The 8 best budget apps for 2024

Saving money, tracking expenses and sticking to an allocated budget can be tough, and it takes time to build towards your goals. But, like just about anything nowadays, when it comes to budgeting there’s an app for that. To help you sift through your options, we’ve compiled a list of eight apps that caught our interest.

Beem

Beem (formerly Beem It) is a free instant payment app owned by Eftpos. Through the app you can send and receive money in a matter of seconds. But it also comes with other features, including a tracking and splitting feature for shared bills or group expenses.

Although it’s not strictly designed for budgeting, Beem could be useful to help stay on top of shared expenses, whether that’s with housemates, a partner, your family or friends. Beem also supports BPAY. That means one person can pay the electricity bill with BPAY, for example, and then request payment from other people within the app. However, all members of the group do need to have Beem downloaded and set up to use this feature.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 4.9, 86.3K ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.4, 12.7K reviews.

Buddy

Buddy is a Swedish budgeting app that allows you to create budgets and track your expenses. Unlike some other budgeting apps, you do not have to sync your bank account to the app. Instead, you can add transactions manually. You can also sync your transactions with a partner or loved one and create shared budgets.

Buddy is free to download and use the basic features, but you have to pay a subscription to unlock full functionality of the app. It currently costs $9.99 per month or $49.99 per year. Buddy is also only currently available on the App Store.

• Availability: iOS.

• App Store rating: 4.6, 2.7K ratings.

Frollo

Frollo is a free Australian budgeting app. You can sync all of your financial accounts (such as your transaction, savings, credit card, loans, super and investments) with Frollo and see them in one place. Frollo then categorises all of your transactions and keeps track of your regular payments and when they are due.

You can create multiple money goals within the app and track your progress. Frollo can also send you money tips and notifications – for instance, letting you know if you have upcoming bills.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 3.9, 963 ratings.

• Google Play rating: 3.3, 337 reviews.

Goodbudget

Goodbudget works as a digital envelope budgeting system, which lets you allocate your income into different spending categories, such as rent, bills, dining out etc. Envelope budgeting comes from the historical practice of splitting your weekly cash income into different envelopes, each of which would represent what the money was intended for e.g. food, bills, spending money.

Goodbudget doesn’t allow for bank or financial institution syncing, so you’ll have to manually input your budgeting information. The app is free to use and allows for one account to be used across two devices with up to 10 regular envelopes and 10 annual envelopes. There is also a paid version, which starts at $8.49 per month, which allows for unlimited envelopes and accounts and an extended transaction history.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 4.6, 817 ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.4, 19.3K reviews.

Raiz

Although Raiz, formerly Acorns, is primarily a micro-investment app, it also includes some budgeting features. Raiz is best known for its ‘round-up’ feature, which rounds up your transactions to the nearest dollar and invests the change.

Raiz also offers a My Finance feature, which gives you a personalised overview of your spending and forecasts your future cash flow using your linked accounts. You can also see where you spend your money based on categories like ‘shopping’ and ‘transport’.

Raiz is free to download, but there are fees when you start investing. For standard portfolios, it is currently $4.50 per month for accounts under $20,000. For plus portfolios, it is currently $5.50 per month for accounts under $25,000. Alternatively you can pay a percentage, currently 0.275% per year, for accounts $20,000 and over.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 4.7, 40.7K ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.4, 9.75K reviews.

Splitwise

Splitwise is another app that could help you manage shared bills and expenses. Splitwise is a bill-splitting app that automatically splits payments between members of a group and tallies up who-owes-who what.

Splitwise is free to download, but there are in-app purchases if you want to access the app’s ‘pro features’, which include no ads, currency conversion and the ability to save default splits. Additionally, like Beem, to use the app with a group of people, everyone needs to download the app individually.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 3.9, 1.6K ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.2, 165K reviews.

WeMoney

WeMoney is designed to give you a ‘360-degree view’ of your finances. Through the free app, you can connect accounts, including supported savings, loans, credit cards, super fund, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), investment and cryptocurrency accounts. This can give you a clearer picture of your net worth. Through the app you can automatically categorise your transactions, track your bills and subscriptions and set monthly budgets and money goals.

Other features include the ability to check your credit score and an offers section. But, it’s important to note WeMoney only displays offers from its partners and may not cover all your options. Additionally, to create an account you will need to provide some photo ID (such as a driver licence or passport). WeMoney says it uses bank-level encryption, but as with any budgeting app, it’s important to weigh up whether you are comfortable sharing your personal information.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 4.5, 3.5K ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.5, 1.92K reviews.

You Need a Budget

You Need a Budget takes a zero-based budgeting approach, which encourages its users to make a plan for every dollar they earn, rather than just looking at past transactions. This categorised approach to budgeting can be helpful for those who are unsure of where to start. Once you create your budget you can also share it with up to six other people, so it can be a useful tool to keep yourself and your family and friends accountable.

Being an app designed for the US market, there may be limitations for automatic syncing with Australian banks and other financial institutions. That being said, you can add transactions and other information manually into the app. You Need a Budget offers a free 30 day subscription, before going to a monthly or annual subscription of $21.99 and $179.99 respectively, making it one of the more costly options.

• Availability: iOS and Android.

• App Store rating: 4.6, 1.3K ratings.

• Google Play rating: 4.6, 20K reviews.

Related: Check your credit score for free

Your bank’s app?

It’s also worth checking what budgeting features are offered by your bank or financial institution. There are a number of banks that automatically categorise your spending, so you can see how much you are spending each month and where.

Some banks also offer round-up features (similar to Raiz) on their transaction accounts. This rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and transfers the change to your savings account. Banks and financial institutions that offer this feature at the time of writing include ANZ, Bank Australia, ING, P&N Bank, Up and Wisr.

Other ways to budget

You might prefer to go old school and create a budget yourself. We’ve previously written about making a budgeting spreadsheet, as well as creating a budget with pen and paper. We’ve also written about different budgeting approaches, including the 50/20/30 method and the bucket strategy.

If you’re not a fan of budgeting at all, you could also try doing an ‘anti-budget’ or ‘paying yourself first’ through your bank’s app. This is where you automatically transfer part of your pay to your savings as soon as you get paid. You’re then free to spend the rest of your pay as you like.

While you’re sorting out your finances, it may be a good idea to check your savings account and make sure it’s working as hard as you are. Check out the savings accounts with the highest interest rates on Canstar’s database, or see which providers won our latest Savings and Transaction Account Awards.

Compare Savings Accounts

More apps to consider

Want more finance or money saving apps? Canstar has also written about:

• 5 cashback rewards apps and sites in Australia

• 6 popular investment apps 

• 9 apps to help you save on groceries

• fuel apps that can help you save money

• Money-making apps

Please note that this is just a selection of budgeting apps available. There are other budgeting apps out there and Canstar is not making recommendations about any particular platforms. It’s important to do your own research before deciding if any of these kinds of apps are suitable for you. You may want to speak to your bank, for example, before downloading third-party apps that use your personal banking information, particularly your login details.

If money is taken from your account due to a security issue or privacy breach related to a third-party app of this kind, your bank may hold you responsible for issues such as fraud. Financial protections and safeguards you may have otherwise received as a customer may be impacted based on the terms and conditions (which can be found in the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS)) of agreements with relevant providers.

Cover image source: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock.com

Additional reporting by Nick Whiting.