Mint Is Dead: The Best Personal Finance Apps to Track Your Budget in 2024

Intuit officially shut down the beloved budgeting app Mint on March 23, 2024. For over a decade, millions of people relied on Mint to track their spending, monitor their net worth, and set financial goals. Now that it is gone, you need a reliable replacement to manage your money effectively.

Why Credit Karma Falls Short

When Intuit closed Mint, the company encouraged users to migrate their accounts to Credit Karma. While Credit Karma is great for checking your credit score and getting recommendations for credit cards, it is not a true budgeting app.

Credit Karma allows you to view your transactions and track your overall net worth. However, it strips away the exact features that made Mint so useful. You cannot set monthly spending limits for specific categories, create custom budget goals, or track your cash flow with the same level of detail. Because of these missing features, most former Mint users are looking for third-party alternatives.

Top Mint Alternatives for 2024

Fortunately, the financial technology market has grown significantly over the last few years. Several companies have stepped up to offer tools that track your net worth, categorize your expenses, and help you reach your financial goals.

Monarch Money

Monarch Money is widely considered the best all-around replacement for Mint. Interestingly, the platform was actually co-founded by Val Agostino, a former product manager for Mint. Monarch is designed to fix the frustrations people had with Mint, specifically the intrusive advertisements and broken bank connections.

  • Pricing: Monarch costs $99.99 per year or $14.99 per month. They do not sell your financial data to third parties.
  • Key Features: The app allows you to share your account with a partner at no extra cost. Each person gets their own login, making it perfect for married couples managing joint finances.
  • Mint Import: Monarch built a specific Chrome extension to help users easily export their historical data from Mint and upload it directly into Monarch.

YNAB (You Need A Budget)

If you want to completely change how you manage your money, YNAB is the top choice. YNAB does not just track what you have already spent. Instead, it forces you to assign every single dollar you earn to a specific category before you spend it. This method is called zero-based budgeting.

  • Pricing: YNAB charges $109 per year or $14.99 per month. They offer a 34-day free trial.
  • Key Features: YNAB connects to your bank accounts, offers comprehensive goal tracking, and provides extensive educational materials to help you learn their system.
  • Best For: This app is best for people who want to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. It has a steep learning curve, but users often report saving thousands of dollars in their first year.

Quicken Simplifi

If you want a modern, streamlined app from a trusted name in personal finance, Quicken Simplifi is an excellent choice. It won the title of best budgeting app from The New York Times Wirecutter in 2024. Simplifi focuses heavily on your cash flow, showing you exactly how much money you have left to spend after paying your fixed bills.

  • Pricing: Simplifi is highly affordable at $47.88 per year (which breaks down to $3.99 per month).
  • Key Features: You can create custom watchlists for specific spending categories. For example, if you want to limit your takeout spending to $100 per month, Simplifi will send you real-time alerts as you approach that limit.

Copilot Money

Copilot is an incredibly beautiful, modern app that relies heavily on artificial intelligence to automatically categorize your transactions. If you hated manually fixing uncategorized transactions in Mint, Copilot is the app for you. The AI learns your spending habits and becomes more accurate over time.

  • Pricing: Copilot costs $95 per year or $9.99 per month.
  • Key Features: It tracks investments, budgets, and subscriptions with a highly visual, colorful interface.
  • Limitations: Copilot is built primarily for the Apple ecosystem. It has excellent iOS and Mac apps. While they recently launched a web version, Android users will need to look elsewhere for now.

Empower Personal Dashboard

If you refuse to pay a subscription fee for a budgeting app, Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly known as Personal Capital) is your best option. It is entirely free to use, though the company will occasionally call you to offer their premium wealth management services if your net worth exceeds $100,000.

  • Pricing: Free.
  • Key Features: Empower is the absolute best free tool for tracking your overall net worth and investments. It analyzes your investment portfolio, shows you your asset allocation, and calculates hidden retirement fees.
  • Limitations: The day-to-day budgeting tools are very basic. It is better for high-level net worth tracking rather than monitoring your weekly grocery budget.

How to Choose the Right App

Selecting the best app depends entirely on your financial goals and how much time you want to spend managing your money.

If you are managing finances with a spouse and want a premium experience, Monarch Money is the clear winner. If you are struggling with debt and need a strict system to control your spending, invest your time and money into YNAB. If you want a cheap, effective, and customizable cash-flow tracker, go with Quicken Simplifi. Finally, if you only care about watching your retirement accounts grow and do not want to pay a monthly fee, Empower is exactly what you need.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Intuit shut down Mint? Intuit decided to close Mint to consolidate its personal finance tools under the Credit Karma brand. Mint was historically difficult to monetize without relying heavily on credit card advertisements, and Intuit saw more value in integrating its user base into Credit Karma.

Is there a way to still access my old Mint data? If you did not export your data before the March 23, 2024 shutdown, you can no longer access your historical Mint data. If you migrated to Credit Karma, up to three years of your net worth history and transaction data transferred over automatically.

Are these budgeting apps safe to use? Yes. Modern budgeting apps like Monarch, YNAB, and Simplifi use secure third-party aggregators like Plaid, MX, and Finicity to connect to your bank. These aggregators use bank-level encryption and read-only access. The budgeting apps cannot move your money or make changes to your bank accounts.