Intuit shut Mint down on March 23, 2024. Two years later, millions of people still haven’t found a permanent replacement — they just keep opening a new app, linking a bank, getting frustrated, and bouncing back out. If that’s you, this post is the one I wish existed when I started looking.
I spent the last month testing every Mint alternative that people actually use. Not the “top 47 budgeting apps of 2026” SEO bait. The five apps that show up again and again when you ask real ex-Mint users what they settled on: Rocket Money, Monarch Money, YNAB, Quicken Simplifi, and Copilot Money.
Below is the honest breakdown — who each app is actually for, what it costs, where it quietly fails, and which one you should pick. Spoiler: there is no single “best” answer, but there is a best answer for you, and the decision tree at the end of this post will tell you in 30 seconds.
Try our #1 pick — Rocket Money — free →
Why Mint died and what Intuit pushed everyone toward
Mint had 3.6 million users when Intuit pulled the plug. If you’re wondering what happened: Mint was free because it surfaced ads and credit-card offers, and those offers were the whole business model. Credit Karma (also Intuit) did the same thing better and without the maintenance cost of a full budgeting app. So Intuit migrated Mint users into Credit Karma and announced the sunset in October 2023, with the final shutdown in March 2024.
Credit Karma is fine for a free credit-score dashboard. It is not a budgeting app. It doesn’t have real budgets, doesn’t categorize transactions the way Mint did, doesn’t track net worth the way you’d want, and doesn’t help you manage subscriptions. If Intuit told you to use Credit Karma as your Mint replacement, they were protecting their business model, not your finances.
So the rest of us had to look elsewhere. Here’s what actually works.
What to look for in a Mint replacement (the features checklist that matters)
Before we get into the apps, here’s the honest checklist. If you came from Mint, you probably want most of these. The apps below do different subsets well.
- Account aggregation — does it link to all your banks, credit cards, loans, and investments in one place? (Table stakes. Every app below supports Plaid or MX.)
- Automatic transaction categorization — how good is it out of the box, and can you customize?
- Real budgeting — not just tracking. Can you set category limits and get warned before you blow them?
- Subscription detection & cancellation — the single biggest under-appreciated feature. Mint never did this well. The post-Mint apps are dramatically better here.
- Net worth tracking — balance sheet, not just cash flow.
- Bill reminders and negotiation — helps you stop paying too much for services you already have.
- Household / partner view — if you share money with a partner, this becomes non-negotiable.
- Investment tracking — if you want holdings, allocation, and performance, not just balances.
- Cost — Mint was free. Most Mint alternatives are not. The question is what you get for the money.
The 5 apps, ranked and honestly explained
#1 — Rocket Money (Best overall Mint replacement)
Cost: Free tier is genuinely usable. Premium is pay-what’s-fair between $7 and $14/month.
Who it’s for: The 80% of Mint users who want the Mint experience — connect accounts, see your money, track budgets, get alerts — but with the subscription-cancellation superpower Mint never had. Also the best free option on this list.
Why it’s #1: Three reasons.
First, Rocket Money is the only app on this list with a truly usable free tier. You can link accounts, see all your spending, create budgets, get balance alerts, and view your recurring charges without paying a cent. Monarch, YNAB, and Copilot have no free tier. Simplifi doesn’t either. For someone coming off a free Mint habit, this matters.
Second, the subscription-cancellation feature is genuinely magic the first time you use it. Rocket Money scans your transactions, flags recurring charges you forgot about, and — on Premium — will cancel them for you. Most people running this the first time find $15 to $60 a month of subscriptions they can kill immediately. That pays for Premium for a year in 30 seconds.
Third, the app feels like Mint looked. If you miss the Mint dashboard — accounts on the left, spending on the right, a transaction feed, a net-worth line chart — Rocket Money is the closest one emotionally. The learning curve is basically zero.
Where it’s weaker: Budgeting is “good enough” rather than best-in-class. If you want proactive zero-based budgeting (plan every dollar before you spend it), YNAB is stricter and better at that. Rocket Money is reactive budgeting — it shows you what you did, and helps you spend less next month. That is how most people actually want to budget, but purists will want more.
Bill negotiation: Rocket Money offers a bill-negotiation service where they’ll call Comcast, your cell carrier, your insurer, etc., and try to lower your bill. It works often enough to be worth a try — they advertise ~85% success rate on attempted negotiations. The catch is the fee: 35–60% of your first year’s savings, charged upfront. If they save you $240 a year on your internet bill, expect to pay $84–$144 out of pocket. Use this feature deliberately, not casually. Our advice: use Rocket Money for subscription management first (free, instant ROI), and only use bill negotiation when you’ve already tried calling yourself and failed.
Verdict: If you only install one Mint replacement, install Rocket Money. The free tier is enough for most people. The Premium tier pays for itself with the first cancelled subscription. This is our primary recommendation for 90% of readers.
Start with Rocket Money (free) →
#2 — Monarch Money (Best for couples and serious finance geeks)
Cost: $14.99/month or $99.99/year. No free tier, but a 7-day trial.
Who it’s for: Couples sharing money, households with complex finances, and anyone who wants a beautifully-designed dashboard that covers cash, investments, real estate, and net worth in one place.
Why it’s great: Monarch is what you’d build if you rebuilt Mint in 2025 with a modern design team. The dashboard is fully customizable — drag and drop widgets, hide what you don’t care about, color-code accounts. Forbes named it “Best App for Couples” in 2025 and the shared-money view (yours / mine / ours, side by side) is the best on the market. If you and your partner have been fighting about money because your spreadsheet is out of sync, Monarch solves that overnight.
It also does net-worth tracking, investment performance, real-estate value tracking (via Zillow integration), and custom reports better than anyone else here.
Where it’s weaker: No subscription cancellation. No meaningful free tier. At $100/year it costs real money, and it’s overkill if you’re a single person who just wants to see what you spent on takeout last month.
Verdict: Pick Monarch if you share finances with a partner and you both want to see everything in one place. Worth the $100/year for the right household. Not worth it for a solo user who just wants to track spending.
#3 — YNAB (Best for people who actually want to change their money behavior)
Cost: $14.99/month or $109/year. No free tier, 34-day trial.
Who it’s for: Zero-based-budgeting true believers. People in debt who want out. Variable-income freelancers. Anyone who has read a personal-finance book and thought “I need more control, not less.”
Why it’s great: YNAB is not a tracking app pretending to be a budget app. It’s a strict, opinionated system that tells you to give every dollar a job before you spend it. You allocate your money when it arrives; you can’t spend from a category that doesn’t have money in it without consciously moving money there first. This sounds restrictive. For a lot of people, it’s the only thing that ever worked.
Users consistently report saving $6,000 to $10,000 in their first year on YNAB. That’s not a typo. The system works because it forces the behavior change that every other app politely suggests.
The community is also the best in personal finance. Free workshops, a huge subreddit, certified coaches, a real YouTube ecosystem of real people sharing their real budgets. You will not be alone.
Where it’s weaker: Steep learning curve. The app’s language — “give every dollar a job,” “aged money,” “rolling with the punches” — takes a week to internalize. If you just want to see what you spent, YNAB will feel like homework. Investment tracking is weak. No subscription cancellation, no bill negotiation, no AI.
Verdict: Pick YNAB if you know you have a spending problem and you want the app to make you confront it every day. Don’t pick it if you want automation and passive tracking — that is not what YNAB is.
#4 — Quicken Simplifi (Closest to the old Mint feel)
Cost: $3.99/month billed annually ($47.88/year). Frequent 50% off promos.
Who it’s for: Ex-Mint users who want the Mint dashboard, the Mint categorization model, and the Mint mental model — but with a paid, maintained product behind it.
Why it’s great: Quicken (yes, that Quicken — the desktop personal-finance dinosaur) built Simplifi specifically to catch the Mint migration. The interface is deliberately Mint-like. The “Spending Plan” feature is arguably better than Mint’s budgets — it shows you what you can spend for the rest of the month based on upcoming bills and income. Transaction categorization is accurate and editable. Investment tracking is decent.
At $48/year, it’s the cheapest paid option on this list.
Where it’s weaker: Rocket Money does most of the same things for free. Simplifi has no subscription cancellation. No partner/household view at Monarch’s level. No bill negotiation. The ecosystem and community are nowhere near YNAB’s. It’s a competent, pleasant, cheap app — it just doesn’t have a standout feature that justifies paying over the free Rocket Money tier for most people.
Verdict: Pick Simplifi if you specifically want the Mint-ish experience without Rocket Money’s subscription-cancellation bent. Otherwise, the free Rocket Money tier gets you 90% of the way there.
#5 — Copilot Money (Best for iPhone users and design obsessives)
Cost: $13/month or $95/year. Free trial.
Who it’s for: iPhone and Mac users who care how an app looks and feels. People who’d rather pay more for a better-designed product.
Why it’s great: Copilot is genuinely gorgeous. It’s the only app on this list that feels native to Apple’s ecosystem — the animations, the typography, the Apple Watch complication, the Shortcuts integration. The AI categorization is good, the investment tracking is clean, the recurring-charges detection is solid. It recently added support for Android, but iPhone-first is still its identity.
Where it’s weaker: Expensive, no free tier, thin feature set compared to Monarch, no subscription cancellation (just detection), no household/shared view worth using. You are paying a premium for design.
Verdict: Pick Copilot if design makes or breaks whether you open an app daily and you’re all-in on Apple. Otherwise skip it.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Rocket Money | Monarch | YNAB | Simplifi | Copilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes (usable) | No | No | No | No |
| Annual cost (paid) | $84–$168 (flexible) | $99.99 | $109 | $47.88 | $95 |
| Subscription cancellation | Yes (best-in-class) | Detection only | No | No | Detection only |
| Bill negotiation service | Yes (fee-based) | No | No | No | No |
| Zero-based budgeting | Basic | Yes | Yes (strict) | Yes | Basic |
| Household / partner view | Basic | Best | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Investment tracking | Basic | Best | Weak | Decent | Good |
| Net-worth tracking | Yes | Yes | Weak | Yes | Yes |
| Design quality | Good | Excellent | Functional | Good | Best |
| Learning curve | Minimal | Low | Steep | Low | Low |
| Best for | Most people | Couples | Behavior change | Mint nostalgia | Apple users |
The 30-second decision tree
Answer these three questions in order:
1. Do you want to start for free?
- Yes → Rocket Money. Stop here.
- No → go to question 2.
2. Do you share money with a partner and want both of you looking at the same dashboard?
- Yes → Monarch. Stop here.
- No → go to question 3.
3. Are you in debt, spending too much, and honest with yourself that you need the app to be strict with you?
- Yes → YNAB. Stop here.
- No → back to Rocket Money free tier. You don’t need a paid app.
That covers 95% of readers. The 5% who end up on Simplifi or Copilot usually have a specific reason — price sensitivity (Simplifi) or Apple-ecosystem loyalty (Copilot) — and if that’s you, you already know who you are.
What we’d actually do if we were starting over today
If I were setting up my finances from scratch tomorrow, here’s the sequence I’d run:
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Install Rocket Money free. Link every bank, credit card, loan, and investment account. Spend 20 minutes letting it import 90 days of history. Do nothing else yet.
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Open the Recurring tab. Look at the subscription list. Every single time I’ve done this, the user finds $20–$80/month of subscriptions they forgot about. Cancel them through the app (Premium) or manually (free).
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Set 3–5 budgets in Rocket Money. Not 25. Not every category. The 3–5 that actually matter to you — probably groceries, dining, shopping, subscriptions, and “discretionary.” Overcomplicated budgets are the reason people abandon budgeting apps.
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Check in once a week. Sunday morning, 10 minutes, coffee in hand. Open Rocket Money. Look at what you spent. Adjust next week’s behavior. That’s it.
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Re-evaluate in 90 days. If Rocket Money is working, stay. If you discover you want partner view (upgrade to Monarch) or you’re still overspending and need the app to be stricter (upgrade to YNAB), move then. Don’t pay for a tier you don’t need yet.
Most people stop at step 4 and Rocket Money is their permanent home. That’s a good outcome. Start the sequence here →
Common follow-up questions
Isn’t Rocket Money just the rebranded Truebill? Yes. Rocket Companies (same parent as Rocket Mortgage) acquired Truebill in 2021 and rebranded it in 2022. Same product, much bigger engineering budget now, much better than the old Truebill. The rebrand caused some confusion but the product improved.
Is it safe to link my bank to a third-party app? These apps use Plaid or MX, the same infrastructure Venmo, Robinhood, Wealthfront, and most of fintech use. Your credentials aren’t stored by the app — they’re tokenized by Plaid/MX and the app only sees read-only transaction data. It’s the same security model your bank already trusts. That doesn’t mean zero risk (no internet service is zero risk), but it’s not meaningfully less safe than using your bank’s own app.
What happens to my Mint data? It’s gone. Intuit gave a migration window to export CSV; if you missed it, you start fresh. The good news is 90 days of new transaction history is enough for any of these apps to give you useful patterns. You don’t need to rebuild Mint’s full history.
Do I need to cancel Credit Karma if I used that as my Mint replacement? No, Credit Karma is still useful for its core job — free credit-score monitoring. It’s just not a budgeting app. Use Credit Karma for credit score, and one of the apps above for actual budgeting. They complement each other.
Will Rocket Money ever go away like Mint did? Hard to say with certainty, but Rocket Money is a profit center for Rocket Companies (a public company — NYSE: RKT), not a loss leader funded by ads like Mint was. The business model aligns with users: they make money when you save money. That’s a more durable setup.
Does any of this work outside the US? Mostly no. All five apps are US-focused. Canadian readers have some of these (Monarch and YNAB work in Canada) but account aggregation is spottier. UK and EU readers should look at Emma, Snoop, and Plum — that’s a different article.
Can I use multiple apps at once? You can, but don’t. Linking one bank to multiple aggregators sometimes triggers security flags. Pick one and commit for 90 days.
What about Empower (formerly Personal Capital)? Good for investment tracking, weak for budgeting. It’s a free service because Empower wants to sell you wealth-management services once your net worth crosses a threshold. Fine as a secondary app for net-worth visualization. Not a Mint replacement on its own.
Bottom line
Mint is gone, and two years later the market has sorted itself out. For most ex-Mint users, the answer is simple: start with Rocket Money’s free tier. Use it for 90 days. If you need more than it offers, you’ll know exactly which direction to upgrade — Monarch for shared finances, YNAB for behavior change, Simplifi for nostalgia, Copilot for aesthetics.
The worst thing you can do is stay in “I’ll figure out a Mint replacement later” limbo for another year. Every month without a budgeting app is money leaking out of subscriptions you’ve forgotten, bills you could negotiate, and spending patterns you aren’t seeing. Pick one, link your accounts this weekend, and move on.
Start free with Rocket Money →
This comparison is based on 30 days of hands-on testing of each app using a real set of linked accounts, plus reviews and feedback from the personal-finance communities on Reddit (r/personalfinance, r/ynab, r/rocketmoney). Prices cited are US list prices at time of writing and may change. We may earn an affiliate commission if you sign up for Rocket Money through the links in this post, at no cost to you. Our recommendations are driven by which app is genuinely best for each type of reader, not which pays the highest commission — we tell you when Monarch or YNAB is a better fit even though we don’t earn on those. See our full affiliate disclosure.