Quicken Review for 2023: Features & Pricing, Pros & Cons
Quicken has been around for decades and it's still one of the most robust tools on the market for personal finance organization and tracking. When considering what personal finance software is best for your needs, it's important to explore your options. So don't forget to consider Quicken (and Quicken for Mac) as you evaluate which personal finance app is the right choice for you. Here's our Quicken review.
Cost - 8
Customer Service - 6.5
Ease of Use - 8.5
Tools & Resources - 9
Synchronization - 8
Accessibility - 9
Overview of Quicken
Quicken has been around for a long time. There are Quicken versions for Windows and Mac, as well as an online version. Quicken was sold to Aquiline Capital Partners in 2021.
At one time, Quicken was one of the only alternatives to tracking personal finances manually on a spreadsheet. Today, there are many choices for personal finance software. But Quicken is still a solid choice, especially since it can connect to your bank and automatically update your accounts.
Quicken Key Features
Both the Mac and Windows versions of Quicken support the following features:
- Budgeting: Create and manage personalized budgets.
- Manage your investments: See how your investments are performing. Track cost basis and see realized and unrealized gains. And the program calculates capital gains and losses.
- Customized reporting: View your income and spending with custom reports.
- Specialized investment reports: You can dive deeper into your investment returns, seeing items like R.O.I. and IRR.
- Bill tracking and payments: You can track and make payments within the Quicken app.
- Debt reduction planner: Figure out how to best pay down your debt and create an actionable plan.
- Free phone support: Phone support and chat support is available Monday to Friday, 5 A.M. to 5 P.M. Pacific Time.
- Data export: You can easily export your data to Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, QXF, and QUIF files
Web & Mobile Access
Once you've purchased a subscription to Quicken and downloaded the software to your computer, you can also log in to your account via Quicken's companion mobile app (available on iOS and Android) or its companion online platform, Quicken on the Web.
Note that the web and mobile companion apps don't provide access to every feature that's available on desktop. However, they work great for monitoring your budgets, balances, spending trends, or investment performance. You can also use the companion apps to search for past transactions and see their details.
Quicken for Windows Features
The Windows version of Quicken adds even more functionality. First, Quicken Home & Business is available for PC only, It includes several business and property features including:
- Creating custom invoices
- Categorizing and separating personal, business and rental income/expenses
- Downloading property values from Zillow
- Generating business-related tax schedules
- Tracking tenant payments
- And more
In addition to Home & Business access, Quicken for Windows also provides a few additional investing tools, such as the Morningstar® Portfolio Instant X-Ray tool, a buy/sell tool for modeling tax implications, and a “What If” tool for estimating capital gains.
Simplifi by Quicken
Simplifi by Quicken is an award-winning budgeting and goal-tracking platform that launched in 2020. Rather than requiring software downloads, Simplifi is available exclusively on mobile and the web. It's also different from Quicken's desktop products in that it will create your budget automatically based on your income and expenses.
From the beginning, Simplifi's goal has been to minimize the hassles and pain points that often discourage people from creating and following a spending plan. In fact, the Simplifi team says that most users should be able to manage their finances in just under 5 minutes per week on the platform.
Read our full Simplifi by Quicken review >>>
Quicken Pricing
Like many other personal finance software applications, Quicken has an annual subscription model. It offers tiered pricing options based on the product you choose.
Note that Investor Junkie readers can get 40% off Deluxe, Premier, or Home & Business by using our referral link. Here are the prices as of writing:
- Simplifi by Quicken: $3.99 per month, billed annually
- Quicken Deluxe: $4.99 per month, billed annually
- Quicken Premier: $6.99 per month, billed annually
- Quicken Home & Business (Windows Only): $9.99 per month, billed annually
Security
Quicken uses bank-level security and encryption to protect your accounts. Because Quicken can connect to your bank and other accounts, it's important to know that you're protected. Quicken uses SSL and 256-bit encryption and you can password-protect your files.
Customer Service
Quicken offers both phone and chat support. They also offer a help center with guidance and support from expert users. You can get phone support Monday through Friday from 5 A.M. to 5 P.M. Pacific Time. Users who purchase the Premium or Home & Business tiers receive priority access to agents.
Technical Requirements
Quicken for PC
- CPU: 1 GHz (I recommend a more powerful CPU)
- Operating System: Windows 8, 8.1, 10, or 11 (not compatible with 10 or 11 in S mode)
- Memory: 1 G.B. or more (I recommend at least 2 G.B., 4 G.B. or more being ideal)
- Hard Disk Space: Minimum of 450 MB, up to 1.5 GB if .NET is not already installed
- Display: 1024×768 or higher resolution, 1280×1024 for large fonts
- Internet: High speed internet connection recommended (Online access required for activation)
- Additional Software (included in Quicken installer): Microsoft .NET 4.6 or later
Quicken for Mac
- Operating System: Mac OS Ventura and previous two versions of Mac
- Display: 1280×800 or higher resolution
- Internet connection: Broadband (Access to the web-based platform for Quicken for Mac requires that you still download the software.)
Quicken on a Mobile Device
- iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad: Requires iOS 9 or higher.
- Android mobile and tablet: Requires 4.4 or higher.
How to Sign Up to Quicken
It's fairly straightforward. You go to the Quicken website and choose the version you want. Pay the fee and, if you purchased a desktop product, download the software. Then get everything set up, create passwords, and sync with your accounts. Also, you may need to import files from other software or download information from your bank.
Quicken Alternatives
Back in the day, there weren't many alternatives to Quicken. But there are plenty of choices today. One of the best alternatives is Empower, which will track your investment accounts, as well as bank and credit card accounts. You can get a number of reports with Empower and see your whole financial picture.
Moneydance and Banktivity are two additional personal finance applications that may be worth considering. Depending on what software you choose, you may be able to get comparable features at lower prices.
But Empower is a freemium product that offers a lot of what most people need. And its starting cost is zero. On top of that, Empower has the option for you to work with a financial advisor if you're willing to pay an annual advisory fee.
Quicken Pros and Cons
pros
cons
Should You Use Quicken?
Quicken for Windows is one of the most robust personal finance software applications on the market. If you're looking for something that will do pretty much everything, Quicken can be a good choice. Quicken for Mac can also be a good choice, but you might pay a little more than you'd like for the value — especially since the Mac version is missing some features.
If you're looking for something more cloud-based or accessible on your mobile device, Simplifi by Quicken could be a great choice. But you'll just want to compare its features and prices to other web-based personal finance platforms like Empower and Mint.
Final Thoughts on Quicken
Quicken (at least for Windows) remains one of the best money management apps on the market today. While Quicken for Mac still lags a bit behind, recent changes make it a perfectly adequate choice. In the end, compare Quicken to other apps to decide whether it would best meet your needs or if you should try something else.
Quicken is fine for recording transactions. But many, many people including me have reported the software flaw of all of your hard work of budget creation simply disappearing. Quicken is unable or unwilling to fix it. This has been happening for years and is well documented on the Quicken Support site,
Still using Quicken 2006 and not planning to upgrade or pay for an annual subscription. The ONLY thing I use Quicken for is as an online checkbook register. We enter our account activity for all 13 accounts with one bank, and at the end of the year we print the reports for our accountant. Unless my software blows up, I’m not changing and I’m not upgrading.
I guess you don’t value downloading/updating transactions directly from your financial websites, then? Nothing wrong with that, but that seems to be the power of Quicken and all other competing financial software programs.
For years I used Ace money for my checking account. That’s really all I need to do. But when my bank upgraded their security Ace no longer works with it. The only software that would work is quicken so I bought the basic version. It is horrible. At first it matched my checking balance but suddenly I am off by over $4000. I can spend the time going line by line to see what’s missing, but if I have to do that I may as well use Google sheets for free. Not going to renew and I will probably cancel before my time is up. Very, very frustrating.
I have used Quicken since its earliest incarnation. Was a windows user for years and was satisfied with that offering. Switched to the Mac in the early 2000s and had to struggle through the early versions (Quicken Essentials) until they finally had a usable Mac version. Despite years to work on it, they were never able to bring it to Par with the Windows version. I used to love the savings goal options of the Windows version. Requested it on numerous occasions when they were seeking input on upgrades. Never happened.
I continued using the 2017 version until it no longer functioned and could only be used for manual entry. I broke down last year and did a one-year subscription. I can say there is nothing really new for me in their offering. There are lots of bugs (transactions would not show in Quicken or would not match manually entered transactions even though they were in the QFX file) which eventually led me to start a new file this year, losing over 10 years of data as the then used data file must have become corrupt according to support. I finally decided to use Quicken Connect for all my accounts.
I had previously used QFX import on most accounts as initially some of my Financial Institutions only supported QFX download and some only Quicken Connect. When I created the new data file, all went well except for my investment accounts. I have three accounts at the brokerage. All are accessed by the same account name and password. I set each account up and used the account name and password. Two of the three accounts were successfully linked. When I tried the third account entering the same account name and password, nothing was returned for that account. Contacted Quicken and was eventually told that it was because my password contained a special character that the Quicken software interpreted as an instructional character. Seemed like a rather lame answer since the other two accounts with the same login name and password worked successfully. I was also under the impression that the password was not visible to Quicken since it was encrypted.
Just received an email that my one-year subscription was up in 14 days. I am still not sure what I will do as I do depend on Quicken for a quick snapshot of my assets and to keep track of the bank and credit card accounts. The investment accounts are a disaster not counting the fact that I can only access two of the three accounts. When you start a new account only a limited amount of transactions are imported. Many of the holdings in the accounts are quite old and all the purchases, dividends, and other transaction data are not there, so other than the totals in the accounts, most else is useless. Ditto with all the prior bank transactions and credit card transactions. C’est La Vie
I have been trying Banktivity and find it quite similar to Quicken. The only problem I have is connecting to one bank. That worked fine initially but somehow broke when the two-factor authentication code stopped being sent to my text messages. Support is good and they answer right away and follow up if you don’t reply back to them. They are working on resolving that as I write this . Still, they are a subscription-based model, and I am not a fan of that, avoiding as much as possible anything that uses that model. Tried Personal Capital but as soon as I did I was inundated with requests to use their paid-for brokerage services. Gave up on that for now.
Unfortunately, the subscription-based model has caught on everywhere and at times one has to live with it. Will I renew with Quicken? No discount offered for existing users and will have to see if I get one before my subscription expires. Still have 6 months with Banktivity and they do upgrade and enhance at a more rapid pace than Quicken. Maybe I will give Banktivity a second chance…
I agree with much of your post. I’ve also periodically tried alternate offerings to Quicken, but keep coming back. I do feel since leaving Intuit and going solo, Quicken is making a lot of improvements to the Mac version. I missed the Quicken Essentials window, so I was limping along with Parallels and Quicken for Windows. The latest Mac version, amongst other things, has some weird UI issues, ways that you can organize the sidebar, and limitations to the iOS app that bug me, but for the most part it meets my needs (tracking paychecks from multiple employers/projects, syncing multiple banking accounts, investment, loan and mortgage tracking, as well as generating union, unemployment and tax specific reports). I was so happy to get rid of Parallels finally and consolidate my entire history going back to 1998 (which was far from painless to do).
For what it’s worth, you can almost always get subscription discounts (40% currently) on Quicken if you look around and you have 6 months or less left on your current subscription. My last renewal was for 3 years and it was a great deal, but I can’t seem to find those multi-year deals now.
Tell me how I can continue using what I have without renewing? I am held hostage. I can not access any of my financials from the past. I. O access the is a pop up of how to install patch which I did now I open, the window pops up again then closes Quicken. I have retired due to covid so don’t need many features but do need my records
I have owned Quicken for several years and neither myself or bookkeepers have been able to figure out how to make it work for a combination of personal, small business, and rental property accounting. In say 3-4 years, none of us have been able to get through to them by phone or on-line chat—only ask the community which never seems to have the answers I need. I’ve even paid to get it set up right but the people I contacted haven’t succeeded, nor can I find any bookkeeper who is able to help. I’ve never encountered worse customer service on any product. I hate to have to start over with something else since I’ve entered all my data into it, but I’ve never been able to pull out a compilation of useful data. I hear Quickbooks is good, but it seemed to have far more than my tiny financial situation needs and having such a terrible experience with Intuit on their Quicken product, I’m very hesitant to use any of their other products. If you can pass this along to them, I’d appreciate it since I’ve never been able to get through.
I was a MYM user until they failed to produce a useful Windows version at whch point I switched to Quicken. As a Financial Planner I found Quicken to provide the data in a format I could work with and had many clients use Quicken and give me their files to save themselves work in providing me with the data needed to prepare their plan. I am not thrilled with the subscription model but that is the way of the world. Even my new car has “subscriptions for certain features I desire. Recognize that Banking industry keeps modifying their data and security structure forcing Quicken to update its systems for downloading. In my case Express Web Connect no longer does anything but spin the counter. For the significant account that uses that I log in to the bank and download the transactions in QDF format and they load into Quicken. Annoying but not a deal breaker – yet. OTOH using my daily account update I caught a fraud on my American Express Account before it cost me anything.
I am interested in changing from Quicken after many, many years. I was usually satisfied and used many aspects of the program for retirement accounts, investments, etc. Now I mostly use it for Bill Pay. Which of course is no more but called Bill Management.
I have not mastered this aspect yet. It does not download as it is supposed to, it does not recognize all businesses or insurance companies, etc. It usually takes about 8 attempts to get my latest bills. I even had a situation where a crediter was sent $50 more than I indicated in the register. When I contacted Quicken I was told I made the mistake even as they were looking at the form for the payment I wanted sent. They would not fix the issue and the person working with me on the phone said he had a headache and could not talk with me anymore. I have also had an issue where my payment was sent to the wrong credit card company. Bill Management will not recognize two credit cards from the same bank!!!!!! I too need an alternative.
I too have been using Quicken for years. I have faithfully upgraded every few years regardless of the fact there was little improvement from the previous version. Last year, I upgraded Quicken by signing up with an auto renewal subscription through Quicken,com.
My subscription is now up and my renewal is $78 per year. However, I can buy the same upgraded Quicken product at a 40% discount via retail. Question: Are there any downsides to cancelling my Quicken.com subscription and installing an upgraded version from a retail outlet?
I’m sure hoping so! I just bought 1yr Premier subscription renewal for $46.79 (40% discount) from online electronics superstore (B…B..). There is a tab in Quicken under ‘Help’ to enter a code which I’m hoping works for this purchase. I don’t think you’ll have to do any cancelling though.
Did this work?
Quicken was purchased by a Private Equity Firm and their only interest is profit. Forcing you to pay for the package is what most software manufacturers are going to use in the future. Remember appliances use to last for 20-25 years and now they’re designed to fail after five. My version 2017 keeps trying to update. Their help desk said that they only know about current systems and they no longer support my version so wouldn’t being asking to update. Told me it was Windows. Right. I wonder if they are trying to install their banner the person mentioned.
I’ve only noticed improvements since Quicken went solo. My history goes back to the 90’s with Quicken. I currently use the Mac version, and on Intuit’s watch it felt like abandonware. Sadly, sunsetting their software after 3 years is nothing new. Before the subscription model (not a fan), I would usually wait 3 years and then update.
I totally agree with the many negative comments about Quicken. Believe me, if there was something better out there, I would dump Quicken without hesitation. They know they don’t need good customer support because they have a monopoly in this market. Quicken has bugs that are identified and not addressed. Quicken is just a step above junk!
Another con: You can’t buy it outright. You have to pay an ongoing subscription, year by year. Why? What service does Quicken provide each year that they’re charging for? This subscription basis is why I will not use Quicken anymore, although I did like it when it first started.
Obviously nobody likes the subscription based model. They have lost a ton of customers as a result. Mostly the ones who are paying the ransom are the ones who cannot find an alternative. I have looked at a dozen packages in some depth and none were satisfactory, especially since it would have to work for Canadian banks/institutions.
I would drop quicken in a heartbeat if I could.
What are you paying for?
– code to access your banks automatically. Lots of different banks, lots of different protocols and always being changed .. by the banks. e.g. adding two-factor security. This is make/break functionality.
-security price updates – these typically are tied to a service that have ongoing fees.
-return on investment for the venture capital fund that took it over a couple of years ago
I’ve looked at a number of alternatives to quicken. I used it for only manual entry. I don’t like the data aggregators that Quicken, Mint, Personal Capital and other use. Subscription seems to be the way everyone is going. I am trying out CountAbout. It’s the closest I can find to Quicken. It’s purely web based and has a phone app. $10/year for manual entry. $40 per year if you want to go the auto-entry/data aggregator route. I think you can reconcile in CountAbout. Others I have tried at MoneyDance and GnuCash. The import from the Quicken QIF file was horrible with those last two. CountAbout import was excellent with one exception. Investment accounts from Quicken won’t import – you have to used their $40 level to make it work like it does in Quicken. I just set up a standard account for my investment accounts since I do manual entry. For $10 it’s pretty good. I do find the split transactions lacking some. I’ll probably write them. So far they have been very responsive.
Quicken placed a non-removable advertising banner so that I can no longer view my entire ledger at once.. They said I must renew my membership to have it removed. In effect, I am being forced pay a ransom. When I bought the software a few years ago, it did not require an annual renewal. Don’t buy Quicken.
Thanks Brenda. I’ve been using Quicken for all my finances since 1994. I stopped updates after the 2014 version and was considering switching to the annual membership, expecting to not renew after a year and continue entering transactions manually. I’m able to run the old version with Windows 10 but am concerned it won’t run under the next inevitable version update of Windows. It appears this advertising banner issue people complained about in the past remains. Looks like I’m stuck taking my chances with the old version.
I Used ‘Managing Your Money’ from ’94 till about ’08 when MYM dropped service of the software. It was much like Quicken, but without the unnecessary bells and whistles… Loved it. Migrated to quicken and wish I would have just stuck with MYM. Quicken is a desaster but there don’t seem to be any alternatives… Been running version 16 and I refuse to upgrade to the subscription model.
I’d been using Quicken since 2003, updating to the new version every 3 years or so. Finally ended up on the subscription based model a year ago. Perhaps keeping 15+ years of history through numerous file format conversions of the product has attributed to my issues, but the product has become very labor intensive. Every time I run the account update, I have to fix what accounts transfers happened between, fix the memos auto-added to a transaction, fix the transaction category, fix the bills since it doesn’t recognize a transaction is the payment for a bill.
The Web Connect for my mortgages hasn’t actually updated the balances in 6+ months. There’s no transaction history to display, there’s no errors indicating a failed update.
Today, I attempted to close the application and there’s so many pop-ups about: do you want to sync, to you want to backup, how do you rate our product, please give us feedback….. it was stuck in a loop showing the same pop-ups over and over; I had to force-quit the application.
I started using Personal Capital about a year ago to run in tandem with Quicken. I’ve found that I haven’t been opening Quicken to update my account data nearly as often over the past year since it’s just such a pain in the neck to mess with anymore. For me, I believe I’ll just save the $80/year and put my Quicken in the grave.
Qucken 2020 is garbage. Complete and total bug fest. Bugs that puts multiple entries in the account calendar so if you use it you can’t tell how much money you actually have with out cleaning it up. This is has been a issue for years and they refuse to fix it. Right now my account balance is off by over two thousand dollars because of this issue. I’ve been using quicken since 2006 and every release it just gets worse and worse.
Your review doesn’t mention that Quicken appears to be the only product that allows you to reconcile your accounts (note that we’re old school and manually enter our transactions…). Have been a user since 1982, and while I dislike the subscription model, I don’t see a viable alternative. I do wish the cashflow projections were more sophisticated as we are retired.
I also do not like the new model, it is by far to advanced for my plain cecking account things. Please can i just have the old plain account? If i can find a simple program as the first account was I will leave you and go to that one! I have spoke up for your first program for 30 years at least, so it is bad that I can no longer have it. and speak up for a simple good program.
I stopped using Quicken solely because they went to a subscription based cost. I had used the software since the late 1980’s but I refuse to pay each year for the privilege.
Decided to check out Quicken for Mac as a comparison against Banktivity, which is getting pricier. Migrating the data has been a total disaster. Every single account balance is wildly wrong. There are tens of thousands of errors and every single transaction would have to be hand-corrected going back years. Just the sheer number of transactions that Quicken somehow duplicated is staggering. Tried getting support from Quicken chat but they became very defensive that their software is perfect and the problem must be Banktivity. I’m not a software developer and have no idea which platform is at fault in this process – probably both – but the Quicken service is miserable. At least when you have have problem with Banktivity they make a serious effort to help solve it. Banktivity has a QIF “export to Quicken” tool but the differences between the platforms must simply be too great. If you’re on a Mac and are starting fresh, Quicken for Mac might be workable, however its ability to handle investment transactions is weak at best. If you’re thinking about coming from another platform, think three or four times.
I have a very old copy of Quicken for MAC on a very old computer.
I have recently upgraded to a new computer and OS 11.0.1
I only use Quicken for record keeping, I don’t use any of it’s online services nor do I ever intend to. I have 27 years of financial records!
If I purchase the current version is there any reason for me to renew my subscription if I am not using the online services, bill pay, etc?
Thanks for you help with this.
George
If you don’t subscribe, it stops working. No downloading, even manually. Since I only use it for keeping my accounts balanced, it is not worth the yearly subscription price. I hate to go back to the old-fashioned way of balancing my accounts, but it’s either that or pay them their yearly ransom.
Quicken software is really not very good. The problem is there is no competition. They have a mediocre product that hasn’t improved in many years. If any thing it is getting worse. For example, if you have a loan account that is connected to the bank, you can no longer see the register and enter transactions manually. They seem to take the easy way out on all features and are just trying to milk this cow for as long as they can. Since they never improve the software, people stopped buying the upgrades. Now they force you into a subscription model. Total ripoff. But there are no other options. Please someone compete with them. It wouldn’t be hard.
I actually started using Quicken (in days of DOS) … a LONG time ago. Used every PC update/version. Then stopped when sold properties 10+ yrs ago. Now I just want to use Mac for budgeting. Don’t need to bring into Excel or for investment purposes. However I am not sure that the Mac version is good enough? What is your opinion? Especially since “PERSONAL CAPITAL” is available & free? Anyone?
Jason’s comments are pretty accurate. I do believe they have made inroads but the product is NOT ready for prime time, by any stretch. The product is much more stable than a few years ago but far from acceptable. The support team is actually pretty good; it is the software that is the problem. I have worked with a number of support technicians and was satisfied with them. The number of issues users are confronted with is considerable. I have been using Quicken for a decade and would be considered a super-user as I use many of the more uncommon features. I can only imagine what people go thru that don’t have a 35 year background in IT. In a nutshell … if you can find an alternative that does what you want, don’t waste your time with Quicken.
I want to buy it. I don’t want a subscription. I have an old version and loved it, but it isn’t working right now. I’m not sure if it is because it is so old and I am trying to run it in Windows 10. Anyway, I wanted to purchase a newer version, but a subscription plan is not for me. They lost this customer.
I have been using Quicken since 1994. Every there or four years I would buy a new version. There were generally very few changes that were of any use to me. If I could use the version they put out 20 years age it would suit my purposes. The is no way that I will be paying them every year for nothing.
I miss the days when you had the option of just buying the software and not a yearly subscription. What happens to your database info if you don’t renew?
Nothing happens to it. You lose nothing. You can continue using it but cannot perform updates or transactions.
Delete the cloud-based data if you so desire.
worst technical support i have ever received from any company. my simple question was how to print a reconciliation report from my account. after the gentleman went thru my finances by asking me to share my screen then he simply said no. quicken for mac does not do that. he could have said that at the very start
You were scammed. They use an outside service that collects all your information, then they say they don’t have an answer or they give you an incomplete answer. Change your password for Quicken immediately
Question … have not used Quicken for YEARS. Now that Intuit has sold it, where is their support? (i.e., US based or OUS?) I’m wary of anything outside the US…
Good analysis….I would like to mention one big issue for those who track their net worth or financial situation over time. Since the beginning of the year the program reports are not working and there is no way to get an accurate view of they change in your balances over time. The account balances or net worth report does not even tie back to the current balances. Ive contacted them and seen discussions about this issue. Its should have been fixed quickly as it is something really basic.
Do you mean that ;you cannot get a detail print out for your accountant at year end listing the detail of every tranasation in your accounts for your accountant or yourself to fill out the tax questionare that i get at the end of the year from my accountant?
Also i have 6 cash accounts. I currently use Quickbooks from 2002. I don’t need payroll or some of the other features but I reconcile the accounts every month and I have a second company that is a small for my husband as treasurer of another organization.. I don’t want to mix this with my own account reports for tax purposes.