13 Best Budget Apps for Couples on a Budget

Must-have Budget Apps for Couples!

Budgeting as a couple – sounds good, right? But how do you do this in the best way for you?

In this article, we will go through the best budgeting apps for couples and, hopefully, find the best one for you and your partner.

Here at Living Low Key, we are huge fans of budgeting and ensuring you and your significant other are on the same page. According to a survey done by New Ally, 36% of couples found that money caused the most stress in their relationships.

We started budgeting because we had $30,000 debt and were living on a $35,000 salary. With the help of our budget, we paid it off!

Not only that, but we have stayed debt-free (so important!) and have a net worth of $300,000. We did this as a team, and we believe that working together is the key to success.

Let’s take a look at the best free budget app options for couples now:

Best Shared Budget App for Couples

In this article, we will look at the best budget apps for couples. There are so many to choose from. Some apps are even designed to use as a pair.

You can do cool things like syncing your accounts and even using instant messenger to query transactions with each other and send emojis.

If you are looking for transparency with your partner, budget apps are a perfect way to do just that.

Not to worry, though, as there are some apps that we will be looking at that allow you to choose which data you want to share with your partner. If you’re a planner, you’ll love these.

The best couple’s budget apps include the following apps:

• Mint – Best app for helping you save money each month
• Oportun– All in one simple budget app saves, budgets, and invests for you
• Empower – The best financial planning tool
• PocketGuard– One of the best mobile apps that allows you to save automatically
• EveryDollar – Best budgeting app for Dave Ramsey fans
• Wally – Free budgeting app
• You Need A Budget– Start your monthly budget with these budgeting tools
• Goodbudget– Track your expenses and recurring bills with this app
• Clarity Money– Tracks your spending
• Honeydue– The simplest way to manage money together
• Firstly – Visually see all of your accounts in one place
• Zeta – Two cards, one account
• Tiller – View all of your money in one place

We will look into these apps more thoroughly throughout the article to find the best budget app for you!

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What is a Budgeting App?

Budgeting is really important when it comes to managing your finances.

A common misconception about budgeting is that it means that you can never spend any money, ever. Wrong!

A budget is a way of making sure that you are spending your hard-earned money on the things that you truly want.

Often what happens is that the bills are paid, and then whatever is left is spent. But on what?

Have you ever gotten to the end of the month and wondered where all of your money has gone? This is where budgeting your money can help you and make sure it’s going where you want it to.

When creating a budget, it’s up to you which method you choose, but we like using a budgeting app if you do this as a couple.

A budgeting app is an app that you can use on your phone to create and work on your budget in real time.

What Should You Look for in a Budget App for Couples?

You’re going to want to look for some special features when you’re picking a budgeting app and some additional things if you’re doing it as a couple.

The most important thing that you need to look for in a couple’s finance app is if it is a shareable budget app between your two phones.

You will want it to be able to sync between your phones quickly so that you have real-time information.

It’s also worth looking at if the app supports both sets of devices so that if you have a different type of phone from your partner, it’ll still work for you.

You may want the app to link to your bank accounts, but then again, you may not, so this is something to think about.

Speak to your partner and see what kind of features they would be interested in having in the budget app as well, so you’re on the same page.

Best Budgeting Apps For Couples 

We will now go through the best budgeting apps for couples. We’ll take a look at the different features and benefits of each; to hopefully help you decide which one to pick!

1. Tiller

Are you looking to manage and track your finances all in one place? Then you must check out one of the best budgeting tools for couples, Tiller!

Tiller is a 5-star budgeting app that lets you view all your money in one spot!

Sign up for the free app, content your accounts, link to Google Sheets, import your transactions, and Tiller does the rest!

If you are looking for a great budget app for couples, this is the one! Head here to read the reviews!

Fee: Free 30-day budgeting app, then $79 a year

Available on: Sign up with either your Microsoft or Google account

2. Mint – Simple budgeting app

Mint is one of the most popular budgeting apps out there, with over 20 million users, and for a good reason!

It’s a free app, and Mint is part of Intuit, which is a company that also owns TurboTax and QuickBooks.

It’s a money management app and is mainly focused on helping you with running your budget.

The great thing about the Mint app is that you can see all of your finances in one place. They bring together your bank balances, credit card balances, credit score, and more.

Your spending will be categorized by which areas you have been spending in. We love a good colored graph!

It won’t only show you all of your finances but give recommendations on things that you can do to improve them as well.

Mint works by analyzing various offers, e.g., checking, saving, and credit card proposals, and making recommendations about which is best for your lifestyle.

You can also set up notifications to alert you of certain things in your budget, such as bill pay reminders, to ensure you don’t miss any due bills.

Fee: Free budgeting app

Available on: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, and Windows mobile devices

3. Oportun- Formerly known as Digit

The Oportun budgeting app is free for the first 30 days, and then it’s $5 per month. It can be canceled at any time.

Oportun is the U.S. only and supports over 2500 banks and credit unions within the United States.

You will share what you want to save for, and Oportun will help you to reach your savings goals.

Examples of things that you could be saving for include things like an emergency fund, Coachella, vacations, and down payments. Whatever your saving goal is, it is up to you!

Oportun is an app that works by automatically saving your money for you. The way that it does this is by analyzing your upcoming bills, how much you are expected to spend, and the minimum amount that you need in your account.

If you have a surplus of money, it will move into a savings account for you. You have unlimited withdrawals if you save more than you’d like.

Not only that, but Oportun will save for and pay off your credit card debt. Every three months, you will get a 1% savings bonus.

Fee: Free for six months, then $5 per month

Available on: Apple and Android

4. Empower – Previously known as Personal Capital

Empower is another service that you can sign up for, which gives you a great overall look at your finances.

Empower’s primary focus is on investments. That means that the budgeting features are perhaps not as in-depth as the other apps on this list, but it’s a fantastic tool, nevertheless.

It provides you with a bunch of tools for managing your investment portfolio and asset allocation.

This personal finance app will link and show all of your accounts in one place for your ease. There are tools on Empower that will show you your income, expenses, and cash flow.

Fee: Free budgeting app, with a wealth management fee of 0.89% if you choose to use that part

Available on: iPhone and Android

5. PocketGuard

The PocketGuard app is aptly named, as its job is to stop you from overspending.

You must link all of your finances – your credit cards, checking accounts, savings accounts, and loans. Once they are all linked, you will be able to see them all in one place.

PocketGuard will automatically update your spending and then put it into budget categories. Categorizing your money is really helpful because you can see the areas that you may need to work on.

There is a section called ‘In My Pocket,’ which will show you how much you can save after paying all your bills.

This budget app is great because it creates a budget for you by looking at your income, bills, and the goals that you have set. This app is excellent for financial planning as it takes the dirty work out for you!

Fee: Free, with an optional Paid version for $3.99 per month or a $34.99 annual fee

Available on: iPhone and Android

6. EveryDollar – Great Couples Budgeting App

Are you a fan of Dave Ramsey? If so, you have probably heard of this budgeting app before, as it’s one he developed!

It’s a free budget app, but there is a premium version available.

With the free version, you get:

• To create as many budgets as you’d like
• Track your transactions against your budget
• Email support

With the premium version, you get all of the above plus the following:

• Connect to your bank account
• View your account balances while in the app
• Call-back support and coaching calls

The EveryDollar app works with the zero-based budgeting system, which is where you make sure that every dollar you earn has a goal and purpose. It also works great along with the envelope budgeting system.

It’s set up with Dave’s Baby Step program in mind, so this could be the perfect personal finance app for you if you follow this plan.

Fee: Free, with a premium version available for $99 a year

Available on: iPhone and Android

7. Wally

Wally is a personal finance app that is available on the iPhone. They have recently released a Wally+ app which is on Android and has a few new features.

It is excellent for budgeting because it allows you to look at your income and expenses and compare them to see how your budget is doing.

It’s really handy to show you how much money you have left in your budget and how much you can save.

Wally is a free budgeting app, and they’ve tried to make it really simple to use. The main difference between this app to the others is that everything is done manually.

Therefore it could be a good app to start with if you are new to budgeting.

Fee: Free budgeting app, with plans to add more premium versions in the future

Available on: iPhone and the Android version is called Wally+

8. YNAB (You Need A Budget) 

You Need a Budget app is usually referred to by the abbreviation YNAB and is a very popular budget app.

The thing that we love about YNAB is that its focus is on forward planning. After all, if you are only looking at your budget at the end of the month, then you will have already spent that money. 

You can also access YNAB on iPad, Alexa, and Apple Watch, as well as on iPhone and Android,

You can sync all your accounts, get real-time updates, get reports, and so much more.

Fee: Free for the first 34 days and then $11.99 monthly, or $84 a year. It’s free for students for the first year.

Available on: Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

9. Goodbudget

Goodbudget was previously known by the name Easy Envelope Budget Aid. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the new name is a lot easier to say!

They use the envelope budgeting system. The envelope method is traditionally where you have a set of envelopes and pull out cash for each category in your budget. 

You would then put the cash into the envelopes for each category amount.

Goodbudget uses software to have a digital version of the envelope method. Some budget categories include things like food, beauty, pets, household, and so on.

This can be a great budget app for couples because it can sync across your devices. Your partner will be able to see if you have spent in a budget category and how much.

With the free version, you get the following features:

• Ten regular envelopes
• Ten more envelopes
• One account
• Two devices 
• One year of history
• Debt tracking
• Community support

For the paid option, you get the following features:

• Unlimited envelopes
• Unlimited accounts
• Five devices
• Seven years of history
• Debt tracking
• Email support

Fee: They have a free version. The paid version for $8 per month or $70 annually

Available on: Download in the App Store or Google Play

10. Clarity Money

Clarity Money is a free budget app for couples that helps you to analyze your spending and see how you can save more.

On this app, you can organize your bills with automated expense tracking. You can literally track all aspects of your budget on this app. 

With the Clarity Money app for couples, you can cancel your subscriptions and automate your savings.

Fee: Free to use, but they will charge a one-time fee of 33% of the annual savings you receive from their bill negotiation service.

Available on: Android, iOS, and web

11. Honeydue

Honeydue is a free budgeting app for couples and works wonders no matter the stage of your relationship.

You can track all of your accounts like your bank account, loans, investments, etc. – Honeydue supports more than 20,000 financial institutions in over five countries.

Something that we love about Honeydue is that although you can track your expenses with your partner, you also have the option to restrict some information. This is perfect if you are trying to buy a surprise present!

There’s an Instant Messaging type feature on the app where you can query transactions with your partner and send each other emojis. This is a great starter shared budget app!

Fee: Free to use for both partners

Available on: iPhone and Android

12. Honeyfi 

Honeyfi is an app that concentrates on managing finances as a couple. It’s free to use for the first 30 days, and after that, it’s $59.99 per year (around $5 per month).

You start off by telling the app which financial goals you want to save for, e.g., saving for a home, vacation, wedding, etc.

You can link your accounts and choose what you share with each other. The Honeyfi app also gives you the ability to tag transactions to one of you, and you can even comment on them to ask your partner about them.

On the budgeting side of the app, you can track your spending and bills all in one place. It will send you alerts for upcoming bills, which means you shouldn’t ever miss a payment again.

Fee: Free to use for the first 30 days and then $59.99 per year

Available on: iPhone and Android

13. Zeta

Zeta is a free mobile and web app where you can combine your finances as a couple, but it is a budget app that can be shared.

This app is focused on managing your money as a couple. So it’s the best app for budgeting as a couple rather than on your own (although you can do it on your own).

You can either link all of your accounts to share with your partner or set up separate accounts and choose what you share specifically with them via the app.

This is another shared budget app that offers the bill alerts option to help you from missing any payments.

Something that we love about this app is that you can split transactions with your partner, to manage to pay each other back.

Fee: 100% free to use

Available on: iPhone and Android

Bonus Money Management Tool: Kubera

Kubera is a serious portfolio-tracking app. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t perfect for couples, whether you’re just starting to combine finances or continuing to grow your financial lives together!

Kubera is the only all-in-one wealth tracker that empowers users to monitor and manage every single dollar, stock, collectible, real estate purchase, crypto coin investment, and any other assets your own. Not only can you see and dive into each asset using Kubera’s modern dashboard, but Kubera also automatically updates and keeps track of their value to give you a real-time calculation of your net worth!

As powerful as Kubera is, it’s still simple to use. You can even create multiple profiles in Kubera to track your assets together, individually, or in any unique combination that helps you keep track of specific goals. 

If account security is a concern for you, Kubera employs bank-level security and will never sell your data or annoy you with upsells. The platform is free to get started, then requires a simple monthly or yearly fee after that. No surprise or increased fees based on your assets.

Fee: Free 14-day trial and then $15 per month after that

Available on: Desktop

FAQ- Best Couples Budget App

Best Budget Apps For Couples – Summary

When it comes to managing your money with your partner, it’s never been easier with mobile apps!

There are so many great budget tracking apps for couples out there, with so many targeted explicitly to helping you as a pair, that you can’t really go wrong.

Have another read through our summaries of each budget app and think about which one would work best for your household. It’s important to get feedback from your partner on this as well, as you will be doing this as a team.

Which budgeting app you pick will come down to what you want to get out of a budget app. Do you want to be able to link your accounts? Do you want to have your own account still and only share certain parts of it?

You may want to start with a free version of an app first – there’s nothing wrong with trying them all out and picking the one that you get on the best with.

Managing your money as a couple can be tricky if you are new to it, but these budget apps for couples make it easy to do and even sprinkle in a bit of fun.

As a couple, you should have joint financial goals that you are working on together to envision your life together. Having a budget app together will help you work on this as a team and give each other accountability.

Do you use a budget-tracking app in your household?

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