Best budgeting apps – Which?

Money Dashboard, a budgeting app that allowed you to view all your banking accounts in one place to help organise your finances, will be closing on Tuesday 31 December. 

The owners said they could not find a sustainable business model for the app and have chosen to focus on B2B open banking service instead. This means the Neon and Classic web platforms and mobile apps will close, bank connections will be removed and existing accounts will be closed and deleted. 

If you’re a Money Dashboard user looking for an alternative, or you’re a newbie and want to give budgeting apps a go, here Which? rounds up several on offer and explains what you need to check before signing up to one. 

How do budgeting apps work? 

Thanks to open banking, third parties that access your data can use it in a wide range of ways to help you manage your money more effectively. From getting an overview of all your accounts in one place, to developing algorithms to squirrel away extra savings without impacting your normal spending habits.

While more than three million people already use open banking, just one in 10 Which? members use a finance app that’s not provided by their bank, according to a survey we carried out in February 2021.

However, when we asked those who were interested in using finance apps, more than half of the respondents said they’d like to have an overview of all of their accounts, and around four in 10 said they’d like help with budgeting.

• Find out more: how to plan an effective budget

Video: budgeting apps to help you save

Watch our short video below to find out which budgeting apps could help you save money:

How to get started

You’ll need a smartphone that has access to either the iOS App Store or the Google Play store. You can search for the name of the app you want to try, and then download it to your phone. Make sure it looks like the images and videos we’ve featured below.

You’ll have to provide some personal information to get the app started – this can vary, but you’ll usually be asked for your name, mobile number and email address, before being asked to set security details such as a password and a Pin. After that, you’ll need to select which accounts you want to link to, and you’ll also need your login information for these.

We’ve listed just a few that can help with your budgeting and savings goals that are all regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and either appear on the list of approved providers on openbanking.org.uk, or access open banking via a listed firm.

Emma

Cost: Free for standard Emma; £4.99 per month for Emma Plus; £9.99 a month for Emma Pro; £14.99 per month for Emma Ultimate.

Key features: In a bid to cut your spending and make the most of the money you have, Emma is another app that links to bank accounts and other financial products, analysing the information to make suggestions on wasteful subscriptions you could cut.

The standard free version of Emma lets you connect up to two bank accounts so you can track your subscriptions, set up monthly budgets, track your payday and make payments within the app.

Emma Plus, Pro and Ultimate offer extra features. With Emma Plus you can link up to four bank accounts, and take advantage of in-app cashback offers and a fraud detection feature that alerts you if your details have been accessed as part of a data breach, along with bill reminders and a ‘true balance’ feature that shows you how much you really have left to spend each month.

Emma Pro offers unlimited bank logins and features such as the ability to track your net worth over time, custom categories and you track your spending in any offline accounts.  

Emma Ultimate has additional features, such as business accounts, unlimited bank transfers and a ‘Spaces’ feature, where you can set budgets on a more specific level.

Drawbacks: If you go for either of the paid-for Emma options, make sure you’ll use enough of the features to justify the price.

HyperJar

Cost: Free

Key features: HyperJar is a bit different from other budgeting apps, as it includes a prepaid card (physical or digital). The idea is to load your money onto the card, and then allocate it into different digital ‘jars’ on the app. You can label these jars according to your spending habits – such as groceries and transport.

You can auto-link individual shops to the jars, so the money comes out of your jar automatically. For example, if you link Sainsbury’s or Aldi to your groceries jar, money would automatically be taken from this jar when you shop in these stores.

You can earn interest on your money if you commit to spending with certain brands – participating retailers change fairly regularly.

You can also set up shared spending jars – parents can share these with their children to keep an eye on where they’re spending money, and it could also work with housemates or partners for paying household bills.

Another bonus is that you can also use your prepaid card to spend abroad, with no foreign transaction fees.

Money you load onto the card is managed by a regulated e-money provider, Modulr FS Limited, held in segregated accounts at the Bank of England. However, you should note that your money is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Drawbacks: You can’t withdraw cash from an ATM with your prepaid card, and you might be able to earn more interest with your money in a regular instant-access savings account.

Plum

Cost: Standard version of Plum is free; Plum Pro costs £2.99 per month; Plum Ultra costs £4.99 per month; Plum Premium costs £9.99 per month.

Key features: Plum’s app features an AI assistant that analyses spending going on in your linked account, and calculates how much you can put aside every few days. You can use Plum to store this cash in a savings account (Interest Pocket) – but you only get one for the basic version. Your spending is split into categories and tracked so you can see how much you have left until your next payday.

Your transactional data is also used to flag what Plum calls ‘lost money’, which is where it thinks you’ve been overcharged on bills that could be cheaper if you switch elsewhere.

Extra features for the paid-for subscriptions include extra pockets, cashback and Money Maximiser – where you can split your spending into weekly allowances and earn interest on the rest.

You also get investment options and a Plum Visa debit card. 

Drawbacks: To get the best easy access saving rate on offer within the app you need to pay. Currently Plum Ultra and Pro offer 4.21% AER, compared to the free version which pays 3.51% AER. 

Snoop

Cost: Free, but you’re asked if you want to give Snoop a ‘tip’ if it makes you a big saving. Snoop Plus is £4.99 a month.

Key features: By gathering all of your accounts together in one place, Snoop tracks your regular bills and flags up when they’re higher than usual – sometimes offering up cheaper providers you can switch to.

It also has features such as an annual insurance checker to check up on policy prices, and a mobile monitor that looks out for cheaper phone deals.

Your transactional data is used to tell Snoop where you shop, meaning it can then suggest voucher codes and cashback offers for your favourite shops or brands to make the most of your spending.

Snoop Plus has extra features such as tracking your spending from payday to payday and the ability to create unlimited custom spending ports and refund alerts.

Drawbacks: You might not get as much out of it if you’re already a savvy shopper who looks out for things like cashback offers and discount codes.

What to check before allowing access to your data

There are hundreds of apps out there claiming to revolutionise your finances, but it can be hard to tell which ones are safe to try.

Opening up your data to third parties does come with a certain amount of risk – for instance, if the worst should happen and the third party firm is hacked. There are measures in place to ensure your information is as secure as possible, but you should also perform a few checks before allowing your data to be shared with a third party.

1. Check the FCA register

A company’s regulatory information should be listed on its website, detailing its trading name and FCA reference number (also called an FRN) – you can usually find this information by scrolling to the bottom of the company’s website.

Compare this information to what’s listed on the FCA register. The authorisation a company needs can vary depending on the services its app provides, but most commonly it will be ‘account information service providers’ and/or ‘payment initiation service providers’.

2. Check openbanking.org.uk

You can look through a list of approved providers at openbanking.org.uk if you want to double-check an app or service.

Note that not all regulated apps will appear on this list, as some access open banking via another approved company. If this is the case, the details should also appear with other regulatory information on the company’s website.

3. Check your data permissions

The information you share through open banking is protected by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, which state that your personal data can only be used for the specific purposes you’ve approved, it cannot be shared or stored indefinitely, and you should be able to revoke your permission to use it at any time.

If an app or service doesn’t appear when conducting these searches or doesn’t seem to be following these rules, it’s best not to grant it permission to access your data.