for the privacy-minded and technically comfortable. It's open-source, built on the same envelope method as YNAB, and crucially you can self-host it, keeping your data entirely under your own control. It's free if you run it yourself (a hosted option exists for a small fee). You can operate it without automatic bank feeds, so it suits people who'd rather import files than connect accounts — though setup asks more of you than a polished commercial app.
Nexiora
Nexiora is the option to look at if privacy and offline control matter most. It's offline-first and never asks for your bank login — instead you bring your data in on your terms, importing CSV or PDF statements, receipts or bank SMS alerts and approving each transaction before it's saved. It keeps a full net-worth balance sheet alongside your budgets, so you see spending and overall wealth in one place. Pricing is around $8 a month or $79 a year, with a 14-day free trial. It suits anyone who wants a real money management app without handing bank credentials to a third party. You can read more about Nexiora or jump straight to pricing.
| App | Best for | Bank-linking | Price model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monarch Money | All-in-one, couples | Required | Subscription |
| YNAB | Method-driven budgeting | Optional | Subscription |
| Copilot | Apple-only design | Required | Subscription |
| Empower | Net worth & investing | Required | Free |
| Rocket Money / PocketGuard | Subscriptions & bills | Required | Free + paid tier |
| Actual Budget | Self-hosted privacy | Optional | Free / open-source |
| Nexiora | Privacy & offline | No bank login | Subscription |
If you've narrowed it down to a shortlist, it's worth reading a deeper head-to-head. Our YNAB vs Monarch vs Nexiora comparison digs into the three-way trade-off between method, polish and privacy.
A note on privacy and bank-linking
Most Mint alternatives connect to your bank through third-party aggregators — services that log in on your behalf and pull transactions automatically. It's convenient, and for many people a fair trade. But it means your credentials and transaction history flow through systems you don't control, which not everyone is comfortable with.
If that's a concern, favour offline-first tools like Nexiora, which let you import statements or enter transactions yourself so no bank login is ever handed over, or self-hosted Actual Budget, where the data lives on infrastructure you run. Both keep your financial picture closer to you. We go into this in more depth in our guide on how to budget without linking your bank.
Automatic bank-linking saves effort but spreads your data across more hands. Manual or offline tools ask a little more of you each week and give you a lot more control in return. Neither is wrong — it comes down to which trade-off you'd rather make.
Which should you pick?
There's no universal answer, so match the tool to what you actually want:
- If you want a strict method that changes your spending habits, choose YNAB.
- If you want a polished all-in-one that works well for couples, choose Monarch.
- If you're all-in on Apple and value design, choose Copilot.
- If you want free net-worth and investment tracking, choose Empower.
- If leaky subscriptions are your problem, look at Rocket Money or PocketGuard.
- If privacy and offline control matter most, choose Nexiora.
- If you're technical and want to self-host, choose Actual Budget.
The best budgeting app is simply the one you'll keep using. Most offer a free trial or free tier, so try one or two for a few weeks before committing — the right fit becomes obvious fast once you're living in it.