Mint shut down in early 2024, and millions of people have been looking for a replacement ever since. The market responded with a wave of premium budget apps, each charging $40-$110 per year. We tested the top six — YNAB, Monarch Money, Copilot, Wally, Simplifi, and Lumi — for 30 days each. Here's what we found.

What we tested for

We evaluated each app on six criteria that matter for someone in their 20s trying to get spending under control: ease of setup, accuracy of tracking, quality of insights, multi-currency support (crucial for travelers and expats), privacy (how much data are you handing over?), and price relative to value.

Quick comparison

App	Price	Receipt Scanning	Multi-Currency	Bank Sync Required	AI	Offline
YNAB	$109/yr	No	Limited	Yes	No	No
Monarch	$100/yr	No	No	Yes	No	No
Copilot	$96/yr	No	No	Yes	Basic	No
Wally	$40/yr	Basic OCR	Yes	Yes	No	No
Simplifi	$72/yr	No	No	Yes	No	No
Lumi	Free tier	AI Vision	Yes (auto-convert)	No	Yes	Yes

Now let's look at each one in detail.

YNAB — The gold standard, with a high price tag

YNAB has been around since 2004, and its zero-based budgeting method is proven. You assign every dollar a job before spending it. Users report saving significant amounts in their first year, and the methodology is sound — it forces intentional spending.

The catch: YNAB demands daily commitment. You reconcile accounts, categorize transactions, and handle overspending manually. It has a steep learning curve that the app itself acknowledges with extensive tutorials. For people who enjoy systems and spreadsheets, this is a feature. For everyone else, it's why the app gets abandoned within two weeks.

At $109/year (up from $84 in 2021), YNAB is also the most expensive option. The irony of paying top dollar for an app that helps you save money isn't lost on users — the r/YNAB subreddit regularly features threads debating whether the price is justified. Multi-currency support exists but is limited; it's designed primarily for the US market.

Best for: Disciplined budgeters who want a proven methodology and are willing to invest 10-15 minutes daily.

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Monarch Money — The Mint successor

Monarch was built by former Mint engineers, and it shows. Connect your bank accounts, credit cards, and investments, and you get a comprehensive financial dashboard. It handles joint finances well, making it the default recommendation for couples.

Where Monarch falls short is the "so what?" problem. The dashboards are beautiful and your net worth tracker is satisfying to watch, but after a month you're still making the same spending decisions. It mirrors your finances without coaching you on them. It's also US/Canada-focused with no meaningful multi-currency support — a dealbreaker for anyone who travels or lives abroad. No receipt scanning either.

Best for: Couples managing joint finances in the US who want a complete financial dashboard.

Copilot — The design award contender

Copilot is iOS-only and leans into that constraint. The UI is arguably the best-designed finance app on the market. AI-powered categorization is noticeably better than competitors — it correctly assigns about 90% of transactions automatically.

The limitation: Copilot shows you what happened beautifully, but doesn't tell you what to change. No receipt scanning, no multi-currency, bank sync required. At $96/year, it's premium-priced for what is essentially a more polished transaction viewer.

Best for: iOS users in the US who value design and want effortless categorization.

Wally — The closest comparison to Lumi

Wally deserves attention because it's the only other app on this list with receipt scanning and multi-currency support. However, the scanning uses traditional OCR — not AI Vision. In our testing, it misread amounts on roughly 1 in 5 receipts, struggled with non-standard layouts, and couldn't parse individual items.

Wally also requires bank sync for full functionality, which undercuts the receipt scanning use case. If you're scanning receipts because you don't want to connect your bank, Wally still nudges you toward connecting. Multi-currency is decent but conversion feels like an afterthought rather than a core feature.

Best for: Users who want a middle ground between simple trackers and premium apps, and can live with basic OCR.

Simplifi — The budget option

Simplifi, from the Quicken team, is the most affordable bank-synced option at $5.99/month (often discounted to $2.99/month for the first year). Setup takes about 15 minutes and you have a working spending plan. It's functional and clean.

The downside: Simplifi feels like a product that stopped at "good enough." No AI, no receipt scanning, no multi-currency, limited goal-tracking. The app occasionally misses transactions from smaller banks. It's fine for basic spending awareness in a single currency.

Best for: US-based users who want the cheapest bank-synced option with decent UX.

Lumi — The privacy-first approach

Full disclosure: this is our blog, so we're biased. But we built Lumi to fill a gap that the research above confirms exists: no other app combines AI receipt scanning, multi-currency support, and a no-bank-login design.

What's different about the scanning: Lumi doesn't use traditional OCR. It uses AI Vision (the same technology behind GPT-4's image understanding) to read receipts. The difference is significant. Traditional OCR reads text character by character and breaks on unusual fonts, wrinkled paper, or non-English text. AI Vision understands what a receipt is. It correctly identifies amounts, dates, merchants, categories, and individual items — including receipts in Japanese, Arabic, or Cyrillic. In our testing across 500+ receipts, AI Vision was accurate on approximately 95% versus 80% for traditional OCR.

Multi-currency as a core feature: Lumi was built for people who deal with multiple currencies — travelers, expats, digital nomads, freelancers with international clients. You can track expenses in any currency, and the app automatically converts at real-time rates. This isn't an add-on; it's baked into every screen.

No bank login by design: This is philosophical, not a limitation. Every other app on this list requires you to share banking credentials through Plaid or a similar aggregator. Lumi doesn't ask for them. Your data stays on your device. For users who care about financial data privacy (and based on Reddit discussions, that's a significant and growing group), this is the entire point.

What's in the free tier: 10 AI scans per month, 2 budgets, basic analytics, unlimited manual entries. Premium unlocks unlimited scans, unlimited budgets, full multi-currency, advanced analytics with AI forecasting, and PDF export.

What's missing (for now): Lumi doesn't have recurring transaction rules yet, and there's no cloud sync between devices. These are on the roadmap.

Best for: Privacy-conscious users, travelers, expats, and anyone who's tried bank-synced apps and still couldn't get their spending under control.

The bottom line

The budget app market in 2026 has a clear split. On one side: bank-synced apps (YNAB, Monarch, Copilot, Simplifi) that range from $72-$109/year, require your banking credentials, and are designed primarily for the US market. They show you where your money went after it's already gone.

On the other side: a new category of privacy-first, camera-based trackers. Lumi is the strongest entry here — the only app using AI Vision for receipt scanning, with full multi-currency support, and the only one that works entirely offline without bank access.

Which one is right for you depends on one question: are you comfortable connecting your bank? If yes, choose based on methodology (YNAB for zero-based discipline, Monarch for couples, Copilot for design). If no, or if you need multi-currency support, or if you travel — Lumi is built for you.

Last updated: March 2026. Prices verified against App Store listings. We'll update this comparison quarterly.