How to pick a personal finance app
After Mint shut down in March 2024, the personal finance app market split into specialised tools rather than one all-in-one winner. The right pick depends on the single question you ask most often: 'How much did I spend on groceries this month?' (Monarch, Copilot), 'Does every dollar have a job?' (YNAB), 'What's my net worth?' (Empower), 'What am I subscribed to that I forgot about?' (Rocket Money). Pick the app whose home screen answers your top question — feature lists are a distraction.
The six apps worth installing in 2026
What each app costs in 2026
- Monarch Money — $14.99/mo or $99.99/yr ($8.33/mo billed yearly).
- YNAB — $14.99/mo or $109/yr ($9.08/mo billed yearly).
- Copilot Money — $13/mo or $95/yr ($7.92/mo billed yearly).
- Empower Personal Dashboard — free; wealth-management upsell is opt-in.
- Rocket Money — free tier + $4–12/mo for premium negotiation features.
- Quicken Simplifi — $2.99/mo or $35.88/yr ($2.99/mo billed yearly).
Privacy, aggregation, and the Plaid question
All six apps connect to banks via Plaid, Finicity, MX, or Yodlee. These services hold your bank login credentials securely and pull transactions on a schedule. The risk model is real but small: you're trusting one more company with read-only access, not write access. If you're uncomfortable with aggregation, the app is the wrong category for you — a manual spreadsheet or YNAB's manual entry mode is a better fit than fighting the aggregation layer.
Decision matrix — which app for which job
- Want everything in one place: Monarch.
- Want strict zero-based budgeting: YNAB.
- Apple ecosystem, beautiful UX: Copilot.
- Investor wanting fee/allocation visibility: Empower (free).
- Suspect subscription bloat: Rocket Money.
- Want a lightweight weekly check-in: Quicken Simplifi.
