Best Budgeting Apps of 2025: Alternatives to Mint

As a former Mint user, I had to find a new budgeting app not too long ago. Intuit, the parent company of Mint, shut down the service in March 2024, prompting users to transition to its other financial app, Credit Karma. However, after testing Credit Karma myself, I found it to be a poor replacement for Mint. This situation led me to explore other options for a trusted app to track all of my financial accounts, monitor my credit score, follow a monthly spending plan, and set goals such as building a rainy-day fund and paying down my mortgage faster.

I tried out Mint’s top competitors in the hopes of finding a new budgeting app that could handle all of my financial needs. Hopefully, my journey can help you find the best budgeting app for you and your money as well.

Best Budget Apps of 2025

In the ever-evolving landscape of personal finance management, several budgeting apps have emerged as strong contenders in 2025. These apps offer a variety of features designed to help users manage their finances effectively. Below are some of the top budgeting apps that have gained popularity this year:

• YNAB (You Need A Budget): Known for its proactive budgeting approach, YNAB encourages users to allocate every dollar they earn to specific expenses, savings, or debt repayment.
• EveryDollar: This app offers a straightforward interface for creating monthly budgets and tracking expenses, making it ideal for users who prefer simplicity.
• GoodBudget: A digital envelope budgeting system that allows users to plan their spending and save for future expenses.
• Personal Capital: While primarily an investment tracking tool, Personal Capital also offers budgeting features that help users manage their overall financial health.
• PocketGuard: This app helps users track their spending and shows how much disposable income they have after accounting for bills, goals, and necessities.
• Mint Alternatives: Various apps have emerged as alternatives to Mint, providing similar features with different user experiences.

How We Test Budgeting Apps

Before I dove in and started testing out budgeting apps, I conducted thorough research. To compile a list of apps to try, I consulted Google and Reddit, read reviews of popular apps on the App Store, and asked friends and colleagues about their budgeting methods. Some of the apps I found were free, but they often displayed numerous ads to sustain their business model. Most available apps, however, require paid subscriptions, with prices typically reaching around $100 a year or $15 a month. (Spoiler: My top pick is cheaper than that.)

All of the services I chose to test needed to fulfill several criteria: import all of your account data into one place, offer budgeting tools, and track your spending, net worth, and credit score. Except where noted, all of these apps are available for iOS, Android, and on the web.

Once I had my shortlist of six apps, I began the setup process. To thoroughly test these apps, I made a point of adding every account to each budgeting app, regardless of how small or insignificant the balance. This resulted in a repetitive cycle of two-factor authentication, requiring hours of entering passwords and one-time passcodes for the same banks multiple times. Hopefully, you will only have to do this once.

Budgeting App FAQs

What is Plaid and How Does It Work?

Each of the apps I tested utilizes the same underlying network, called Plaid, to pull in financial data. It is important to explain what Plaid is and how it functions. Founded as a fintech startup in 2013, Plaid has become the industry standard for connecting banks with third-party apps. It works with over 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, and Europe. Additionally, more than 8,000 third-party apps and services rely on Plaid, the company claims.

To clarify, you do not need a dedicated Plaid app to use its services; the technology is integrated into a wide array of apps, including all of the budgeting apps listed in this guide. When you find the “add an account” option in any of these apps, you will see a menu of commonly used banks, along with a search field to look yours up directly. After locating your bank, you will be prompted to enter your login credentials. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, you will also need to enter a one-time passcode.

Plaid acts as a middleman, facilitating the transfer of information that may include your account balances, transaction history, account type, and routing or account number. Plaid employs encryption and maintains a policy of not selling or renting customer data to other companies. However, it is worth noting that in 2022, Plaid faced scrutiny Plaid was forced to pay $58 million to consumers in a class action suit for collecting “more financial data than was needed.” As part of the settlement, Plaid was required to modify some of its business practices.

In a statement provided to Engadget, a Plaid spokesperson stated that the company continues to deny the allegations underlying the lawsuit and that “the crux of the non-financial terms in the settlement are focused on us accelerating workstreams already underway related to giving people more transparency into Plaid’s role in connecting their accounts, and ensuring that our workstreams around data minimization remain on track.”

Why Did Mint Shut Down?

When parent company Intuit announced announced in December 2023 that it would shut down Mint, it did not provide a specific reason for this decision. However, it did state that Mint’s millions of users would be transitioned to its other finance app, Credit Karma. “Credit Karma is thrilled to invite all Minters to continue their financial journey on Credit Karma, where they will have access to Credit Karma’s suite of features, products, tools, and services, including some of Mint’s most popular features,” Mint wrote on its product blog. In our testing, we found that Credit Karma isn’t an exact replacement for Mint, so if you’re still looking for a Mint alternative, you have some decent options.

What About Rocket Money?

Rocket Money is another free financial app that tracks spending and supports features like balance alerts and account linking. If you opt for the premium tier, the service can also assist you in canceling unwanted subscriptions. We did not test it for this guide, but we will consider it in future updates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/best-budgeting-apps-120036303.html?src=rss