YNAB alternatives in 2027: five apps, named
We make one of these, so read us accordingly. What we can offer is that every price here was read off a first-party source, and the two we could not verify are marked rather than guessed.
| App | Price | How it is charged, and where you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Fundkeep | $39.99 | one purchase, not a subscription. 14-day trial. Ours — see below. |
| YNAB | $109 | a year, or $14.99 a month. 34-day trial. On the App Store, free to download; the subscription is inside. |
| Envy | $6.99 | free to download, one in-app purchase called Envy All Access. On the App Store. iPhone and iPad; on a Mac it runs as the iPad app. |
| Actual Budget | Free | open source. Syncing between devices means running a server. Not an App Store app. You run it yourself, which is the whole idea. |
| Zeroed | Not printed | a one-time purchase, but the only figure on their site today is a founder’s offer — a promotional price, which is exactly the kind that moves. Not on the App Store: Apple’s catalogue returns nothing for it in any storefront we checked. On Google Play and the Microsoft Store. |
| MoneyCoach | Not printed | free to download with a Premium subscription. Their own site prints no figure and Apple does not publish in-app purchase prices, so neither do we. On the App Store. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. |
Two rows carry no figure. Their prices could not be confirmed from a first-party source on the date above — one publishes only a promotional price, the other publishes none — and a number we cannot stand behind is worse than an admission. Follow the links and check for yourself; that is what they are there for.
A review of budgeting apps written by somebody who sells one is a conflict of interest, not a service. So here is how we have handled ours, and you can judge whether it is enough.
Every price in the table above came from a first-party source — the company’s own pricing page, or Apple’s own App Store listing — read on the date the caption gives. Not from a review site, not from a comparison blog, and not from our own internal notes, which turned out to be wrong about two of these when we checked. Two rows have no price at all, because we could not confirm one first-hand, and an admission is worth more than a number.
Availability was checked against Apple’s own catalogue, by identifier and by developer, rather than against anybody’s marketing. That check changed this article after it was written: one of the five is not on the App Store at all.
Every figure on this page lives in one file in the site’s source, with the date it was read and a build that complains when it goes stale. That is not a courtesy to these companies. It is the only way a page like this stays true after the week it was written.
And the section at the end is where we lose. If a roundup by a vendor does not have one, it is an advertisement wearing a lab coat.
YNAB
The one most people are leaving, and the reason this page exists. It is the reference implementation of zero-based envelope budgeting: if you learned the method anywhere, you probably learned it here, and the vocabulary everyone else borrows — give every dollar a job, to be assigned — is theirs.
It is a subscription, and the most expensive thing on the list by a distance once you run it for a few years. It connects to banks, so transactions arrive on their own. It is web-first with capable phone apps, which is either fine or the whole problem depending on where you actually sit down to budget. Its trial is the longest here, which is genuinely to their credit — it is long enough to watch a month roll over, and watching a month roll over is the only real test of a budgeting app.
If the subscription does not bother you, there is no case for switching. It works, and it invented most of what the rest of us do.
If you are leaving, take your data first: we wrote up exactly what comes out of a YNAB export and what every column means.
Envy
The one that should worry us most, and the one we would point a friend at before we would point them at ourselves in some cases.
It is free to download with a single unlock — a fraction of what we charge — and it is a properly made envelope app: real envelope balances, widgets on the home and lock screens, receipt scanning that fills in the amount and date for you. Apple’s listing shows Data Not Collected. It runs on iPhone and iPad, and on a Mac it runs as the iPad app rather than as a Mac app, which matters only if the Mac is where you work.
The honest position: if you want envelope budgeting on a phone for the least money, this is the first thing to try, and you should try it before you pay us several times more. Our answer to it is a native Mac app, the migration path, and no third-party anything — not a claim to be tidier, because it is not.
Zeroed
The closest thing on this list to our own argument, made by somebody else. Offline, local storage, a one-time purchase, no subscription, and privacy as the headline rather than a footnote — the same pitch, delivered first. Their licence key travels through Google Drive, which is a reasonable engineering choice and is also a third party in a story about having none.
But if you are reading this on an iPhone, you cannot buy it today. Apple’s catalogue returns nothing for Zeroed — not by its identifier, not by its developer, in any storefront we checked. It is on Google Play and the Microsoft Store. Their own site markets a licence that unlocks iPhone and Mac alongside Android and Windows, so the intention is plainly there; the App Store listing is not, and an app you cannot install is not an alternative, whatever it costs.
We have not printed a price either, because the only figure on their site today is a founder’s offer. Promotional prices are exactly the kind that move, and quoting one as though it were the standing price is how comparison pages become wrong.
If you have an Android phone or a Windows laptop in the house, they are worth watching. If your household is all Apple, check back rather than plan around them.
MoneyCoach
The most polished Apple citizen here: Apple’s catalogue lists it for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, and it has been at it for years. If what you want is a personal-finance app that feels like it belongs on the platform, this is the bar.
It is free to download with a Premium subscription. We are not printing a figure because their own site shows none and Apple does not publish in-app purchase prices in its catalogue — check it in the App Store before deciding.
One warning that cost us an hour: there is a second, unrelated app also called MoneyCoach by a different developer. Make sure the listing you are looking at is the one by MoneyCoach UG, or you will be comparing the wrong product — as we briefly were.
The question to ask it is not about price but about method: find out whether its budgeting is genuinely zero-based envelopes, where money is assigned before it is spent and an empty envelope stops you, or category limits with reporting. Both are useful. Only one of them is the thing you came here for, and the words used to sell them are nearly identical.
Actual Budget
Free, open source, envelope-method, local-first, and the only one here you can read the source of. If you are technical and you want no vendor at all — not us, not anyone — this is the honest end of the spectrum, and nothing on this page beats it on price.
The cost is in your time. Syncing between devices means running a server, which means being the person who keeps it running, patched and backed up. Some people enjoy that. If reading that sentence made you tired, it is not for you, and that is not a criticism of the software.
Where we lose
Three places, and they are not small.
No bank connections, ever. YNAB will fetch your transactions. We will not, and this is deliberate rather than unfinished — no aggregator holds a key to your accounts, and in exchange you type transactions or import a CSV you exported yourself. If automatic import is what you are paying for, we are the wrong answer and no amount of privacy argument changes that.
Apple devices only. iPhone, iPad and Mac, one purchase for all three, and nothing on Android, Windows or the web. Zeroed covers all four platforms; we cover three Apple ones properly. If your household is mixed, that decides it.
Price against Envy. We charge several times what Envy charges for something that, from the outside, does the same job. Our case is the native Mac app, the YNAB migration with a reconciliation report you read before anything is saved, and no third-party code anywhere in the app. Whether that is worth the difference is genuinely your call, and the fourteen days are free precisely so you can make it without taking our word for anything.
What to check, whichever way you go
Six questions that separate these apps faster than any feature list:
- Is it really zero-based? Enter income and see whether the app insists you assign all of it. If nothing drives the unassigned pile to zero, it is a spending tracker with folders.
- What happens when you stop paying? Read-only, export-only, or locked out? The answer is rarely on the pricing page and it is always somewhere.
- Does it need a bank login? A real convenience and a real liability. Make the trade knowingly rather than by default.
- Can you get your data out, and is the file any use? Export on day one, before you have anything to lose, and open it.
- Do credit cards work properly? Spend on a card and see whether money moves into that card’s payment envelope. If it does not, you will spend the same money twice and notice a month later.
- Can you see a month roll over inside the trial? That is where budgeting apps either hold up or annoy you forever.
Take those to all six apps, ours included. If the answers point somewhere else, go there — and take your export with you.
If they point here, the page for people leaving YNAB has the rest: what stays the same, what the switch costs over the years you were going to keep budgeting anyway, and the same list of what you give up.