If you find yourself struggling to manage your money, a budget can help you take control of your finances. When you keep a budget, you track your income and expenses and monitor your spending. Whether you’re looking to get out of debt, save money, or make better financial decisions, budgeting can help you meet your long-term financial goals.
Budgeting can be time consuming. Budgeting newbies may feel overwhelmed or unsure of how to get started. That’s where budgeting apps come in. Budgeting apps make money management hassle-free to help you improve your financial health.
With so many budgeting apps available, it can be hard to choose which one is the best to use. We’ve evaluated the most popular budgeting apps available on iOS Apple Store and Google Play and put together a list of the best budgeting apps in 2022.
The 6 Best Budgeting Apps in 2022
- Best free budgeting app: Mint
- Best app for simple budgeting: PocketGuard
- Best budgeting app for couples: Honeydue
- Best budgeting app for growing wealth: Personal Capital
- Best budgeting app based on envelope system: Goodbudget
- Best overall: You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Best Free Budgeting App: Mint
Mint combines all your financial accounts — including checking, savings, credit cards, investments, and loans — into one user-friendly dashboard. This all-in-one budgeting app makes it easy to monitor your cash flow and set and track financial goals, like saving for emergencies and getting out of debt.
In addition to helping set and track your financial goals, Mint offers helpful tools (loan repayment calculator) and a blog loaded with budgeting tips. Mint allows you to view your ratio of cash to debt, notifies you about upcoming bills and view your account balances with a detailed breakdown across all of your accounts. You’ll also get personalized insights to help you meet your financial goals more quickly and customized alerts when you go over budget, incur ATM fees, and more.
Pros:
- Create savings goals and track investments
- Bill payment reminders
- Free TransUnion credit monitoring
Cons:
- Ads when using the app
Cost: Free
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web
Best App for Simple Budgeting: PocketGuard
PocketGuard connects all of your financial accounts so you can track all of your transactions and balances in one place. The app allows you to group expenses together using hashtags to easily see how you’re spending your money. If you tend to overspend, PocketGuard shows exactly how much money will be leftover each month after you’ve paid bills, met your savings goals, and purchased life’s necessities, like groceries.
Feel like you’re spending too much on bills? PocketGuard alerts you when you could pay less on a bill (e.g., cell phone service) and helps you negotiate savings from the service provider. If you’re a visual learner, the app’s pie charts clearly show where your money is going and give you the tools needed to set financial goals.
Pros:
- “In My Pocket” feature shows how much you have available for every day, discretionary spending
- AutoSave feature withdraws funds from linked bank account to a non-interest custodial account to help meet savings goals
Cons:
- Takes a 40% cut of any savings received from negotiating rates on cell phone service, cable, and other bills
Cost: Free for the basic plan; $34.99/year or $4.99/month for PocketGuard Plus
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web
Best Budgeting App for Couples: Honeydue
Honeydue provides couples with a simple budgeting app to help you and your partner manage your money and meet financial goals. The app allows you to link up all of you and your partner’s bank accounts, loans, investments and credit cards in one place to help make money management as a couple a little easier. Don’t want your partner to see everything in your personal bank account? No problem. You can select exactly what you want to share with your partner in the app.
Use the app’s automatic expenses categories or create custom categories and set up personalized spending limits on each category. Honeydue will send an alert when you or your partner are reaching the spending limit.
Pros:
- Chat feature to send messages to your partner through the app
- Set monthly spending limits in each category; sends alerts when limit is nearly reached
- Bill payment reminders
Cons:
- Some users report that some transactions do not show up immediately in the app
Cost: Free
Platforms: iOS, Android
Best Budgeting App for Growing Wealth: Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a comprehensive investment and budgeting tool with a focus on helping you grow wealth. Sync all of your financial accounts, including your investment portfolios (e.g., IRA, 401k) for a complete overall picture of your finances. While the app doesn’t allow you to create specific goals (e.g., savings), it does allow you to add a budget, evaluate your spending by category, and compare your financial situation to previous months.
The Personal Capital app offers outstanding tools to prepare for the future with the Education Planner tool to help save for college and the Retirement Planner. The app also offers investment management services for 0.89% of your investment money for accounts under $1 million.
Pros:
- Money-tracking dashboard includes net-worth tracker and details of your investment portfolio
- Retirement planner, education planner
- Free analyzing tool to check portfolio fees
Cons:
- Budgeting features not as thorough as investment features
Cost: Free
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web
Best Budgeting App Based on Envelope System: Goodbudget
Goodbudget is the digital form of the envelope budgeting system. Essentially, the envelope system involves breaking your monthly income into specific spending categories (envelopes) to help you stay within your spending limits for each category. With Goodbudget, you enter your budget for each envelope category, such as mortgage, groceries, entertainment, and more. Create up to 10 envelopes with the free version and unlimited envelopes with the paid version.
The app does not connect to your banking or credit card accounts, so you’ll need to enter each purchase/expense manually. With detailed visual reports, this app is particularly helpful for visual learners. The app also offers useful features for savings, sharing your budget with your partner, and tracking debt repayment.
Pros:
- Eye-catching, easy to understand visuals
- Easily add recurring payments on the app to save time on manual entry
- Upgraded version of the tried-and-true envelope budgeting system
Cons:
- Can’t sync financial accounts; must manually enter expenses
Cost: Free basic plan. $7/month or $60/year for Goodbudget Plus.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web
Best Overall Budgeting App: You Need a Budget (YNAB)
You Need a Budget (YNAB) is easily one of the best budgeting apps available. This comprehensive app is full of helpful features to help you sync your bank accounts and credit cards and see where every dollar goes. Designed to help you get out of debt, YNAB claims the average user saves $600 within the first two months of using the app.
Based on the zero-based budgeting system, every dollar you earn is assigned to a category, such as savings, investments, bills, or debt repayment. YNAB takes a hands-on approach that requires you to actively allocate your money in a way that helps you take control of your finances and meet your financial goals.
Pros:
- Personal customer support and live Q&As daily
- Educational resources, including a blog, budgeting guides, and 100+ free weekly workshops
- Helps users actively allocate and track every dollar to improve financial awareness
Cons:
- Greater time commitment and learning curve than other budgeting apps
Cost: Free 34-day trial; $14.99/month or $98.99/year
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web, Apple Watch, Alexa
