Budget apps that don't connect to your bank

If you searched for this, you probably already know why. You want a budget, and you would rather not hand your banking credentials — or a permanent read-only feed of every transaction — to a company you had not heard of last week.

That is a reasonable position, and it is not the same as being paranoid. But the apps that claim to serve it fall into two quite different groups, and lumping them together is why most lists on this subject are useless.

Two very different things called "no bank connection"

• Manual by design. No bank connection feature exists. There is no screen where you could link an account even if you changed your mind.
• Linking is optional. The app is built around an automatic feed, but you can decline it and type entries yourself. You still create an account, your budget still lives on their servers, and the linking option is always one tap away.

Both are legitimate. Only the first removes the third party entirely.

Manual by design

Alfie and Fudget have no bank connection feature at all. Actual Budget is local-first and open source, with optional sync you host yourself.

Linking is optional

These all support manual entry but are built around an automatic feed:

"Not stated" means exactly that: we could not find a primary-source claim either way, so we are not asserting one. Prices verified from each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-08-07.

What each one is genuinely good at

Fudget

Real Mac and Windows apps alongside mobile, with sync across all of them. Its cross-platform desktop availability is a real strength for keyboard-first entry.

Simple list-based income-minus-expenses tracking. Free tier: Up to 5 budgets, up to 250 entries, single device. Pricing

YNAB (You Need A Budget)

Two aggregators rather than one, so a bank that fails on Plaid can often still connect via MX — materially higher connection success. And a genuinely deep method with a large, well-taught community behind it.

Zero-based — “give every dollar a job”. No free tier. Pricing

Goodbudget

A real free tier plus web access and household sharing — two people on separate phones and a browser all see the same envelope balances. A device-local app cannot do that.

Envelope budgeting. Free tier: 10 regular + 10 more envelopes, 1 account, 2 devices, 1 year of history. Usable indefinitely. Pricing

EveryDollar

The free tier is a complete zero-based budget with unlimited categories and live human support, tied to a widely-taught curriculum. If you want coaching alongside the tool, Alfie does not offer that.

Zero-based — “income minus expenses equals zero”. Free tier: Manual transaction entry, unlimited budget categories, multi-device access, live support. Indefinite. Pricing

Monarch Money

Automatic net-worth aggregation across investments, loans and property. Maintaining that by hand is impractical, and Alfie does not try to.

Flexible budgeting and tracking. No free tier. Pricing

Actual Budget

Free, open source, genuinely local-first, and you can self-host sync with optional end-to-end encryption. On privacy grounds this is the most credible alternative on this page — if you are comfortable running a server, it is excellent.

Zero-sum / envelope budgeting. Free tier: Everything. Open source under the MIT licence. Pricing

PocketGuard

Four aggregators gives unusually broad institution coverage, and automatic recurring-charge detection surfaces subscriptions you forgot you were paying for.

“In My Pocket” — income minus bills and goals. Free tier: A free version exists; the exact free-vs-Plus split is not published. Pricing

Honest recommendations

• You want free and you don't mind an account: EveryDollar's free tier is a complete manual zero-based budget with unlimited categories. It is a genuinely good deal.
• You want free, private and you're technical: Actual Budget. Open source, local-first, self-hostable with end-to-end encryption. The catch is there is no official iOS app — it's a desktop app plus a mobile PWA.
• You want a household budget shared across people: Goodbudget. A device-local app cannot do what its web plus multi-device sync does.
• You want automatic import and you've decided linking is fine: YNAB or Monarch. Both are excellent, both cost roughly $100+/year.
• You want zero-based budgeting on an Apple device with no Alfie account, no aggregator and no server: that is what we built Alfie for.

Where Alfie fits

Alfie is a zero-based budget planner. Alfie Basic: free forever with 1 active manual budget. Apple Premium is $3.99/mo, $39.99/yr, or $149.99 once across iPhone, iPad, Mac. Android edition is coming soon. Apple budgets do not sync to Android and Android budgets do not sync to Apple. Apple purchases do not unlock Android. Google Play purchases do not unlock Apple. The Apple edition works offline with budgets on device and in private iCloud. No bank linking, Alfie account, ads, third-party analytics, or generative AI advice.

The coming-soon Android edition supports local-only use and optional Android-only Google Drive app-data sync. Alfie also has no web app, shared household budget, or automatic import — so it will only ever know what you tell it. If any of those matter more to you than removing the third party, one of the apps above is the better choice.

Choose your platform

Related

• Does Alfie connect to my bank?
• Does Alfie work offline?
• Where is my budget data stored?