The Best Budgeting Apps of 2024: Find Your Financial Ally
These days, mobile apps can help us take care of basically any task. We use them for shopping, learning, dating, paying taxes, and many other aspects of our lives. While it’s true the majority of them can lure you in to spend your hard-earned money, there’s also a variety of apps that help you reach your financial goals. Budgeting apps are much more convenient than old-school methods, like keeping your expenses in a notebook or a dedicated spreadsheet. Not only do they include a ton of handy functions, but they’re also a lot easier to use on the go – which is how most of us spend most of our lives (and money)!
In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the most popular apps so you can choose the right budgeting app and better grasp your cash flow. Many budgeting apps on this list are available in both the Google Play Store and the iOS app store, and they're either entirely free or have a free version amongst paid options.
Emma
💸 Price: Free (or $59.99/a year for Pro)
🤳 OS: Android and iOS
🆓 Free trial: Yes;
Emma is a free (a paid Pro version is available, too) budgeting app for your mobile device that leverages open banking systems by combining the information from all your bank accounts, investment accounts, crypto exchanges, and wallets. Seeing all your financial information in one budgeting app is much more convenient than checking all the separate accounts and trying to work the numbers in your head!
In addition to that, this budgeting app has budgeting tools to track spending, provide spending insights based on your spending categories, and identify the bank and subscription fees that might be eating your money away without you noticing.
It also has bank-level encryption and is approved by both ICO and FCA, meaning your financial information is kept entirely confidential. Due to its playful UI and elements of gamification (e.g., quests), Emma is often listed among the top budgeting apps for college students.
Plum
💸 Price: Free (or £1–4.99 for paid plans: Plus, Pro, or Ultra)
🤳 Available on Google Play and iOS
🆓 Free trial: Yes;
The second budgeting app on our list is Plum! Plum can be linked with major banks and get insight into your monthly income and expenses – however, it has more to do with saving and investing than simply tracking your spending habits. According to its website, it has already helped 1,000,000+ Brits set aside over 670 million pounds!
This budgeting app takes away a certain sum of money from your accounts every few days after carefully deducting the perfect amount from the given data for better money management. There’s also a variety of extra options you can set up for automatic savings with Plum: money can be set aside on every payday, rainy day (literally!), or even according to the rules of the 52-week challenge!
Honeydue
💸 Price: Free
🤳 OS: Android and iOS
What sets this budgeting app apart from other budgeting apps (aside from a superb choice of name, of course!) is that it’s couple-oriented, meaning you and your partner can monitor both your spending habits. When you haven’t got much experience sharing your expenses, diving into a serious relationship might be tricky – and that ’s precisely where Honeydue steps in.
While most budgeting apps allow you to link bank accounts to them and track them from the app, Honeydue takes it a step further by organizing linked bank accounts into individual and joint accounts on your personal dashboard. Honeydue can be connected with your accounts in 20,000+ financial institutions in 5 countries and protects your data using 256-bit encryption and multi-factor authentication.
Aside from a bill and expense tracker, this free budgeting app also includes a chat option to discuss transactions and plans with your significant other. Unfortunately, you can’t set financial goals or manage your savings like you would with budgeting apps like Mint or Plum.
PocketGuard
💸 Price: Free (or $34.99/a year for Plus)
🤳 OS: Android and iOS
🆓 Free trial: No;
PocketGuard is another budgeting app for tracking spending, setting limits, and identifying spending categories (each category is called a pocket – hence the app's name). More uniquely, you can index them even further by using hashtags!
A bit like Plum, PocketGuard also offers other budgeting features: it also has an automated saving functionality that allows you to set certain sums of money away in regular intervals (however, unlike with Plum, you won’t be earning any interest on your savings).
What's unique about PocketGuard is a feature called In My Pocket, which allows you to see how much money you have to spend on any given day. The app takes your income, subtracts everything you need to pay or put away for bills and savings, and divides it for individual days. Simple yet smart!
The budgeting app combines both budgeting features and security features perfectly, including PIN codes, Touch IDs, Face IDs, and 256-bit SSL encryption. As far as security goes, PocketGuard just has to be one of the best free budgeting apps around.
Cleo
💸 Price: Free (or $5.99–$9.99/a month for paid plans: Plus or Crusher)
🤳 OS: Android and iOS
🆓 Free trial: No;
You might want to look at Cleo if you’re looking for a budgeting app for college students or young adults. What differentiates it from most budgeting apps is its AI chatbot that acts as your financial advisor and can provide financial information, hype you, or even roast you for irresponsible spending.
While Cleo’s not student-specific, its funky design, bold humor, GIFs, and trivia games mostly appeal to younger crowds looking for an excellent budgeting app. It’s not stingy with security, either: Cleo uses 256-bit SSL encryption and promises a $250k pledge coverage if losses are attributable to Cleo.
Once you connect Cleo with your financial accounts, it acts as an expense tracker, allows you to set up budgets for custom periods of time, and helps you save money with options like round-ups, automatic savings, and even swear jars.
More uniquely, the paid plans include a chance to borrow money without extra fees or interest and cashback opportunities when shopping with your selected retailers. This could be your best budgeting app if you feel quirky yet responsible for your finances.
Credit Karma
💸 Price: Free
🤳 OS: Android and iOS
Credit Karma is a budgeting app that took over Mint users as Mint was shut down in 2023. This budgeting app has a mission to help members make financial progress. The Credit Karma app empowers you to stay in control of your overall financial picture by checking your free credit scores – but that’s not all.
Credit Karma also offers you an option for high-yield savings accounts. Credit Karma Savings is a high-yield savings account that takes just a few minutes to set up, earning a competitive interest rate. And once you’re set-up, you’ll have insight into your credit and savings all in one place.
The app also offers a financial Relief Roadmap. It's a new tool that can help you understand the relief resources, programs, and financial services available when you need them most. After you enter some of your banking information into the app, it'll provide information about government stimulus programs, unemployment benefits, debt relief opportunities, and loan options for which you may qualify.
Goodbudget
💸 Price:Free version or a Premium version is available for $10 monthly;
🤳 OS: Google Play and iOS;
🆓 Free trial: No;
The Goodbudget app uses the time-tested envelope system to track monthly spending. It’s designed to help you budget your money by dividing your income into different spending categories and monitoring your spending habits.
The idea of planning versus tracking sets the Goodbudget app apart from other budget apps. With Goodbudget, you create envelopes for all your budgeting categories – rent, groceries, eating out, date night, etc. Afterward, you set aside personal capital in each envelope to spend based on categories, not your account balance.
This app can also help with your debt payoff plan! Using budgeting features like Debt Accounts on the web, you can track your payoff progress and see when you’ll be debt-free – all while setting aside money for your savings goals!
You can enjoy Goodbudget for free, but if you choose the Premium plan, you get unlimited envelopes (essentially the ability to create unlimited budgets), seven years of monthly spending history, unlimited account balances, and email support.
Rocket Money
💸 Price: Basic version for free, or $4-$12 monthly;
🤳 OS: Google Play and iOS;
🆓 Free trial: Yes;
Like other apps on this list, Rocket Money allows you to track spending and manage money easily! With over 5 million users worldwide, this free app will enable you to find and track your subscriptions, track and understand your credit score, understand and grow your net worth, create a personal budget, and get the best rates on your bill payments.
Your safety matters to Rocket Money, so they host their servers safely on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a secure online data storage and hosting service used by the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
The Rocket Money website also has a learning center where you can learn about credit cards and the importance of an emergency fund. You can also receive general budgeting advice and learn how to create a personalized spending plan, amongst other important topics.
If you always thought budgeting wasn't compatible with your active lifestyle – think again! Each budgeting app offers a modern way to take back control of your bank account and reach your financial goals easily!
Sure, learning more about personal finance from books, podcasts, or even movies can’t hurt – but you can certainly start taking your first steps with many budgeting apps without a ton of knowledge already gained.
Naturally, planning your budget and saving money are only some of what personal finance encompasses: first, you need to earn money to cover your needs and wants, with or without the best budgeting apps.
If you’re interested in taking up an extra source of cash flow, consider Honeygain – a crowdsourced web intelligence network that pays you for sharing your unused Internet bandwidth. Click the button below to sign up now, and we’ll top up your budget with $2 for free!
