- Starting price
- No free tier - $14.99/mo or $99.99/yr after a 7-day trial
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- iOS - Android - Web
- Developer
- Monarch Money, Inc.
- Launched
- 2020
- Updated
- Jul 27, 2026
The verdict
Monarch is the best general answer in this category and the wrong answer if you want to be told what to do. Buy it if you have accounts worth watching - a mortgage, a brokerage, a partner, three credit cards - and want one honest picture of net worth and cash flow. Skip it if you need a free tool, want a method enforced on you, or would rather not hand one vendor a complete map of your finances.
Try Monarch Money ↗Opens monarch.com
Monarch is a net-worth and cash-flow tracker with budgeting bolted on, the exact inversion of EveryDollar and YNAB. Those two are methods first: they exist to make you assign every dollar before the month starts, and the software is downstream of the doctrine. Monarch is an instrument. It connects banks, cards, loans and brokerages through one of three aggregators, pulls balances and transaction history, auto-categorises, and puts net worth, cash flow, recurring bills, holdings and budget progress on one dashboard. Budgeting is a module, offered as Flex Budgeting or Category Budgeting, and you can ignore it. Nothing insists you attack your smallest debt first or stop using a rewards card. That is the self-selection test: if you want a plan, buy elsewhere; if you want to see the whole board, buy this.
It is not a Christian product, and nothing in Monarch's own materials claims otherwise. faith.tools files it under the title "Monarch Money: Christian Budgeting App"; that is the directory's framing, not the vendor's. There is no Scripture, no default tithe category, no stewardship teaching and no faith-based positioning anywhere on monarch.com. It earns its place on merit as the strongest tool a household can point at its money, and should be read as secular software a Christian household may find useful.
Its growth is inseparable from Intuit killing Mint. Founded in 2018 by Val Agostino, Osman Osman and Jon Sutherland, with the iPhone app shipping November 2020, Monarch published a migration post on 9 November 2023, days after Intuit's announcement. Mint went dark on 23 March 2024 and Intuit pushed its users to Credit Karma. Monarch was the main beneficiary: $75 million in Series B financing in May 2025 at an $850 million valuation led by FPV Ventures and Forerunner Ventures, and 1 million members as of 24 March 2026 with "more than 100% increase year-over-year." Forbes called it the "Best Mint Replacement"; the Wall Street Journal named it best budgeting app. The price is the friction - no free tier at all, a 7-day trial that takes card details up front, then $14.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly, with a $199 Plus tier added 20 April 2026.
✓ The good
- It shows you everything - net worth, cash flow, holdings, recurring subscriptions, credit card statement balances and minimum payments due, loans, plus homes valued through Zillow and vehicles through Vinaudit, on one customisable dashboard
- Unlimited household members at no extra cost - "It costs nothing to add other members to your household under the same subscription," each with their own login and mutual visibility, so a couple with separate accounts pays once
- Three aggregators rather than one - the Help Center names Plaid, Finicity and MX, so a bank that fails on one provider may connect on another
- The rating rests on an enormous sample - 4.9 across 101,234 US App Store ratings, the largest vote count in this batch, with build 2.0.107 shipped 23 July 2026
- The money-back guarantee is unusually open - a refund "for the remaining time on your subscription--no questions asked," with no window stated at all
- Advisor collaboration is real - invite an advisor, coach, tax professional or estate planning attorney, and the Professionals Program lets an advisor sponsor a client at $14.99 per month per active client
- No ads and no product upsell - Monarch commits it will "never interrupt your experience with ads or try to sell you another financial product you don't need," the substantive break from Mint's model
✗ Watch out
- No free tier of any kind - a 7-day trial taking payment up front is the entire free experience, making Monarch the only app here a curious household cannot try indefinitely for nothing
- The privacy cards contradict the marketing - Google Play reports "Location, Personal info and 4 others" both collected and shared with third parties, against an App Store description promising Monarch will "never sell your personal or financial information to third parties"
- Brokerage sync is not uniform - "For some brokerages connected via MX, Monarch does not receive holding information," cost basis is "not always available," and "Monarch does not support securities listed on Canadian exchanges"
- Investment transactions are off by default and in beta - "Transactions in investment accounts are not synced to Monarch by default," and the feature sits behind Monarch Labs
- The awkward account types break - the connection guide flags "Store credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and certain Canadian banks" as poorly supported and recommends manual accounts instead
- Plus at $199 per year has no monthly option and two prices - Monarch's launch post prints "Monarch Plus $199 per year" while Apple lists Yearly Plus Subscription at $199.99
Best for
- Households with investments and a mortgage to track
- Couples keeping separate accounts under one subscription
- Former Mint users who want the same complete picture
- People who want data, not a prescribed method
Avoid if
- Anyone who needs a permanently free budgeting app
- First-time budgeters who want a plan enforced
- Households outside the US and Canada
- Privacy maximalists unwilling to centralise everything
What Monarch Money is
Monarch is a subscription personal finance platform for iOS, Android and the web, available in the US and Canada only, billed in USD, with USD or CAD account support. You connect banks, credit cards, loans and brokerages through one of three aggregators; Monarch pulls balances, transaction history and account type, auto-categorises, and assembles a dashboard of net worth, cash flow, recurring bills, holdings and budget progress. Homes connect through Zillow, vehicles through Vinaudit.
Budgeting is one module among several. Household members are unlimited and free; advisors can be invited. The platform is read-only - it cannot move money, pay bills, cancel subscriptions, monitor a credit score or file taxes. The Terms state Monarch is "not a financial institution...consumer reporting agency...creditor...investment advisor or broker."
It has no opinion, and that is the product
EveryDollar encodes Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps and YNAB encodes four rules; both tell you what to do next, and both get less useful the further your situation drifts from the method. Monarch encodes nothing. It offers two budgeting styles, lets you build your own categories, and otherwise confines itself to accurate reporting. Flex Budgeting exists precisely so a household can stop assigning every dollar and simply watch a ceiling. Nothing objects to a car loan at 2 percent or a rewards card cleared monthly.
The cost of neutrality is that Monarch will not get an undisciplined household out of debt. No snowball ordering, no bundled coaching, no streaks, no next action. It reports; you decide. For a household that already knows what it is doing and has assets rather than only obligations, that is exactly right, and it is why Monarch suits the reader EveryDollar and YNAB are not built for. For a household that needs to be told, the absence of an opinion is the absence of the thing they came for.
What bank and brokerage sync actually covers
Monarch does not run its own aggregation. The Help Center article Understanding Data Providers and Connections names three providers - Plaid, Finicity and MX - and explains that connections use either OAuth, which redirects you "to your bank's own login page or app" and returns "a secure token," or the older credential route, where "your login information is passed securely to the data provider." All three support OAuth, but "whether a given institution uses it is determined by the financial institution itself." What comes back is narrow: "account balances, transaction history, and account type."
The disclosed gaps are specific. History depth is out of Monarch's hands - "Some banks provide a few months of history; others may provide several years" - transactions appear within "24-48 hours" of posting, and "Store credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and certain Canadian banks" have limited support, for which Monarch recommends manual accounts. Some institutions "only share transactions but not balances." On investments, Investments in Monarch states that "For some brokerages connected via MX, Monarch does not receive holding information," that cost basis and purchase dates are "not always available," that prices come from Financial Modeling Prep and "may stay frozen" for unsupported tickers, and that "Monarch does not support securities listed on Canadian exchanges." Crypto is Coinbase only, excluding assets "loaned out, borrowed, or used as collateral."
Data handling, and where the disclosures disagree
Monarch holds a more complete financial picture than almost anything else on this site, so its disclosures deserve harder reading. The security page says "We have read-only permissions and can't access your money, ever," that "All data is covered at rest and in transit," that two-factor authentication and one-time passcodes on unrecognised devices are available, that independent auditors verified SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, and that providers are held to "API traffic control, and one of the strongest bug bounty programs in the industry." Monarch also "never store[s] any of your financial credentials." There is no reason to doubt the security engineering.
The privacy commitment is narrower than the marketing sounds, and the policy says so. Its pledge is "We will never sell your financial data" - financial data, not personal data - and it then concedes that "disclosures to Advertising Partners may constitute a 'selling' or 'sharing' under applicable U.S. State Privacy Law," naming Device/IP Data and Web Analytics Data as what goes to those partners. It discloses interest-based ads, retargeting cookies, a Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information form, that Monarch "may create aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data" and "disclose it to third parties for our lawful business purposes," and that recipients include "Artificial Intelligence platforms (e.g., OpenAI)." Honest summary: your transactions are not for sale, but your identifiers and behaviour are commercial assets, and the App Store line about never selling "personal or financial information" overstates the policy.
The Mint inheritance, and what remains of the migration path
Intuit announced Mint's end in early November 2023; Monarch published "Mint shutting down; How to migrate to Monarch" on 9 November 2023 and shipped a Mint importer with category and tag mapping. It also released an open-source Chrome extension, monarchmoney/mint-export-extension, to pull Mint data to CSV past Mint's own 10,000-transaction export limit, running locally so it "won't store anything remotely." Mint shut down on 23 March 2024 and Intuit directed users to Credit Karma - which, as Monarch's comparison page correctly notes, "does not have any budgeting tools."
The dedicated path is now gone, and Monarch has not said so anywhere prominent. The mint-export-extension repository was archived on 11 February 2025 and is read-only; its last release, v1.0.8, is dated 9 January 2024. The current Help Center article Importing Transactions Manually contains no mention of Mint at all - it is a generic CSV importer needing Account, Amount and Date headers, warning that "CSV imports cannot be undone" and that "Budgets or aggregate cash flow totals can not be imported." Meanwhile monarch.com still runs a Mint alternative page carrying a 50 percent code. The marketing inheritance is live; the technical migration is not.
Pricing
7-Day Trial
Free for 7 days
The only free access. The homepage prints "Your first week is on us"; the FAQ confirms "You will be billed at the end of your free trial, and your subscription will auto-renew until it is canceled." Card details are required at signup, and the FAQ is explicit that Monarch "only offer[s] paid subscriptions, billed either monthly or yearly."
Core (Monthly)
$14.99/month
Full product: unlimited connections, budgets, goals, net worth, cash flow reports, bill tracking, holdings, unlimited household members and advisor invitations. At $14.99 x 12 = $179.88 a year it costs $79.89 more than the identical annual plan - 1.80 times the price for the same features. Apple's in-app purchase panel lists Monthly Subscription at $14.99 in three entries and once at $15.99. Reported as printed, not reconciled.
Core (Annual)
$99.99/year
The plan to buy, identical to monthly. $99.99 / 12 = $8.33 per month, the figure Elite Daily quotes. Two first-year codes run simultaneously on Monarch's own site at different values - WELCOME for "30% OFF your first year" on the homepage and pricing page, GETMONARCH for 50 percent off on the Mint alternative page - both for new users on annual Core.
Plus (Annual)
$199/year
Launched 20 April 2026. Adds Forecasting (net worth projection, life-event scenarios), Monarch for Business Owners (separate business books, P&L, a "Schedule C tax prep doc ready to export"), and advanced investment analysis - Morningstar-powered Fund Analysis plus Gains & Losses with cost basis. Annual only. Existing members got "$50 off of their first year" plus a limited-time Trust & Will free will billed as "a $299 value."
There is no free tier. The Help Center is unambiguous - "we only offer paid subscriptions, billed either monthly or yearly" - and the trial is seven days with card details taken up front. Every app in this comparison except YNAB keeps some permanent free mode; Monarch does not, and that is the biggest single reason a reader might not buy it.
Core is $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year. $14.99 x 12 = $179.88 against $99.99, so monthly billing costs $79.89 more per year - 1.80 times the annual price for an identical product. $99.99 / 12 = $8.33 per month. Buy annually or do not buy.
Plus is $199 per year, annual only, and buys Forecasting, business-owner books with a Schedule C export, and Morningstar fund analysis with cost-basis gains and losses. That is $99.01 more than Core, almost exactly double, aimed at self-employed households and people who genuinely model scenarios. Most subscribers do not need it.
Two vendor discrepancies are worth recording rather than reconciling. Apple's in-app purchase panel lists Monthly Subscription at $14.99 three times and once at $15.99; and Monarch's launch post prints "Monarch Plus $199 per year" where Apple lists Yearly Plus Subscription at $199.99. Apple also still carries a legacy "Monarch Subscription" at $99.99. Both figures in each pair are live.
Discounting is inconsistent by page, which is the oddest thing on the site. The homepage and pricing page run WELCOME for "30% OFF your first year," new users, annual Core, web checkout only. The Mint alternative page on the same domain runs GETMONARCH for 50 percent off. A reader landing on the pricing page pays $69.99 for year one; a reader landing on the Mint page pays $50.00 for the same thing. Refunds are separately generous, though "Subscriptions made via Apple App Store are not eligible" and must go through Apple.
Where Monarch Money falls behind
The store privacy cards contradict the store description. Apple's App Privacy card discloses Financial Info, Contact Info, User Content, Identifiers including device ID, Usage Data including advertising data, and Diagnostics - all linked to your identity, and used among other things for the developer's advertising or marketing. Google Play's Data safety card is blunter: "Location, Personal info and 4 others" collected, and the same categories shared with third parties. Location does not appear as a named collection category in Monarch's own privacy policy, which lists Device/IP Data instead. Against both cards sits the App Store promise to "never sell your personal or financial information to third parties" and the security page's "privacy-first and ad-free." Nothing suggests anyone is reading your transactions, but a product whose pitch is that you pay so you are not the product still ships identifiers to advertising partners, and its own policy is where that is written down.
Investment tracking is the headline advantage and the least finished part. Holdings, prices and quantities sync for supported brokerages, but the Help Center concedes MX-connected brokerages may return no holdings, that cost basis and purchase dates are often missing - in which case performance is modelled "as if you had held your current securities for the entire date range," which is not what happened - that prices freeze for tickers Financial Modeling Prep does not cover, that stock splits "may not be automatically adjusted" in historical charts, and that Canadian-listed securities are unsupported. Buys and sells are off by default and in beta. For a product recommended because it tracks investments, that is a long list of asterisks.
Android is materially behind iOS. Apple shows 4.9 from 101,234 ratings on version 2.0.107, shipped 23 July 2026. Google Play shows 4.7 from roughly 21.2K reviews in a 500K+ download bracket, last updated 15 May 2026 - two months of releases behind. The iOS listing is English only. A household where one partner is on Android is not getting the same app, and collaboration is why such a household buys Monarch.
The geography and the exit are both narrow. Monarch "is currently only available in the US and Canada," supports USD or CAD, bills in USD, and does not support Canadian-listed securities, which makes the Canadian offering visibly second-class. On the way out, "30 days after a subscription ends, institution connections within a Monarch account will be disconnected," so a lapsed account becomes a static archive. The Terms cap liability at the greater of $100 or twelve months of fees paid, disclaim liability for "any errors or omissions in the Content," require arbitration in San Francisco County, and state that "CLASS ARBITRATIONS AND CLASS ACTIONS ARE NOT PERMITTED."
Categories rivals cover that Monarch does not. No bill negotiation and no subscription cancellation - Monarch finds a recurring charge and tells you about it, but you cancel it yourself, which is Rocket Money's entire pitch. No credit score monitoring, no bill pay, no tax filing beyond the Plus Schedule C export, no envelope system. And no coaching: EveryDollar Premium bundles live Ramsey-trained coaches, while Monarch's human element is inviting your own advisor, which presumes you have one.
Monarch Money vs. EveryDollar vs. YNAB vs. Goodbudget
The dividing line is method versus instrument, and it decides the choice before price does. EveryDollar encodes Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps and the debt snowball; YNAB encodes four rules built on giving every dollar a job. Both are opinionated by design. Monarch is an instrument. If you want software to tell you what to do next, Monarch will disappoint you daily. If you want a true and complete picture of net worth, cash flow and holdings, EveryDollar will disappoint you instead - it has no investment tracking at all - and YNAB's account view is thinner than Monarch's by intent.
On money: Monarch is $14.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly with no free tier. YNAB is $14.99 or $109 yearly, also with no free tier, after a 34-day trial. EveryDollar has a genuinely complete free tier limited to manual entry, then $17.99 monthly or $79.99 yearly for sync plus live coaching. Goodbudget is free with a capped envelope count, then $10 monthly or $80 yearly. Monarch is mid-priced annually, second most expensive monthly, and the only one of the four with neither a free option nor bundled human help. Ramsey Solutions' own 2026 comparison table lists Monarch at $14.99 or $99.99, matching what Monarch and Apple publish.
Practical routing. Monarch if you have a mortgage, a brokerage, a partner with separate accounts and no interest in being coached; the 101,234-vote 4.9 is the largest endorsement in the group. EveryDollar free if you are starting out, will type transactions in, and want the Baby Steps as your plan. YNAB if you want a rigorous method and will invest the learning time, particularly on irregular income. Goodbudget if envelopes are already how your household reasons about money. If you need both a plan and assets tracked, none of the four does both, and the common answer is two subscriptions - worth admitting.
The bottom line
Monarch is the best-executed general-purpose money tracker in this category, with the largest and highest App Store aggregate on this list - 4.9 from 101,234 ratings - and a business model honest about charging you rather than monetising you. Buy the annual Core plan at $99.99 if you have assets and a partner and want one accurate picture, and take the 50 percent code over the 30 percent one, since both are live. Do not buy the monthly plan at $14.99, which costs $179.88 a year for the same software, and do not buy any of it expecting to be told what to do about your debt. The trade is one vendor holding a complete map of your finances, under a policy that promises never to sell your financial data while conceding its advertising disclosures may count as selling under state law. Defensible - but make it with your eyes open.
Alternatives to Monarch Money
EveryDollarThe opposite emphasis: a method rather than a dashboard, with the strongest free tier in zero-based budgeting if you will type transactions in. $17.99 monthly or $79.99 yearly for sync and coaching, and no investment tracking at all.
YNABThe rigorous method, at $14.99 monthly or $109 yearly with no free tier after a 34-day trial. Better than Monarch at changing behaviour, weaker at showing you what you own.
GoodbudgetDigital cash envelopes, free with a capped envelope count, then $10 monthly or $80 yearly. The cheapest paid option of the four and the least automated - manual by design rather than by paywall.Rocket MoneyBuilt around the one thing Monarch declines to do: cancelling subscriptions and negotiating bills for you. Has a free tier. Complementary rather than a replacement.Credit KarmaWhere Intuit sent Mint's users. Free and ad-supported, with credit score monitoring Monarch lacks, but no real budgeting. The reason this category needed a Mint replacement at all.Frequently asked questions
Does Monarch Money have a free version?
No. The Help Center states that Monarch "only offer[s] paid subscriptions, billed either monthly or yearly." The only free access is a 7-day trial requiring card details up front - "You will be billed at the end of your free trial, and your subscription will auto-renew until it is canceled." That is the clearest difference from Mint, which was free and ad-supported, and from EveryDollar and Goodbudget, which both keep permanent free tiers.
How much does Monarch cost in 2026?
Core is $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year, matching Apple's in-app purchase entries. Plus is $199 per year with no monthly option, launched 20 April 2026. Monthly billing works out to $14.99 x 12 = $179.88, which is $79.89 more than the annual plan for the same product. Two first-year codes are live on Monarch's own site at different values - WELCOME at 30 percent off on the pricing page, GETMONARCH at 50 percent off on the Mint comparison page.
Does my partner need a separate subscription?
No, and this is one of Monarch's better features. The FAQ says "You can invite one or more members of your household to get a joint view of your finances, all under a single subscription," that "Partners will each have their own login, but can view each other's data," and that "It costs nothing to add other members to your household under the same subscription." It works whether or not you hold joint accounts. Advisors, coaches, tax professionals and estate planning attorneys can also be invited.
Can I still migrate my Mint data to Monarch?
Only through the generic CSV importer. Monarch shipped a dedicated Mint importer with category mapping in November 2023 and an open-source Chrome extension to export Mint data past its 10,000-transaction cap, but that repository was archived on 11 February 2025 and its last release was v1.0.8 in January 2024. The current Help Center article Importing Transactions Manually makes no mention of Mint - it needs Account, Amount and Date columns, warns that "CSV imports cannot be undone," and states that "Budgets or aggregate cash flow totals can not be imported." Mint shut down on 23 March 2024, so there is no live account left to export from.
Whose bank connections does Monarch use, and what breaks?
Three aggregators - Plaid, Finicity and MX - which is more resilient than a single-provider app. Connections use OAuth where the bank supports it, otherwise credentials passed to the provider. What comes back is "account balances, transaction history, and account type," with transactions appearing within 24 to 48 hours. Monarch flags "Store credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and certain Canadian banks" as poorly supported and suggests manual accounts instead. History depth varies: "Some banks provide a few months of history; others may provide several years."
Is Monarch safe, and does it sell my data?
The security posture is solid - read-only access, credentials not stored by Monarch, encryption at rest and in transit, two-factor authentication, and a SOC 2 Type 2 audit. On data, read the policy rather than the marketing. The pledge is "We will never sell your financial data," narrower than the App Store description's "never sell your personal or financial information to third parties," and the policy concedes that "disclosures to Advertising Partners may constitute a 'selling' or 'sharing' under applicable U.S. State Privacy Law" of Device/IP and Web Analytics Data. Google Play reports "Location, Personal info and 4 others" both collected and shared with third parties.
Is Monarch a Christian app?
No, and it does not present itself as one. There is no Scripture, no default tithe or giving category, no stewardship teaching and no faith-based positioning in the product or on monarch.com. It appears in this category because it is the strongest general-purpose tool for seeing a household's whole financial position, which is a legitimate stewardship need, and because it suits readers whom the explicitly Christian budgeting apps do not fit. If you want faith framing built into the software, EveryDollar is the closest thing in this batch.
Sources & further reading
- Monarch pricing page ↗
- Help Center: Monarch FAQs (trial, household, US and Canada only) ↗
- Help Center: Understanding Data Providers and Connections (Plaid, Finicity, MX) ↗
- Help Center: Investments in Monarch (brokerage and holdings limits) ↗
- Monarch blog: Introducing Monarch Plus (20 April 2026) ↗
- Monarch blog: Mint shutting down; How to migrate to Monarch (9 November 2023) ↗
- Monarch Privacy Policy (advertising partners, de-identified data) ↗
- Google Play listing (Data safety card) ↗
More Budgeting & Stewardship Apps
YNABA zero-based budgeting method with software attached, sold at $14.99 a month or $109 a year with no free tier of any kind - and the most expensive way to discover you were never going to do the weekly work.
AdelFiAdelFi is a member-owned Christian credit union, not a budgeting app, and its most important fact contradicts its own app listing: the credit union tells members "By members' choice, this institution is not federally insured," while the App Store description ends "Federally insured by NCUA" - two statements that cannot both be true.EveryDollarRamsey Solutions' zero-based budgeting app, relaunched in January 2026, with a genuinely usable free tier and every piece of automation behind a paywall - and it only makes sense if you have already decided to work the Baby Steps in order.GoodbudgetDigital cash envelopes from Dayspring Technologies, with the only permanently free tier among the serious budgeting apps and a paid tier that quietly added the bank syncing Goodbudget was once famous for refusing - the free plan is still manual entry, but that is now a price point rather than a principle.
FaithFiThe app arm of Faith & Finance, the daily biblical-stewardship broadcast Larry Burkett began in 1988, now owned by Kingdom Advisors and wrapped around a Plaid-connected envelope budgeter. The teaching half is free to anyone with a podcast player - the budgeting half is not free at all, because every bank connection sits behind Pro.
SubsplashThe all-in-one church platform megachurches keep choosing - fully custom-branded apps across phone, web, and TV that make a 5,000-member ministry feel like an Apple keynote.