What to use after Mint: an honest 2026 guide
Mint has been gone since 2024 and Credit Karma still is not a budgeting app. A fair look at Monarch, YNAB, Copilot, and PocketGuard — and where moniya fits.
The moniya team6 min read
Mint shut down on March 23, 2024. Intuit pointed its millions of users at Credit Karma, which imported linked accounts and net worth history — and left the actual budgeting behind. Two years on, Credit Karma is still a credit-monitoring product with a spending view bolted on, not a replacement for what Mint did.
If you have been coasting since then — a spreadsheet here, a mental tally there — this guide is for you. No affiliate links, no fake rankings. Just what you lost, what to demand from a replacement, and candid takes on the realistic options in 2026, including where our own product does and does not fit.
What Mint users actually lost
It is worth being precise, because "Mint alternative" gets thrown at anything with a dollar sign in its icon. Mint's core promise was:
- A free, complete picture. Budgets, spending by category, month-over-month trends, and net worth across all your accounts — for zero dollars, subsidized by ads and offers.
- Low effort. Bank sync did the data entry; you did the occasional cleanup.
- One place. Checking, cards, loans, and investments in a single dashboard.
The migration to Credit Karma preserved net worth tracking and transaction viewing, but not budgets or long-term category trends. That is the hole everyone has been trying to fill since — and the uncomfortable truth is that the free-and-complete combination died with Mint. Everything that replaced it charges money, limits features, or asks more of you.
What to look for in a replacement
Four questions cut through most of the marketing:
- What does the free tier actually include? "Free" that caps you at two accounts or hides budgets behind a paywall is a trial, not a tier.
- Does it do budgets and net worth, or just one? Plenty of tools do spending or wealth. Mint's value was doing both.
- Can you get your data out? CSV export is the difference between a tool and a trap. Mint users learned this the hard way — twice, if they then moved off Credit Karma.
- Does its data-entry model fit your life? Bank sync is effortless until a connection breaks, and it barely exists outside the US and Canada. Manual entry works everywhere but tests your discipline. Know which failure mode you'd rather have.
The candidates, honestly
Monarch — the closest spiritual successor
Monarch is what most former Mint power users landed on, and for good reason: full budgets, goals, investments, net worth, solid reports, and household sharing so couples can run one budget from two logins. In 2026 it split into two tiers — Core at $99.99/year (or $14.99/month) and a Plus tier at $199/year — with a 7-day trial and no free tier. It is polished and complete, and it is also a $100-a-year subscription for what Mint did for free. If your finances are US-based, you want bank sync, and you will actually use the depth, it is arguably the safest pick on this list.
YNAB — a methodology, not a dashboard
YNAB (You Need A Budget) is the opposite of Mint: opinionated, hands-on, and genuinely life-changing for the people it clicks with. Its zero-based method — give every dollar a job before you spend it — forces engagement in a way passive dashboards never do, and devotees credit it with real behavior change. The costs: $109/year or $14.99/month after a generous 34-day trial, a real learning curve, and a philosophy you must adopt rather than a report you glance at. Former Mint users who liked watching their money often bounce off YNAB, which wants you managing it. See our full YNAB comparison for the feature-by-feature view.
Copilot — the beautiful one, if you live in Apple's world
Copilot is probably the best-designed finance app on this list — fast, native, and pleasant in a way that makes the others feel like enterprise software. It costs $95/year (or $13/month) and runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac; a web app arrived in late 2025 but remains noticeably thinner than the native experience, and there is still no Android app or confirmed timeline for one. If your household is all-Apple and US-banked, it deserves its trial. If anyone in your budget uses Android, it is a non-starter.
PocketGuard — the simple one
PocketGuard's pitch is one number: "In My Pocket," how much you can safely spend after bills and goals. That simplicity is genuinely useful for people who found Mint overwhelming. The free tier has been squeezed hard over the years — a couple of linked accounts and limited categories — so treat the real price as Plus: $74.99/year, $12.99/month, or a one-time $149.99 lifetime purchase, which is the only lifetime option in this lineup and quietly its best deal. It is lighter on reporting and investment tracking than the others; simple is the feature, not a limitation they forgot to fix.
The comparison at a glance
| Tool | Free tier | Price (annual) | Platforms | Data entry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monarch | No (7-day trial) | $99.99–199/yr | Web, iOS, Android | Bank sync |
| YNAB | No (34-day trial) | $109/yr | Web, iOS, Android | Bank sync + manual |
| Copilot | No (1-month trial) | $95/yr | iOS, Mac, limited web | Bank sync |
| PocketGuard | Very limited | $74.99/yr | Web, iOS, Android | Bank sync |
| moniya | Yes — core free forever | Free; Pro removes AI cap | Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows | AI capture + manual |
Where moniya fits (and where it doesn't)
Full disclosure: this is our blog, so calibrate accordingly. Here is the honest version.
moniya's core is free forever — unlimited accounts and transactions, budgets, saving goals, recurring bills, reports, net worth, and CSV export — which makes it the only option on this list that preserves Mint's "complete picture for $0" deal. The free plan includes 50 AI captures a month; Pro removes that ceiling and adds AI insights on your reports.
The big difference is the data-entry model. moniya does not connect to your bank — by design. Instead of bank sync, you snap the receipt or say the expense out loud, and the AI drafts the transaction: merchant, line items, currency, category. Nothing posts until you approve it. Two consequences follow:
- It works anywhere. No aggregator coverage map, no broken connections, no credentials handed to a third party. Cash, foreign banks, 18 currencies with exchange rates frozen at spend time — all first-class. If Mint's US-only bank sync never fit your life, this model will.
- It asks a few seconds of you per expense. A photo or a sentence, then a tap to approve. That is far less than manual entry, but it is more than zero. If your ideal tool is one you never touch and your banks all sync cleanly, Monarch will fit you better than we will.
We keep a detailed, dated Mint comparison if you want the feature-by-feature breakdown.
The bottom line
- Want the closest thing to Mint and will pay for it: Monarch.
- Want to change your behavior, not just observe it: YNAB.
- All-Apple household, design matters to you: Copilot.
- Want one simple number: PocketGuard — consider the lifetime purchase.
- Want a free core, live outside the US, deal in multiple currencies, or never trusted bank sync: that is the gap moniya was built for.
Whatever you pick, do two things Mint taught us all: check the export button before you commit, and check it again every few months. Your data should always be one CSV away from leaving.
