Budgeting software: what you need and what you can skip

What makes a budget succeed or fail is whether you stick with it. Every feature listed below is about that.

• Entering an expense in under ten seconds. At the till, with one hand, without clicking through three screens first. If it takes longer, you put it off until the evening, and the evening means never. Test this before you test anything else.
• Fixed costs as recurring items. Rent, energy, insurance and subscriptions go in once, with an amount and a frequency, and after that they show up every month on their own. Software that makes you type in your rent again every month loses you in month two.
• Monthly totals per category. Not a chart in twelve colours, but a list: groceries 412, transport 95, eating out 138. That is the number you make a decision on.
• Export. To CSV or JSON, all of your data, whenever you want. Without an export you are stuck with the software, and software disappears. This is the feature you hopefully never need, and that is exactly why you should check it beforehand.

• Bank connection. It sounds like the answer to all that entering, and for someone with fifty transactions a week it is. For most people it means an intermediary looking over your shoulder, a connection that has to be approved again every few months, and seeing your spending only afterwards instead of at the moment itself. The trade-off is explained in the guide on budgeting without linking your bank.
• Savings goals with confetti. A bar that fills up and an animation when it is full. Fun in the first week. What makes a goal work is the amount you put aside every month, and the confetti doesn't help with that.
• Shared households. Essential if two of you share a budget. Unnecessary if you live alone, and then it is the very feature you take the more expensive plan for.
• AI advice. "You spent 12 per cent more on groceries this month." You knew that already, because you were in the shop. Advice that changes your behaviour rarely comes from an app and almost always from the number itself. Budgetto's monthly forecast is deliberately a calculation based on your own history and not advice; how it works is explained in the guide on the monthly forecast.

Software costs money to build and to keep running. Whoever pays for that decides who the software is made for. There are four answers.

• Free with ads. You aren't the customer, the advertiser is. The app wants you to come back often, not to be done quickly.
• Free with data sales. Your transactions are commercially valuable, especially in aggregate. Search the privacy policy for the word "partners".
• Paid. The most honest model: you pay, you are the customer, and the company has a reason to keep existing. The downside is one more subscription, in an app that is meant to cut down your subscriptions.
• Free with no revenue model. That is how Budgetto works: no ads, no data sales, no paid version, and the maker pays the server costs. The honest downside is that there is no business model behind it that guarantees it will still be here in five years. That is why export isn't an afterthought here.

The prices of the paid options are listed, with the date they were checked, in the comparison with YNAB and Spendee, and deliberately not here: prices change, and there should be only one page that goes out of date.

Two paid apps that are worth their money, each for a different reason.

• YNAB isn't an overview but a method. Every euro gets a job in advance, and you spend nothing there is no envelope for. If your problem is spending and not a lack of overview, it will do more for you than any free app. It takes discipline, and that is also the reason people give up on it.
• Spendee has the best shared wallets. Two people keeping track of a household or a trip together, with a bank connection and a real app with widgets, are well served there.

Budgetto is built for one person, doesn't connect to your bank and is a website rather than an app. If you want an overview and a forecast without a subscription, that is enough. If you are looking for a method or a family budget, it isn't.

Go through this list with the software open. It takes ten minutes and saves you from starting over after three weeks.

1. How many taps does it take to enter an expense of €14?
2. Can I enter a fixed cost once and give it a frequency, including quarterly or yearly?
3. Can I see the total per category for each month in a list, without first decoding a chart?
4. Can I export all my data, and can I import that export again?
5. Who pays for the software, and what does the privacy policy say under "partners"?
6. Where is my data stored, and in which country?
7. Does it work without a bank connection, or is the connection required to see anything?
8. What happens to my account if I enter nothing for three months: is it deleted, or is it still there?

If the first four questions get a good answer, you have budgeting software that works. The other four decide whether you will still be happy with it a year from now.

Choose on the four features you use every week, not on the list in the app store. Then look at who pays for the software, because that tells you who it was built for. And check the export before you start, not when you want to leave.

Budgetto answers the eight questions like this: a few taps, yes at any frequency, yes in a list, yes to CSV and JSON and back again, nobody, on a server in the EU, without a connection, and your account stays until you delete it yourself. Whether that is enough depends on what you are looking for.

Try Budgetto for free