Budget apps that don't need to connect to your bank
You don't have to hand a budgeting app your bank login. Of the seven apps below, three never connect to a bank at all, and four connect only if you set it up — usually on a paid plan, and only in some countries. Without a connection you type transactions or import a file from your bank: you give up automatic updates, and no third party holds a key to your accounts.
7 apps, in alphabetical order, checked against first-party sources on . The table scrolls sideways.
| App | Price | Connects to a bank | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actual Budget | Free open source. Syncing between devices means running a server. | Optional Bank integration is optional and off until you set it up with one of its data providers. Even then it fetches only when you ask. Otherwise you type transactions or import CSV, QIF, OFX or QFX files. | The web, Windows, Mac and Linux |
| Envy | $6.99 free to download, one in-app purchase called Envy All Access. | Never Manual by design: you type your transactions. | iPhone and iPad; on a Mac, as the iPad app |
| Fundkeep (ours) | $39.99 one purchase, not a subscription. Free for the first 14 days. | Never You type transactions, or import the CSV file your bank gives you. | iPhone, iPad and Mac |
| Goodbudget | Free a free plan with 10 regular and 10 more envelopes and one account. Plus is $8 a month or $70 a year; Premium, the plan with bank sync, is $10 a month or $80 a year. Prices from its own website. | Optional Only on the Premium plan, only with US banks, and through Plaid. On the free and Plus plans you type transactions or import QFX, OFX or CSV files. | iPhone, Android and the web |
| MoneyCoach | Free the most used features are free. Premium is a subscription that Apple’s US listing shows at several prices; Lifetime Premium is $199.99. | Optional Only with Premium, and only for European banks; UK banks are not supported. Otherwise you type transactions or import a CSV file. | iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch |
| Pennies | Not printed free to download. Apple’s US listing shows annual subscriptions at several prices, and we could not find what a subscription adds, so we print none. | Never No bank connection at all, in its developer’s own words. | iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch |
| Skwad | $49 a year for DIY, which syncs from your bank’s email alerts; LINK, with bank linking, is $65 a year. Billed monthly they are $6 and $8. No free plan. | Optional The DIY plan needs no bank login: it reads the alert emails your bank already sends. The LINK plan connects through Plaid. | iPhone, iPad, Android and the web |
One row carries no price: it could not be pinned to a single figure from a first-party source on the date above, and a number we cannot stand behind is worse than an admission. Every name links to the company's own page, so you can check for yourself.
Why people leave bank sync
Three things lie behind the question. Each is linked to the organisation’s own document, and each was read on 13 September 2026.
The app, not the bank, holds your budget. In October 2023, Intuit’s Credit Karma announced that it was folding Intuit’s budgeting app, Mint, into Credit Karma. Mint’s own help page told users they could carry over account balances, net worth history and three years of transactions, and that Credit Karma “doesn’t offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets”.
The connection usually runs through a third party. In the table above, Goodbudget’s and Skwad’s bank connections both go through Plaid. In July 2022 a federal court approved a $58 million settlement of class actions in which the plaintiffs alleged that Plaid “uses consumers’ banking login credentials to harvest and sell detailed financial data without their consent”. Plaid denied liability. The settlement required changes to its practices, among them “minimizing the data Plaid stores from users’ financial accounts”.
Handing over a bank password is being phased out, slowly. When the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule in October 2024, it called screen scraping “a still common but risky practice that typically involves consumers providing their account passwords to third parties”. Its own figures show the practice shrinking: among the aggregators it collected data from, screen scraping fell from 80 percent of access attempts in 2019 to 50 percent in 2022 (89 FR 90838). A federal court stayed the rule’s compliance dates in October 2025, and the CFPB is reconsidering it.
What you give up without it
Nothing arrives on its own. Every transaction is one you typed, or one that came in a file you downloaded from your bank and imported yourself, so a balance is as current as the last time you did that.
What you get in exchange is the other side of the same fact: nobody else is logging in to your bank on your behalf, there is no connection to break or re-authorise, and nothing about your accounts reaches a company whose business is holding that data.
How the seven differ
Whether they can connect at all. Envy, Fundkeep and Pennies never do. Actual Budget, Goodbudget, MoneyCoach and Skwad can, and the table says on which terms: Goodbudget and MoneyCoach keep it for a paid plan, Skwad for its LINK plan, and Actual Budget for a data provider you set up yourself. Goodbudget connects only to US banks, and MoneyCoach only to European ones.
How you pay. Actual Budget is free and open source. Goodbudget and MoneyCoach have free tiers with paid plans above them, and Pennies and Skwad sell subscriptions. Envy sells one in-app purchase, and Fundkeep is one purchase with a free trial.
Where they run. Envy, Fundkeep, MoneyCoach and Pennies are made for Apple devices. Actual Budget, Goodbudget and Skwad also run on the web, and Goodbudget and Skwad on Android.
Where Fundkeep fits
It is ours, so read this part accordingly. Fundkeep is envelope budgeting for iPhone, iPad and Mac, bought once. It never connects to a bank: you type transactions or import the CSV file your bank gives you, and see every row before anything is saved. It does not run on Android, Windows or the web, and a budget is one person’s, kept in step across that person’s own devices.