Best Budgeting Apps

• Free“In My Pocket” Calculator: Displays money that is available for spending after savings, goals, and bills are taken into consideration.
• SyncConnects to a number of credit card, bank, and investment accounts.
• AutoTransactions are automatically sorted into expenditure categories.
• ViewSpending restrictions can be set and transactions can be viewed, edited, and managed.
• GoalsFinancial Objectives: Establish and monitor savings goals.
• ChartsSpending Pie-Chart: Shows costs broken down by category.
• DebtDebt Payoff Planner: Provides techniques for managing debt (in premium).
• ImportImport transactions in PocketGuard (in premium).
• ExportExport transactions in PocketGuard (in premium).
• AddAdding your own categories (in premium).
• DateChange the date of the transaction (in premium).

• *Like the majority of budgeting tools, PocketGuard allows you to link your credit card, checking, savings, and investment accounts utilizing Plaid and Finicity to import your data in a matter of seconds without disclosing personal information or account details.
• *Recurring Income: Adding your recurring income in PocketGuard allows you to see how much money is available to create a budget and calculate your Leftover.
• *Recurring Income: Setting up your recurring income in PocketGuard is an important step to see the full picture of your financial life. Recurring income not only allows you to calculate your Leftover, but also to see your upcoming paychecks.
• *Recurring Income: It is an income that re-occurs on a regular basis, and you can count on it to pay your bills. For example: Paycheck, Rental Income, Pension, Alimony, etc.
• *Recurring Income: The following are items that you may regularly encounter as credits to your bank accounts are not considered recurring such as Side hustles, Monetary gifts, Refunds, Paybacks, Expense reimbursements, etc.
• *Bills: Adding your bills in PocketGuard allows you to set aside a portion of your income required to pay them on time and calculate how much is left “Leftover”.
• *Bills: All your fixed recurring expenses, like Cell phone, Utilities, Mortgage, Gym membership, Subscriptions, Insurance are your bills.
• *Bills: PocketGuard recommend NOT tracking credit card payments as recurring expenses, as we mark these payments as transfers.
• *Bills: Every time you swipe your credit card to make a general purchase, that amount is debited from your “Leftover”. In reality, your credit card company is floating the money, and you technically have not paid for it.
• *Category budgets: They may come in handy when you want to set enough money for essentials, like food or transportation, aside from the Leftover money that you can spend on everything else.
• *Category budgets: When creating a Category budget, PocketGuard will reserve the money for spending in this category and deduct it from your Leftover.
• *Category budgets: You can even create a zero-based budget by allocating a portion of your income for each category. However, in this case, your Leftover will always be equal to zero. That’s why they call it “zero-based”.
• *Category budgets: You can create up to 2 budgets with the basic version, and PocketGuard Plus users can create as many budgets as they want.
• *Category budgets: It is not allowed to create a Category budget for Income and Savings at this time, as we have dedicated sections for these parts of your budget – Income and Goals, respectively.
• *Surcharge-free guarantee – Bask Bank guarantees you will not pay a surcharge at any Allpoint® ATM. Some locations may have more than one ATM, not all of which are part of the Allpoint Network.
• *Goals: The “Savings goals” feature is a great tool if you want to set short-term and long-term targets that fit your monthly budget. And there are 2 types of goals (1) External (2) Manual.
• *Goals: PocketGuard applies the SMART framework to the goals setup process. That means your goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.
• *Goals: External Goals: An external goal is a goal that is linked to one of your bank accounts. In this way, we’d track your goal progress based on your account balance. That means one goal can be linked to one account only.
• *Goals: Manual Goals: A manual goal can be created without linking to an account. To track the progress, you’d need to contribute transactions manually.
• *Review last month’s Budget: The Plan Tab now lets you jump back to any past month and see how your budget actually ended. You can quickly check your leftover, spending, and income for that period with accurate end-of-month snapshots.
• *Transaction rules: Transaction Rules puts your spending on autopilot by applying custom “if-this-then-that” logic to every new entry.
• *Transaction rules: Think of these rules as automated filters for your transactions. Define what to watch for, like “Starbucks,” any charge over $100, or transactions on a specific account, and choose what happens next: rename, re-categorize, tag, or even exclude from calculations. From that moment on, matching entries flow into your account exactly the way you want.
• *Split transaction: Splitting a transaction may come in handy when you share a rent payment with a roommate, go for dinner with a friend, or want to break down that $100 spent at Target into multiple categories.
• *Split transaction: Splits are treated like regular transactions. You can associate a split with a bill by changing its merchant name, adding a note / #hashtag, or marking a split as “Don’t count”.
• *Insights: This section contains the features that help you analyze your expenses and get some insights into your spending habits. It’s a really eye-opening experience that motivates you to spend less and stick to the budget.
• *#Hashtags: #Hashtags may come in handy to track specific kinds of expenses or assets, such as vacations or hobbies.
• *Internal Transfers/ “FROM” and “TO” stamps: PocketGuard automatically detects transfers between your accounts and links them into an “internal transfer”. The debit transaction will get a “FROM” stamp, and the credit transaction will get a “TO” stamp.
• *Internal Transfers/ “FROM” and “TO” stamps: “Internal transfers” feature help us avoid double-counting when you use your credit card for spending and then pay it off at the end of the month.
• *Debt payoff plan (Plus feature): The debt payoff plan is a premium functionality for prioritizing your loans and building a payoff strategy with minimum losses or with maximum progress. Thus, a debt payoff budget is an amount you are ready to spend on paying your debts every month.
• *Debt payoff plan (Plus feature): While creating your personal debt payoff plan, it is necessary to enter minimum payment, an annual percentage rate, and set up a debt payoff budget, so we can allocate enough money from your Leftover. There are 2 strategies (1) Snowball (2) Avalanche.
• *Debt payoff plan (Plus feature): Snowball: In this see your debt payoff progress as soon as possible. The priority is built based on the lowest account balance. That means your loans would be sorted by balance from lowest to highest.
• *Debt payoff plan (Plus feature): Avalanche: In this in case you don’t want to pay extra APR fees. That means your credits will be sorted by APR in descending order. The loan with the highest interest rate must be paid off first.
• *Track Cash in PocketGuard (Plus feature): Tracking cash may come in handy to track bank accounts that are not supported by our data aggregation provider, broken accounts, or for manual budgeting needs.
• *Track Cash in PocketGuard (Plus feature): Track cash on hand with cash accounts. You are able to create up to 50 cash accounts on the Plus subscription.
• *Import transactions (Plus feature): Import transactions is a great way to get your full transaction history just in seconds. It works great if you prefer tracking expenses manually since all imported transactions would be listed under your cash account. As a reference, it could be any unsupported bank account or Apple card.
• *Export transactions (Plus feature): If you wish to build custom spending reports using MS Excel or Google Sheets, you can download your transaction history in a CSV format.
• *Change the date of the transaction (Plus feature): Imagine a situation you get paid on the last day of the month but use that money for the following month (for example, your pay on January 31 will be used in February). Clearly, you would like it to be considered as “February” income. You can easily change the posted date of the transaction and make your calculations accurate again.
• *Adding your own categories (Plus feature): Add and customize your own categories or enable additional pre-defined ones. Get even more detailed budgeting and even more insight into your spending habits. You can see the additional categories in your spending pie chart and set Category budgets for them.
• *Mint data transfer: Since Mint announced its closure, we have received multiple inquiries regarding transferring Mint data to PocketGuard for a smooth transition. Now, we would like to introduce our Mint data transfer feature.
• *Leftover: Leftover shows how much money you can save or spend on everything else after setting aside enough to cover your Bills, Budgets, Goals, and Debts. You should remember that connecting all your checking and credit accounts is essential for Leftover calculation.
• *Leftover: PocketGuard will try to identify your Recurring Income and Bills. Moreover, this will help to calculate your total spent amount. We also include your Goal contributions in the calculations.
• *Rollover budget feature: In this feature, now, any unspent funds in your budget categories can be carried over into the next month, giving you more flexibility and control over your finances.
• *Countries supported by PocketGuard: PocketGuard is currently supporting the US, Canadian, and UK financial institutions.
• *PocketGuard without linking an account: Of course you can! After registration, enter your income and bills, set up category budgets, and you are good to go. Happy budgeting.
• *Security: When you register a financial account for PocketGuard tracking, we encrypt your login credentials and, with the help of our data aggregation partners, establish a secure connection with your card issuer.
• *Security: For improved safety, we purposefully do not store any of your credit/debit card account credentials. Once your credentials are confirmed, PocketGuard is granted “read-only” access to your transaction history.
• *Security: PocketGuard transfers data with the same security level as your banking application. We use the same 256-bit SSL and advanced Encryption standards as banks and other financial institutions.
• *Security: Double layer of protection: With our PIN code and password combination, nobody can access your financial information, even if you lose your phone.
View Rates & Fees

With the budgeting app PocketGuard, you can monitor your expenditures. It lets you link several credit and debit cards so you can keep track of everything in one handy app. PocketGuard assists you in creating budgets for several categories, such as meals, clothes, and groceries, and alerts you when your limit is about to be reached. For those who overspend, this software is ideal.

Net worth tracking, debt repayment programs, bill negotiation, subscription management, spending analytics, and a personal finance education are among the features of the PocketGuard app.

After a seven-day free trial, PocketGuard costs $12.99 per month or $74.99 annually. You can download the PocketGuard app for iOS (4.6 stars rating) and Android (4.3 stars rating).

• +Easy to learn and use
• +Debt payoff planning
• +Bill negotiation services
• +Personal finance education
• +Thorough transaction management
• +All spending accounts are conveniently located in one location
• +Extra security layer

• –The PocketGuard website is not the most user-friendly
• –Although you may download the app for free, a monthly membership is required for many of its most helpful functions
• –No subscription cancellation service
• –No feature for tracking of investments
• –Unclear data privacy and marketing policies

Key takeaway

People who seek a comprehensive snapshot of their monthly expenditure across all bank accounts in one handy location are best suited for PocketGuard.