When Intuit shut Mint down in March 2024, around 25 million people lost the free budgeting app they had used for years. Users were pushed toward Credit Karma, but the migration was limited: only your account login carried over, while transaction history, budgets, and goals did not. Credit Karma is also built to track your credit score and surface loan offers, not to help you budget, so the search for a real replacement is still going strong.
The good news: the tools that replaced Mint are, in most cases, better than Mint ever was. The catch is that there is no single "Mint 2.0". The right pick depends on how hands-on you want to be and what you actually need from a budget. Here is an honest rundown.
What to look for in a Mint replacement
Before the list, four questions sort most of the options for you:
- Automatic or manual? Mint synced your bank accounts and sorted transactions for you. Some replacements do the same; others ask you to enter spending yourself, which sounds tedious but tends to make people far more aware of where their money goes.
- How much does it cost? Mint was free because it sold ads and referrals. Most modern alternatives charge a subscription instead, usually somewhere between free and roughly $15 a month.
- Who is it for? Some apps are built for couples and families sharing money. Others are solo-first.
- Where do you live? Several popular options only connect to US banks. If you are in Europe or budget in euros, that rules a few of them out immediately.
The shortlist
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
The most popular paid alternative. YNAB uses a "give every euro a job" method (zero-based budgeting) that is genuinely effective once it clicks. The downsides are the learning curve and the price: $14.99 a month or $109 a year at the time of writing. Best for people who want a strict, proactive system and will invest the time to learn it.
Monarch Money
A polished, sync-first app aimed at couples and households. Clean dashboards, good shared-account support, subscription priced. Strong if you want automatic bank sync and a partner view and you are mostly in the US.
Copilot
Beautiful, design-led, and Apple-only. iPhone and Mac users who care about how their tools look and feel tend to love it. Not an option on Android or the web.
Actual Budget
Free and open source, with the same envelope method as YNAB. It can be self-hosted, which appeals to privacy-minded and technical users, but setup is more involved than a normal app.
kvar.
The pick for the large group of people who, after Mint closed, simply went back to a budgeting spreadsheet. kvar. is built to replace that spreadsheet: you snap a photo of a receipt and the purchase is read, math-checked, categorized, and tracked against your monthly budget, so the data entry that kills most spreadsheets just disappears. It works in euros and across Europe (where Mint never operated), has a free tier to start, and supports shared household budgets for couples and families. If your "budgeting app" has quietly become an Excel file you keep falling behind on, this is the one to look at.
How to choose
A quick way to narrow it down:
- You want a strict method and will learn it: YNAB or Actual Budget.
- You want automatic sync and share money with a partner in the US: Monarch.
- You live in the Apple ecosystem and value design: Copilot.
- You track spending from receipts, budget in euros, or are escaping a spreadsheet: kvar.
If you are outside the US, note that several of these are built around American banks; we cover what works on this side of the Atlantic in the best budgeting apps that actually work in Europe.
A note for the spreadsheet crowd
A surprising number of former Mint users did not move to another app at all. They built a budget spreadsheet, because it is free and flexible. Spreadsheets are great until the upkeep gets you: a fortnight of unentered receipts, a broken formula, and the whole thing gets abandoned. If that cycle sounds familiar, read our guide on how to make a budget spreadsheet (and when to skip it), or start with the 50/30/20 rule for a simple split any of these tools can run.
Whichever you choose, the best budgeting tool is the one you will still be using in three months. Try kvar. free if you want one that keeps itself up to date.