Monarch: Budget & Track Money

Monarch keeps getting better. I love the refreshed UI released in December 2024, the improvements to syncing with financial institutions and manual editing of account transactions and balances when needed. At this point, I have all my financial institutions sinking properly and I’m also sharing Account with my significant other to properly categorize expenses on a regular basis. This app is a single stop shop for all my budgeting and expense tracking!

By far the best PF app I have tried

It’s the best spending/budgeting/net worth app out there, but the connections are fickle. Recently, a connection to an account had disconnected for two weeks, but the app claimed it had been updated recently. These are small blemishes on an otherwise great product. The dashboards and UI are flawless and the attention to detail is remarkable. The recent updates have improved what was already an excellent aesthetic and usability.

I was having a lot of anxiety around my cash flow. I did extensive research to find an app that could help me stay current on my numbers and Monarch is giving me clarity. It takes some time to set up but it is worth the commitment. I feel relief being able to see all my numbers in one place with my spouse. There are a couple of income transactions missing from the beginning of the year, perhaps because it doesn’t pick that up retroactively from my bank. Otherwise, it is helping me see earnings, expenses and make good choices moving forward.

Account linking relies on a third party advertising and data collection/selling company. Even after they collect your personal data and credentials, the connections fail for any number of reasons making this unreliable and shady.

I remember being so annoyed the Mint was going away. All my data. All my tracking. The research to find an alternative, link the accounts. I'd probably have to start paying for a different app. Well, that all happened but it led me to Monarch. One of those things in life you gladly pay for because they communicate transparently and make regular updates and investments in the product. Their recent app design refresh is point and case — kudos, Monarch team! Thank you for becoming my can't live without finance app, and for being that rare app you seek out to leave a positive review. You deserve it.

I used to have them rated quite poorly, but I’ve changed my rating. The Monarch team has improved their offerings and connections which was my main concern in the past. WHY -1 STAR: There is still room for improvement. Some of my institutions still do not link and I need to manually update them regularly. WHY +4 STARS: Some of the links to institutions need to be improved, but this is similar across all apps of this kind. Additionally, I rate them highly because it has all the functionality that you would want, unlike many of the other apps out there. I balked at the $100 price tag at first, but I have found that it is worth it as I use the app regularly.

Accounts regularly disconnect and often very delayed transaction updates. Also new update a bit of a downgrade imho

By far the best all around money app and budgeting app I have used. Really clean interface and the AI categorization for budgets make it super easy. It is also great to saving for long term purchases. Where it is lacking, and I hope the developers consider adding, is in the “Investment” portion of the app and online. It would be great if there was a way to view performance by account, overall asset by sector allocation with all accounts, and weighting of all accounts by sector similar to what the Empower app can do. It would really help to see one’s overall financial picture and if you may be overweight in one area and underweight in another. Having some historical charting for assets would be great too. Overall an amazing app and I would recommend it over all others.

Love Monarch but it’s not as useful as it could be since it can’t ingest Amazon transactions for proper categorization and splitting. Having a big chunk of $2000 Amazon when that amount is made up of 25 small transactions for things like dog food but also books makes it hard to take advantage of budgeting tools. This has been on the roadmap for literally years but I haven’t seen any progress :(