12 of the Best Budget Apps

Expense tracker apps can make this a lot easier and even save you money. These budgeting tools can help you see your spending habits visually and see where your strengths and weaknesses are. As a management tool, it can help you spend your money the smart way and manage your cash flow. 

All you need is a user friendly spending tracker that works for you and you're on your way to spending less and saving more. 

Start a New Budget Today with a Prepaid Debit Card.

Many expense apps also act as budgeting apps and can help you create your own budget. They make it easier to see all your spending in one place and manage all your monthly purchases and bills. Don't be afraid to also ask around on your favorite finance subreddit for the apps people like to use.

It can throw our finances out of balance for a while when we go over budget for one month. To get back on track you can take out a Check City Installment Loan and get your finances back in order in no time.

Here are some of the best rated expense tracker apps you can get for your phone today. 

All the information below was taken from Google Play on the day of posting.

Best Investment Portfolio Budget App

The Personal Capital Budget App is great for individuals who want to grow their personal wealth and want to better keep track of all their investments. This app makes a great place to keep your full financial portfolio. 

PROS

• Allows you to connect accounts: savings, checkings, investments, retirement, credit card accounts, mortgage.
• Available financial advisors to offer recommendations backed by data.
• Tax optimization advice.
• Free analytics tool to track cash flow over a period of time.
• Free analytics tool to track cash flow over a period of time.
• Compatible with desktop and mobile devices.

CONS

• Designed primarily to track your net worth, cash flow, and investment portfolio.
• Not the most ideal option for personal, basic budgeting.
• Doesn’t allow you to share or link with other users.
• Less ideal if you don’t have a lot of money flow going to different places.

With the Personal Capital app, you can do just about anything. You can sync the app to your personal bank accounts, your retirement funds, investments, IRA, and even debts, all in one seamless dashboard. 

They even off their own high yield savings account called Personal Capital Cash. You can use Personal Capital's saving account to keep any extra cash. It has no fees, no minimum balance requirements, and an Annual Personal Yield (APY) of 1.55%. 

‍Best Small Business Budgeting App

Quickbooks is the perfect budgeting apps for small businesses and individuals who are self-employed. It's a seamless place to do all your business bookkeeping. 

PROS

• You can plan specifically for small businesses, self-employed, and accountants.
• Can keep track of all business expenses and keep them separate from personal expenses.
• Includes Turbo Tax features.
• Automatically track miles.
• Send professional invoices.
• Compatible with desktop and mobile devices.
• Ideal for all your business bookkeeping.

CONS

• Not ideal for personal budget use.
• Monthly subscriptions required from $15 to $35 a month.
• Desktop pro costs $299.95. 
• It costs an additional $250 to add other people to your account.
• You can only add up to 3 other people.

If you have frequent business expenses then QuickBooks is a good choice for you. This app includes the ability to track and earn up to 57.5 cents per mile, send and track your professional invoices, digitally keep track of receipts, and review how your business is doing financially in easy-to-read charts and graphs.  

Best Free Budget App

The Clarity Money Budget App is a great app for anyone who wants a completely free, super easy-to-use money management app.  

PROS 

• 100% free to use.
• High-yield savings account with 1.70% APY.
• Organize monthly expenses into categories.
• Cancel unwanted subscriptions all in one place.
• Make specific savings goals.
• Free credit score checks.

CONS 

• Very simple features.
• Involves creating an account with Marcus by Goldman Sachs Bank
• You can’t create groups.

The Clarity Money app has built-in AI that can help show you key information about your spending habits and help you automate your savings! 

They also have a high yield savings account that's highly customizable. With it you can decide to save specific amounts, at certain times each week or month, and even say what each savings plan is saving up for. 

You can also cancel your subscriptions in one convenient location, organize all your bills, and check your credit score.

Best Credit Score Checking Budget App

The Mint Budgeting App is a great budgeting tool for those who want to improve their credit scores since Mint offers unlimited credit score checks and personalized tips and tricks on how you can improve your score. 

PROS 

• Free unlimited credit score checks
• Stay on top of your bills.
• Stay on top of your spending.
• See your financial analytics.
• Make specific budget goals.

CONS 

• It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing app.
• There isn’t a desktop app, just a desktop website.

Mint is one of the most popular budgeting apps. It's made by the same people who brought you QuickBooks and TurboTax. 

With the Mint app, you can create a budget that's easy to stick to, keep track of your spending in neat categories, keep tabs on all your bills in one spot, and even get free credit score checks. Mint also has an easy-to-use web app that connects to your mobile app.

Best Desktop Budget App 

 The YNAB Budget App is a good budget tool for anyone who is already invested in using the YNAB methods of budgeting. So if you need some more specific guidance when it comes to budgeting, then the YNAB Budget App is made for you.

PROS 

• 34-day free trial.
• Track your personal budget goals.
• Optimized for the YNAB method of budgeting.
• The YNAB app is compatible with your phone, desktop, Apple smartwatch, and even Alexa!

CONS

• Pay $11.99 a month or $84 a year.
• Not very customizable.

YNAB stands for You Need A Budget, which is a company that specializes in helping people use the YNAB budgeting method to make it easy to follow monthly budgets. The YNAB app will take you through this easy process and help you to set specific money goals.

Best Envelope System Budget App 

Mvelopes is the best app for anyone who wants to digitally use the envelope system of budgeting without the hassle of taking out cash and using actual envelopes. This app is also ideal for people who need help getting out of debt. 

PROS 

• 30-day free trial.
• Resources for debt.
• Personal Financial Coaches are available.
• Digitally make use of the envelope budgeting system.

CONS

• Pay $6 to $59 a month.

The envelope method for budgeting is popular for its incredible simplicity. If you have a very difficult time with budgeting, then the envelope method is where you should start. 

The Mvelopes Budget App allows you to put money into digital envelopes that will notify you when they're empty so you don't overspend on a specific category of your budget.

Best Inexpensive Budget App 

The Money Manager Budget App can be extremely useful for both personal and professional use. And even though the premium version of the app costs money, it doesn't require a monthly or yearly subscription as most other budgeting apps do.

PROS 

• A free version of the app.
• You can save photos.
• Allows dual entry booking.
• Let's you budget monthly or weekly.

CONS

• Premium version of the app only costs $4.99 on Google Play and $3.99 on IOS.
• Desktop version only available with Premium.

The Money Manager app lets you save photos along with photos of your receipt, so you can see what you bought, and how much it cost. It also allows dual entry booking and backs up your data to Google Drive or Excel files.

Best Receipt Scanner Budget App 

 The Expensify app may not be ideal for budgeting, but it is the most ideal app for keeping track of business expenses and keeping track of all your receipts. If you want a safe place to keep and organize all your many receipts then Expensify is the best app for you. 

PROS 

• Put business expenses on the Expensify Card.
• Scan receipts with a smart scanner.

CONS 

• Not very ideal for creating a personal budget.

Expensify is an expense report app that comes with its own Expensify card. With this card, you can eliminate expense reports by simply using the Expensify card for all your business expenses. 

Using the Expensify card also comes with lots of benefits. For instance, when you take a client out to dinner you help pay for a student's lunch and every time you use the Expensify card to book a hotel for a business trip, you help someone else get a home. 

Now you can make business expenses and feel good about the little ways the Expensify card helps you help others. 

You can track and submit receipts with a receipt scanner that can automatically detect all the important information from the receipt for you. Then, you can categorize, code, and organize all your receipts in one easy-to-reach place.

Best Budget App 

The Dave Ramsey Budget App is a very simple budgeting app that might just be the easiest to use. Everything is effortlessly organized for you so you can start budgeting immediately. 

The only major downside to the Dave Ramsey Budget App is that the premium versions cost a lot of money, $129.99 a year, and it's only with this cost that you can sync your bank accounts to the app. 

PROS 

• You can plan your paychecks.
• It’s compatible with your desktop and mobile device.
• It’s compatible with your desktop and mobile device.
• The premium version is expensive but it does also offer courses from Financial Peace University.

CONS

• You can only connect your financial accounts with the premium version.
• The sections aren’t very customizable.
• The premium version of the Dave Ramsey Budget app costs $129.99 every year.

Dave Ramsey's main budgeting principle is to decide where every dollar you earn goes so that you have absolute control over every penny you earn. There's also a premium version of this app available with EveryDollar Plus.

Best Expense Reporting App 

The Zoho Expense Reporting App is the best app for keeping track of all your business-related expenses. 

It's also a very useful app if you're an employee that needs to frequently send expense reports because you can quickly and painlessly send them to your boss from your phone!   

PROS 

• The dashboard helps you see the expense reports you have and haven’t sent.
• Can easily track your miles.
• Creates detailed expense reports.
• Import your credit card statements all at once.

CONS 

• Not ideal for tracking personal expenses.
• No budget creation features.

Zoho Corporation creates all kinds of useful apps for your business. One of them is an expense reporting app that lets you import credit card statements and helps you see the overall analytics for your business expenditures. 

With this app, you can easily see how your business is doing financially in one place. With their easy-to-read graphs and charts, you can see how much your business is costing you in travel, office supplies, and client meetups. 

Best Family Budget App

The Wally app is the best overall budgeting app. It's the perfect budget app for families and individuals and comes in a pleasant and friendly design you're sure to love. 

PROS 

• Create groups and share budgets with the whole family.
• Manage foreign accounts, investments, and your net worth.
• Automatically track all your spending and give detailed insights into your spending habits.

CONS 

• The app is still in development.
• Wally Gold costs $26.99 a year.
• Coin earning system. Earn Wally coins every time a friend uses your invite code to download the app.

Don't let this budgeting tool's low rankings mislead you, Wally is an up-and-coming finance app that has been rated #1 over 40 times by places like NerdWallet, Forbes, and The Guardian. It is quickly becoming one of the most popular budget apps and it's easy to see why. 

The Wally app even lets you create group budgets for your family and household. It also lets you create shopping lists so you can see how much your grocery trip might cost you. And their basic version is 100% free! 

Because the Wally Budget App is still new, they're still working on creating features like desktop capability. But these features should soon be on their way. But already the basic Wally app has all the budget tool features you could ever want, with bank syncing, easy customization, and the ability to create multiple groups! 

Best Budgeting App for Quick Cash

The budget app by Albert Genius is a great portfolio for someone who wants easy access to some extra funds and an easy way to get started in the investment world. 

PROS 

• Get a $100 cash advance on your next paycheck.
• Customize your savings goals.
• Get a 1% annual bonus for saving.
• Start an investment account with just $1.

CONS

• Cash advances cost up to $4.99 for instant delivery.
• Without the instant delivery fee, cash advances deposit in about 3 business days.
• Requirements apply.
• Requirements apply.

The Albert budgeting app has a sleek and simple design and allows you to easily take care of all your finances. 

You can even text with a professional when you need financial advice, get real-time alerts about your finances, invest, and fully automate your savings. And these professionals aren't just bots, they're actual financial experts that work at Albert Corp to help you with your financial questions.