Best Online Budgeting Tools

It’s fair to say that managing your budget is not as much fun as blowing your budget. Spending money feels great – until your bank balance hits zero, that is. A range of budgeting apps have been designed to help you keep track of your finances.

Money Dashboard

Free, iOS & Android

The king of budgeting apps, Money Dashboard gives you a fantastic overview of your finances. Once you’ve hooked it up to all your accounts, it puts all the info in one place so you can see what’s coming in and going out. You can categorise spending and view your habits over six months through nifty charts and graphics to get a really clear idea of exactly how many hundreds of pounds you’d save each year if you could only be bothered to wake up 20 minutes earlier and make a packed lunch each morning.

Bean

Free, iOS & Android

As in bean counter rather than Mr Bean, this app is for you if you tell yourself you’re too busy to shop around. Share all your messy financial connections read-only through the wonders of open banking, and Bean will flag up better deals on everything from inflated household bills to overpriced pet insurance to groggy savings rates.

Emma

Free, iOS & Android

Blowing too much on your Costa treats? Sorry but Emma will (with Jane Austen politeness) let you know, once your read-only accounts and cards are added to the app. She is another play on the theme of slimming your budget without losing the will to live. Her smart tech will ring up a savings target that you can afford at the end of the month and buzz you when that iced Mocha will bust your coffee budget.

Wally

Free, iOS & Android

If you are a bit old school, or open banking feels a bit like snooping, don’t feel like a wally for trying this old stager. It’s a slick and stylish app where you have to do the heavy lifting yourself, inputting all the data. But after that the tech works its magic. You can see every species of account including loans, set daily or weekly budgets and savings targets, create groups to manage joint accounts, and ask Wally for spending insights and alerts.

Cleo

Free, iOS & Android

Turns out that artificial intelligence isn’t quite as scary as the movies made it out to be. Take Cleo, a chatbot assistant with read-only access to your accounts who’ll give you instant answers to questions about your spending and saving, as well as charts and graphs.