For over a decade, Mint was the default answer to “what app should I use to track my money?” That answer is gone: Intuit shut Mint down in early 2024 and steered its users toward Credit Karma — which tracks credit and net worth but never replicated Mint’s budgets, category rules, or alert system. If you’re searching for Mint today, what you actually need is a replacement.
The good news: the current crop of alternatives is genuinely better than Mint was at its end, especially at the two features that made Mint sticky — custom transaction rules and proactive alerts. Here’s how the main options compare and how to get one set up as your single money dashboard.
What Made Mint Work (and What to Demand From a Replacement)
Mint’s core value was aggregation plus automation: every account in one place, transactions categorized for you, and warnings before problems became expensive. A real replacement needs all four of these:
- Broad account aggregation — checking, savings, credit cards, loans, and investments, syncing reliably through connectors like Plaid.
- Custom rules — “always rename and categorize this merchant,” “flag anything over a set amount,” “split this recurring charge.” Rules are what turn a transaction feed into a system you don’t have to babysit.
- Alerts that matter — low balance, upcoming bills, unusually large charges, new recurring subscriptions, budget category overruns.
- A dashboard view — net worth, cash flow, and budget status on one screen, on web and mobile.
One thing to accept up front: the free-with-ads model mostly died with Mint. Today’s serious tools charge a subscription; the trade is better sync reliability, no ads, and active development.
The Best Mint Alternatives Compared
These five are the credible, currently maintained options. Prices are approximate as of mid-2026 and change — check current pricing before you commit. Most offer a free trial.
| App | Price (approx.) | Best for | Custom rules | Alerts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monarch Money | ~$100/yr | Closest overall Mint replacement | Strong — rename, categorize, tag, split by rule | Bills, budgets, large transactions, new recurring charges |
| YNAB | ~$110/yr | Hands-on zero-based budgeting | Payee renaming + auto-categorization | Overspending, upcoming scheduled transactions |
| Rocket Money | Free tier; premium ~$6–12/mo | Subscription tracking + light budgeting | Basic category rules | Low balance, bill reminders, subscription price increases |
| Empower Personal Dashboard | Free | Investments and net worth focus | Limited — manual recategorization | Large transactions, cash-flow summaries |
| Copilot Money | ~$95/yr | Polished design, Apple ecosystem | Strong — smart categorization that learns your fixes | Budgets, recurring charges, unusual spending |
A quick read on each:
- Monarch Money is the one most former Mint users land on. It looks and works the way Mint did — flexible budgets, a real rules engine, shared access for couples, solid web app — without the ads.
- YNAB is less a tracker than a budgeting method: every dollar gets a job before you spend it. It demands more attention than the others and repays it; if you want passive monitoring, it’s the wrong pick.
- Rocket Money (formerly Truebill) leads with recurring-charge detection and bill negotiation. Its free tier is a reasonable Mint-lite; the deeper budgeting features sit behind the premium tier, where you choose your price within a range.
- Empower Personal Dashboard is the best free option, with excellent net-worth and investment-fee views. Its budgeting is shallow, and the trade-off for “free” is that Empower may call to pitch its wealth-management service.
- Copilot Money has the most refined interface of the group and machine-learning categorization that improves as you correct it. Historically Apple-first, so Android users should confirm current platform support before subscribing.
Avoid recommendations you’ll still find in older articles: Truebill (renamed Rocket Money), and Digit, Trim, and Wally, which have shut down or faded — links and reviews for them are stale.
Set Up Your New Dashboard in an Afternoon
Whichever app you choose, the first-week setup determines whether it sticks. Budget about two hours.
- Link every account, not just the convenient ones. The dashboard’s value is completeness. Include the store card you rarely use and the old savings account — hidden accounts are where surprise charges live.
- Verify the sync. Compare each linked balance against the real balance at the bank. Fix broken connections now, while you’re paying attention.
- Clean up 60–90 days of history. Recategorize the backlog once. It’s tedious, but it trains the app’s auto-categorization and gives your budgets a real baseline.
- Set your category structure before adding rules. Fewer, broader categories beat dozens of precise ones — you want a structure you’ll actually maintain.
Build Rules That Do the Work for You
Rules are the difference between an app you maintain and an app that maintains itself. Start with these four patterns (specific amounts are examples — set your own):
- Merchant cleanup: rename cryptic payment-processor strings to the real merchant and lock in a category, so “SQ *COFFEE 4821” always books as the coffee shop under Dining.
- Recurring-charge tagging: rule every subscription into a “Recurring” tag or category. This gives you a one-screen subscription audit whenever you want one.
- Large-transaction flags: anything over, say, $200 gets flagged for review. This catches fraud, duplicate charges, and price increases within a day instead of at statement time.
- Splits for mixed merchants: if a warehouse-store run is always part groceries, part household, a standing split rule keeps both budgets honest without manual edits.
Add rules as exceptions appear rather than trying to anticipate everything on day one. After three or four weeks, a well-ruled feed needs only a couple of minutes of review per week.
Alerts: Configure for Signal, Not Noise
The fastest way to ruin an alert system is to turn everything on and then start ignoring notifications. Enable a small set that each demand an action:
- Low balance on your checking account, set above your typical week of spending — this is your overdraft early-warning.
- Bill due / upcoming recurring charge a few days ahead, so you can cancel or move money before the charge posts.
- New recurring charge detected — catches free trials converting to paid.
- Budget threshold at around 80% of a category, early enough in the month to change behavior rather than just document the overrun.
Skip daily balance summaries and per-transaction pings unless you’re actively investigating something. Every alert you ignore trains you to ignore the next one.
Which One Should You Pick?
- You want Mint back: Monarch Money.
- You want to change your spending behavior, not just watch it: YNAB.
- Your main problem is subscriptions and bills: Rocket Money.
- You won’t pay and you’re mostly tracking investments: Empower Personal Dashboard.
- You’re all-in on Apple and value design: Copilot Money.
Use the free trial deliberately: link everything, build five rules, set three alerts, and live with it for two weeks. The right replacement is the one still open in a tab at the end of the trial — and any of these five will do more for you than a bookmarked login page for an app that no longer exists.