Mint.com Alternatives for 2018 – What Replacements Are Available?

Mint is a juggernaut among budgeting programs. It’s been around since 2006, which makes it an old-timer in the world of financial apps. And it’s free to use. I’ve used Mint for several years, and it was instrumental in helping me learn the basics of budgeting.

However, although it’s convenient and established, many users are dissatisfied with Mint. Common complaints include:

• Problems With Synchronization — Mint has trouble connecting to certain banks or credit unions if they’re on the smaller side, and it has trouble staying connected long term. Users are often asked to fix their connection to accounts. Obviously, this impacts how useful the app can be, since data can go days or weeks without being updated.
• Poor Customer Service — It’s not uncommon for questions to go unanswered for weeks or to have problems never resolved.
• Lack of Investing Features — Mint’s investing section is OK at best. And it does not make it easy to monitor your investment performance. Personal Capital is a possible alternative that offers better investment tools (see below).
• Intrusive Ads — Ads are displayed in various parts of the site, trying to sell you financial services related to your profile. The ads are numerous and constant, which leaves a bad taste in a lot of users’ mouths.
• Lack of Report Generation — The only way to generate a report is by exporting a CSV file to a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel.
• No Reconciliation — You cannot reconcile against your monthly bank statements. Mint assumes the data downloaded is always correct.
• No Import Option From Quicken — You cannot import your data from Quicken into Mint.
• Mistakes in Labeling Purchases — Mint attempts to label your purchases as they come in, but it can get it wrong. Users have to check their purchases to make sure things are sorted into the right budget categories and to make sure that less common purchases are labeled appropriately.

For those who are fed up with Mint, there are many alternatives waiting for you to give them a spin. Many of the alternatives have developed features that make Mint seem like a toy. There are other options that might fit better, depending on your goals and preferences. In the following list, we’ve linked to our product reviews.

Personal Capital

If you are looking for a web-based finance app that focuses on investing, this is what we recommend. In fact, we have it on our list of the best investment apps.

Like Mint, Personal Capital is free to use. Unlike Mint, which focuses a lot on budgeting and where your money has gone, Personal Capital emphasizes investing and saving for retirement.

Personal Capital allows you to sort and track your money, so you’re not sacrificing that Mint option by using Personal Capital. It’s a combination of strong budgeting and investing platforms that makes it easier to handle your money overall.

If you want to dive deeper into the differences, we have a detailed comparison between Mint and Personal Capital.

YNAB

While Mint is heavily focused on helping you track your spending after the fact, YNAB is all about planning your spending ahead of time. You aren’t going to get a solid investing app with YNAB, but you are going to be able to feel more as though you are directing your resources, rather than just tracking where your money has already gone.

It’s a great app for those especially interested in zero-based budgeting. YNAB is our recommended best budgeting app.

It’s much more in-depth and hands-on when it comes to helping you use money like a tool. YNAB is not just a simple money tracker. It pairs you with an accountability partner and allows you to see your goal progress in the app. Mint allows you to set goals in the web-based portion of its service, but you can’t track them in the app.

For more information, read our Mint vs. YNAB comparison.

YNAB has a special promotion going on where you can get the first two months for free.

CountAbout

CountAbout is an online service that automatically downloads your transactions into one central place and allows you to create budgets with ease. Unique to CountAbout, you can import your existing transactions from Mint or Quicken.

You can easily import data from Quicken, which you can’t do in Mint. There are no ads, though there is an annual fee. And you can create reports to give you in-depth feedback on your finances.

Sign up for the free 15-day trial.

PocketSmith

PocketSmith is a web-based personal finance app that allows its users to create budgets and calendars, as well as analyzing spending patterns and generating projections of your financial picture based on budgeting scenarios. You can create monthly, weekly or even daily budgets — beginning on any day you choose. It also lets you track one-time expenses and income such as quarterly taxes or freelance earnings.

PocketSmith is easy to use and convenient. Its budget-setting functions are uniquely flexible, and it’s easy to set up an account (it literally took us seconds). Plus, its calendar-creation feature is extremely handy and gives you a window on the future of your finances.

Tiller Money

Would you rather use a spreadsheet to manage your finances? Now you can with Tiller Money, which can import the data into a Google Sheet automatically. Since it uses the same backend software as Personal Capital (Yodlee), Tiller offers the same synchronization options as Personal Capital. Unfortunately, Tiller doesn’t currently support investment accounts and is best suited for budgeting.

Quicken

If you want a fully functional way to track your accounts — including investment accounts — the latest version of Quicken has really taken things up a notch. Quicken now makes use of the cloud, and it can sync up your desktop with what’s available online. This is one of the best fully functional options. However, Quicken for Mac isn’t nearly as good as the Windows version. If you have a Mac, there are alternatives on this list.

Unlike many other apps that target financial newbies, this one can be used by someone with $1 or $1 million. You can pay bills from right within the app, which means it’s less likely you’ll miss a payment.

Banktivity

This is one of the few native applications for Apple’s MacOS operating system. In addition, like Quicken for Windows, Banktivity offers mobile synchronization with your Apple iPad, iPhone and even Apple Watch!

A strong pro for Banktivity is that it supports multiple currencies. You can pay bills, monitor investments and budget within the app, and it comes with a free 30-day trial. A new feature we like is “tagging,” where you can track different expenses that fall under one larger category, such as your vacation spending or food and transport.

Moneydance

You can link your accounts online for automatic updates, or you can enter your information manually. Moneydance is the closest thing you’re going to get to Quicken for Macintosh. You can try out Moneydance for free for the first 100 transactions. If you are looking for software that works on Apple’s OS X, then this is a possible option.

You can generate charts and graphs to see your larger financial picture. This can be invaluable to understanding spending habits. You can manually input transactions or have them linked to an account — the control is in your hands.

QuickBooks Online

An unlikely idea is to use Intuit’s other online offering QuickBooks Online.

For individuals who need full accounting software, or who like to treat their personal finance as a business, QuickBooks Online is the answer. Unlike Intuit’s Mint, QuickBooks Online can reconcile your bank statements. From a part-time side hustle to a full-time business, to managing real estate, QuickBooks can’t be beaten. It is our recommended accounting software. Plus, there’s a free 30-day trial.