Best Budget Apps That Track Expenses Automatically

PocketGuard imports every transaction from your linked accounts and adds a safe-to-spend number on top. The three bank-synced apps here record about the same share of your spending, so PocketGuard leads on price: US$74.99 a year, the least of the three, and its bank connections cover the US, Canada and the UK. There's no free plan (a 7-day trial), and users report that categorization and sync can lag.

Copilot Money records everything from linked accounts, categorizes it with AI and notifies you of new transactions quickly. It's US$95 a year after a 1-month trial, works with US-based accounts only, and runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web, with no Android app.

Monarch Money records every transaction from linked accounts, including transfers and cash withdrawals, and adds investments, net worth and household sharing on iOS, Android and the web. On this page's criteria it's third only because it's the most expensive of the three at US$99.99 a year; it connects US and Canadian accounts only.

Graiden (our app) reads the bank-alert emails and e-receipts you forward and logs each purchase with AI, without a bank login. It ranks last because it only sees purchases that send an email, so cash and anything your bank doesn't alert you about still needs typing, and because automatic reading is free for only the first 7 days, and after that you type purchases in yourself unless you get Pro. Pro is US$24.99 a year or US$2.99 a month. It's strongest where bank sync isn't available, such as Singapore, where it reads alerts from DBS/POSB, UOB, OCBC, Citi, Standard Chartered, Trust and PayLah!.