Starling Bank
UK-licensed digital bank with FSCS-protected deposits, built and majority-owned without a US parent
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The best Personal Finance software
Personal Finance software and applications
- Tools listed
- 50
All 50 personal finance tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What personal finance software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 50 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0.40Betterment
- Median entry price
- $7across 26 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $99Monarch Money
- Publish a $0 plan
- 35of 50
Paid personal finance plans in this set start anywhere from $0.40 a month for Betterment to $99 for Monarch Money. The median entry price across the 26 tools that publish one is $7, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is PocketGuard's at $149.99 a month, 1.5× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
35 of 50 publish a $0 plan, and 18 of those charge nothing at all. 9 tools have no free tier of any kind.
13 of 50 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 50 personal finance listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- freemium
- 12
- transaction
- 8
- subscription
- 7
- free
- 6
- Free core current account; paid Plus and Premium tiers add features
- 1
- Free for short Pay in 4 plans; longer plans carry a disclosed APR up to roughly 36 percent, merchant pays a transaction fee
- 1
- Free government app, no payment of any kind
- 1
- Free personal current account; business accounts have free and paid tiers
- 1
- Free standard tier; paid plans add higher limits, insurance and perks
- 1
- Free to shoppers with no interest on the standard plan; merchant pays a per-transaction fee, late fees apply to missed payments
- 1
- one-time
- 1
- Open source, no licence fee
- 1
- Open source, no licence fee; optional paid hosted sync and subscription tier
- 1
- open-source
- 1
- Pay what you want, annual, above a published minimum
- 1
- Percentage of the amount converted
- 1
- quote
- 1
- usage-based
- 1
Separately, 13 of 50 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 43 personal finance tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Expense tracking , 6 of 43
- Advanced analytics , 5 of 43
- Mobile app , 5 of 43
- Commission-free trading , 4 of 43
- Receipt scanning , 3 of 43
Named by fewer
- Bill splitting , 2 of 43
- Custom categories , 2 of 43
- Fee-free foreign currency card spending , 2 of 43
- Money transfers , 2 of 43
- No ads , 2 of 43
Named by exactly one vendor: access across devices, Basic reports, Digital wallet, Investment analysis, No recurring fees, Reports and spending insights. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Personal Finance” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 50 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- Mobile App30
- budgeting19
- payments11
- expense-tracking10
- Free10
- Freemium10
- web app10
- fintech6
- investment-tracking6
- paid5
- retirement-planning5
- digital-wallet4
Carried by a single tool: accounting, Banking, credit-monitoring, currency-exchange, envelope-method, mac, Pfm, spreadsheet-based. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
35 of 50 personal finance tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with expense tracking, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0.40 to $99 is a $98.60 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $99 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
6 of 50 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, expense tracking, advanced analytics, mobile app, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 18 billing models: freemium on 12 listings, transaction on 8, and 16 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare personal finance tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Starling Bank vs Affirm
- Affirm vs Lunch Money
- Lunch Money vs Revolut
- Revolut vs Afterpay
- Afterpay vs Actual Budget
- Actual Budget vs Strands
- Strands vs Firefly III
- Firefly III vs Monzo
Go straight to the numbers
- Starling Bankpricingalternatives
- Affirmpricingalternatives
- Lunch Moneypricingalternatives
- Revolutpricingalternatives
- Afterpaypricingalternatives
- Actual Budgetpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about personal finance software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does personal finance software cost?
- Across the 50 personal finance tools listed here, paid plans start between $0.40 and $99 a month, with a median entry price of $7. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $149.99 a month (PocketGuard). 35 of 50 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest personal finance software?
- 18 of the 50 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Betterment has the lowest published entry price at $0.40 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free personal finance software?
- Yes, 35 of 50 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 18 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should personal finance software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are expense tracking (6 of 43 tools that publish plan detail), advanced analytics (5) and mobile app (5). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as access across devices or basic reports, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is personal finance software usually billed?
- freemium (12), transaction (8), subscription (7), free (6), plus 14 less common arrangements, counted across the 50 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 13 of 50 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does personal finance software actually cover?
- The 50 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are mobile app (30), budgeting (19), payments (11), expense-tracking (10), free (10). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under personal finance may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do personal finance tools offer?
- 46 of 50 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 6 of 50 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many personal finance tools are listed on Softwr?
- 50 approved personal finance listings appear on this page, including Starling Bank, Affirm, Lunch Money, Revolut. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/personal-finance, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 50 picks
The shortlist for “Personal Finance”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
More on Personal Finance
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.