Mint shut down on March 23, 2024, after seventeen years. If you are still looking for a replacement — or you tried Credit Karma, found it wasn't a budgeting app, and gave up — this guide covers what actually exists in 2026, what each option costs, and which one fits how you budget.
We have included our own app, BudgetVault, in the comparison. We have also been explicit about what it does not do, because for a lot of former Mint users it is the wrong choice, and you deserve to know that before you spend an hour setting it up.
The short version
Intuit announced the shutdown on October 31, 2023, first set the cutoff at January 1, 2024, then extended it; Mint shut down on March 23, 2024. Users were pushed toward Credit Karma, which migrated account logins but not budgets, categories, goals, or transaction history.
What actually happened to Mint
Mint launched in 2007 and was acquired by Intuit in 2009. Intuit reported around 3.6 million active users in 2021, down from a much larger peak, and Mint said it had served about 25 million people over its lifetime. It was free, it connected to your bank automatically, and it categorised your spending without you doing anything.
Our privacy audit of 40 budgeting and expense apps found 8 trackers in the last analysed Android build of Mint, including AdMob and location tracking. It was free because you were not the customer. Intuit made money on Mint by showing users targeted offers for credit cards, loans, and savings accounts, chosen based on the spending data those users had handed over. The budgeting was the hook; the lead generation was the business.
When Intuit bought Credit Karma in 2020 for $7.1 billion, it acquired a much better version of that same business — one with more users, better credit data, and a stronger offer engine. Mint became redundant. The shutdown followed.
The Credit Karma migration was not a migration
This is the part that caught most people out. Intuit directed Mint users to Credit Karma, and the wording made it sound like your data would come with you. In practice, only your account login transferred.
- Transaction history — not migrated
- Custom categories — not migrated
- Budgets — not migrated
- Savings goals — not migrated
- Bill reminders — not migrated
- Recurring transaction labels — not migrated
Credit Karma is a credit monitoring and offers platform. It shows you accounts and transactions, but it has never had Mint's budgeting layer — no envelopes, no category budgets, no month-to-month planning. Users who moved across expecting Mint-with-a-new-logo found a different product entirely.
There was an export window from November 2023 until March 23, 2024, during which you could download your data as CSV. After that, accounts closed and Intuit began deleting Mint data under its normal retention policy. If you did not export in that window, that history is gone.
The lesson most people took from this
Seventeen years of budgeting history disappeared because a corporation decided one product line was less profitable than another. That risk is structural to any app that stores your financial data on someone else's servers — and it is the reason a chunk of former Mint users now specifically look for apps that store data locally.
What to look for in a Mint replacement
Before the comparison table, it helps to know which of Mint's features you actually used. Most people used two or three of them, not all of them, and that changes the answer completely.
- Automatic bank sync — transactions appear without typing. The feature people miss most, and the one that costs money in 2026.
- Net worth tracking — all accounts, including investments and debts, in one number.
- Category budgets — a monthly cap per category with progress tracking.
- Bill reminders — upcoming due dates.
- Free — Mint cost nothing, and that shaped what people expect.
The uncomfortable truth of 2026: the free-and-everything model died with Mint. Automatic bank sync costs the app money on every connected account, so every app that offers it either charges a subscription or monetises your data the way Mint did. There is no third option. Any app promising both free and full bank sync is making money somewhere you cannot see.
So the real decision is which trade you prefer: pay a subscription, accept data monetisation, or drop bank sync.
Mint alternatives compared (2026)
Pricing checked September 2026. Subscription prices change — verify before you pay.
| App | Cost / year | Bank sync | Budgeting | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monarch Money | $99.99 (Plus $199) | Yes | Full | The closest overall Mint replacement |
| YNAB | $109 | Yes | Zero-based | Getting out of debt, changing habits |
| Copilot Money | $95 | Yes | Full | Apple users who want polish |
| Quicken Simplifi | $71.88 | Yes | Full | Cheapest full-featured sync |
| PocketGuard | $74.99 (no free tier) | Yes | Simplified | "What can I safely spend today?" |
| Rocket Money | Free + premium | Yes | Basic | Cancelling subscriptions |
| Empower | Free | Yes | Minimal | Net worth and investments |
| Goodbudget | Free tier, $80 premium | Premium only (US, via Plaid) | Envelope | Budgeting with a partner |
| Actual Budget | Free (self-hosted) | Optional | Zero-based | Privacy, if you can run a server |
| BudgetVault | Free | No | Category | Privacy with no setup |
Monarch Money — the closest thing to Mint
If you want Mint back and you are willing to pay for it, this is the answer. Monarch was co-founded by Mint's first product manager, which shows: the dashboard, the category structure, and the net worth view will feel familiar within minutes. It syncs banks, tracks investments, handles shared household budgets, and is actively developed.
The catch is $99.99 a year for the Core plan. For a tool that used to be free, that is a real adjustment — but it is the honest price of automatic bank sync when the app is not monetising your data.
YNAB — if Mint was not working for you anyway
YNAB is not a Mint clone and does not try to be. Mint showed you what you spent after the fact. YNAB makes you assign every dollar a job before you spend it, the approach we walk through in our zero-based budgeting guide. That is a genuinely different discipline, and it works — but only if you engage with it. People who wanted Mint's passive tracking often bounce off YNAB in a week.
At $109 a year it is the most expensive mainstream option. Worth it if you are carrying debt and need the system to force a change; overkill if you just wanted to see where your money went. If the price is the sticking point, we compared the free YNAB alternatives worth using separately.
Copilot Money and Quicken Simplifi
Copilot ($95/year) is the most polished option if you live in the Apple ecosystem — excellent iOS and macOS apps, smart categorisation, attractive reporting. Simplifi ($71.88/year) is the cheapest full-featured sync app and comes from Quicken, which has been doing this since before Mint existed.
Both do essentially what Mint did. Both cost money. Pick on interface preference and platform.
Empower — the free one with a catch
Empower is genuinely free and does net worth and investment tracking better than Mint ever did. The catch: it is a wealth management firm, and the free tools exist to identify people worth calling about advisory services. If your portfolio is large enough, you will get a phone call. Budgeting features are minimal.
Rocket Money and PocketGuard
Neither is a full Mint replacement, but both solve a specific problem well. Rocket Money finds and cancels forgotten subscriptions — for many people that alone pays for itself. PocketGuard answers one question, "what can I spend today without breaking anything," and answers it clearly.
The category most "Mint alternative" lists skip
Every roundup compares apps that connect to your bank. But a meaningful share of former Mint users came out of the shutdown with a different conclusion: that handing bank credentials to a third party, so that a company can analyse spending and sell offers against it, is exactly the arrangement that ended badly. Our explainer on Plaid covers how that credential-sharing actually works.
If that is you, there is a whole category built around not connecting to your bank at all — we compared eight of them in our guide to budget apps that don't require a bank account.
Goodbudget
A digital version of the envelope method. The free plan has no bank sync: no Plaid, no aggregator, no bank login. Premium ($80 a year) adds optional Plaid sync for US banks, which you can leave off. You divide income into named envelopes and spend from them. The free tier covers one account and a limited number of envelopes. It is particularly good for couples, because the envelopes sync between two phones without either person exposing bank access — see our roundup of budgeting apps for couples without bank sync.
Actual Budget
Open source, local-first, zero-based budgeting. Your data lives in a file you control, and self-hosted setups support end-to-end encryption. It is the most capable privacy-first option by a distance.
The barrier is real: you either self-host it on a server or pay a small hosting fee, and the setup assumes comfort with things most people do not want to do. If you are technical, this is probably your answer. If "self-host" made you pause, it is not.
BudgetVault — what it does and does not do
This is our app, so read this section with appropriate suspicion. Here is the honest version.
BudgetVault is a budgeting app that runs entirely in your browser. Your transactions, budgets, and balances are stored on your device using IndexedDB and are never uploaded to a server. There is no account, no password, no bank connection, and no subscription. After the first load it works offline, and you can install it to your home screen like a native app.
In effect it is Actual Budget's privacy model without the server — you open a URL and start, with nothing to configure and nothing to host.
What it does not do, and these matter:
- No automatic bank sync. You enter transactions manually or import a CSV. If automatic import was the feature you valued most about Mint, this will frustrate you — choose Monarch instead.
- No investment or net worth tracking. It budgets cash flow. It does not aggregate brokerage accounts or compute net worth. For that, Empower is free and better.
- No credit score monitoring. Not the same category of product.
- Your data is only on that device. That is the point, but it cuts both ways — clear your browser data without exporting first and it is gone. Use the CSV export regularly.
It suits people who want to see where their money goes, are willing to spend two minutes a day logging it, and are not willing to hand over bank credentials or pay $100 a year. If that is not you, one of the paid options above is a better fit, and we would rather say so than waste your time.
Is there a free Mint replacement?
Short answer: yes, but not one that does everything Mint did.
Free and automatic bank sync exists in exactly two forms. Either the app monetises your financial data the way Mint did — which is the model that just collapsed under you — or it is a lead generator for another business, like Empower's advisory services. We looked at which budget apps sell your data in detail. Bank data aggregation has a real per-account cost, and someone pays it.
What you can get for free without that trade:
- Free with bank sync, data monetised: Rocket Money's free tier, Empower.
- Free without bank sync: BudgetVault, Goodbudget's free tier, Actual Budget if you self-host.
- Free and genuinely unlimited: a spreadsheet, which still works and still costs nothing.
If free is non-negotiable and you want no data monetisation, you are choosing from the manual-entry group. That is the actual shape of the 2026 market.
What about Mint and TurboTax?
These come up together because both are Intuit products, so it is worth being clear: Mint's shutdown did not affect TurboTax. Your TurboTax account, prior returns, and filing history are unaffected and remain accessible.
Mint was never a tax tool. It did not generate tax documents, produce a Schedule C, or file anything. Some people used Mint's categories to estimate deductible expenses at tax time, and that workflow is what disappeared.
If categorising expenses for tax season is why you used Mint, any app with custom categories and CSV export covers it, including the free manual-entry options.
How to choose, in one pass
Pick the first line that describes you and stop reading.
- You want Mint back and will pay for it → Monarch Money ($99.99/yr).
- You are in debt and need the system to force a change → YNAB ($109/yr).
- You are on iPhone and Mac and care about the interface → Copilot ($95/yr).
- You want bank sync as cheaply as possible → Quicken Simplifi ($71.88/yr).
- Subscriptions are the actual problem → Rocket Money.
- You mostly want net worth and investments, free → Empower.
- You budget with a partner and do not want bank access shared → Goodbudget.
- You want privacy and can run a server → Actual Budget.
- You want privacy, free, and zero setup, and will type transactions → BudgetVault.
If you still have your Mint CSV export
If you exported before March 23, 2024, that file is still useful. Mint's export is a standard CSV with date, description, amount, and category columns, which most apps can import.
- Keep the original file. Archive an untouched copy before importing anywhere — imports go wrong and you cannot re-download it.
- Check the sign convention. Mint exported debits and credits in a way some importers misread, flipping income and expenses. Verify the first month against a statement.
- Expect to remap categories. Mint's category names rarely match another app's, so plan to map them once during import.
- Import history selectively. Most people only need twelve to twenty-four months. Importing a decade makes reports slower and rarely changes a decision.
If you did not export in time, that history is gone — Intuit deleted it under its retention policy. Your bank will usually let you download the last twelve to twenty-four months of transactions as CSV, which is enough to rebuild a useful baseline.
Whatever you choose, export regularly
The single lesson of Mint is that your budgeting history is only as durable as someone else's business plan. Whichever app you land on, export to CSV every few months and keep the file somewhere you control. It takes two minutes and it is the only thing that actually protects seventeen years of data.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly did Mint shut down?
March 23, 2024. Intuit announced the wind-down on October 31, 2023 and initially set January 1, 2024 as the cutoff, then extended it to March 23 to give users more time to export.
Did Credit Karma really replace Mint?
No. Only account logins migrated. Transaction history, budgets, custom categories, savings goals, bill reminders, and recurring transaction labels did not transfer. Credit Karma is a credit monitoring and offers platform, not a budgeting app.
Can I still get my Mint data back?
No. The export window closed on March 23, 2024, after which Intuit began deleting Mint data under its retention policy. If you did not export then, request transaction history from your bank instead — most provide twelve to twenty-four months as CSV.
Why did Mint shut down if it had millions of users?
Users were not the revenue. Mint made money by showing targeted financial product offers based on spending data. After Intuit acquired Credit Karma in 2020 for $7.1 billion, it owned a platform that did the same thing better, and Mint became redundant.
Is there a Mint alternative that works offline?
Yes. Apps that do not connect to your bank can work fully offline, since there is nothing to sync. BudgetVault runs in the browser and works offline after the first load; Actual Budget works offline if you self-host it; Goodbudget's free plan syncs between devices but does not touch your bank. We ranked the options in best offline budget app 2026.
What is the best free Mint alternative?
It depends on what free has to include. For free with bank sync, Empower or Rocket Money's free tier — both monetise in other ways. For free without bank sync and without data monetisation, BudgetVault, Goodbudget's free tier, or Actual Budget self-hosted.
Bottom line
There is no single Mint replacement, because Mint's specific combination — free, automatic, comprehensive — only worked while your data paid for it. That model ended.
If bank sync is what you miss, Monarch is the closest fit and costs about $100 a year. If the shutdown made you reconsider handing over bank credentials in the first place, the manual-entry category is free and, for a lot of people, sufficient. Our list of budget apps that never touch your bank data is the place to start.
Either way, export your data regularly. That is the one habit that would have made March 2024 a minor annoyance instead of the loss of seventeen years of history.