The 7 Best Credit Karma Alternatives for Budgeting in 2026
Mint closed on March 23, 2024, and its users were moved to Credit Karma. A lot of people are still there, and a lot of them are still looking for the budget they used to have. This guide is for them: seven apps to look at if you want to plan and track spending, not just watch your credit.
Full disclosure up front: we build FYN, one of the apps on this list. We have tried to be fair to every product here, and every competitor fact below comes from that company's own pages, linked from our comparison pages.
First: for credit scores alone, Credit Karma is still fine
Credit Karma is free with no subscription. It sends credit monitoring alerts for new inquiries and accounts, and it runs on iPhone, Android and the web. If a free credit score and those alerts are all you need, there is no reason to leave. This post is about budgeting and spending.
On that side, Credit Karma shows spending by category, recurring charges and a "Left After Bills" figure. Its budgeting tool is the Paycheck Assistant, an AI plan for each paycheck built from your actual spending, and an in-app AI assistant, Credit Karma Intelligence, is rolling out to all members. It also has apps in ChatGPT and Claude for credit and spending insights. Two things to know: Credit Karma is free because it earns from financial product offers, and its plan is built around each paycheck. If you want a monthly budget you can hold your spending against, one of the apps below will fit better. Our FYN vs Credit Karma comparison has the side-by-side table.
1. FYN: a budget built for you, with receipts and AI access
FYN categorizes every transaction itself and builds your budget from your last 60 days of spending, so you start with real numbers instead of a blank form. It does not hand you a review queue; it only flags transactions it thinks it may have gotten wrong. Proactive alerts tell you when something needs a look.
It also goes below the transaction. Scan a receipt or forward it by email and FYN keeps every line item; on Pro it builds price history from your own trips. Apple Pay and Google Wallet purchases are logged as you pay, on iPhone and Android. When a store charges you twice, FYN asks the store first, and on Pro it drafts the dispute letter and tracks the bank's deadlines. You can ask Ask FYN, the in-app AI chat, about your money, or connect FYN's read-only MCP connector to Claude, ChatGPT (Plus and up) or Grok. You can revoke any app, and FYN keeps a log of what each one asked.
Pricing: free plan; Pro is $9.99/month and adds bank sync via Plaid for up to 15 accounts. See pricing. Honest limitation: FYN has no credit score, no bill negotiation and no investment analysis to speak of. Keep Credit Karma for your score, and look at Monarch or Empower if investments matter most. Automatic bank sync is a Pro feature.
2. Monarch Money: a full household planner
Monarch fills your budget from your six-month average and pairs it with an AI assistant, AI insights and a weekly recap. It scans receipts with line items and accepts receipts by email. Household members are free, it connects banks through Plaid, MX and Finicity, and Monarch Plus adds forecasting and investment analysis. It also has an official MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini CLI and Cursor. It runs on iPhone, Android and the web.
Pricing: Core is $14.99/month or $99.99/year; Plus is $199.99/year. Honest limitation: there is no free plan, so moving from free Credit Karma means paying from day one. See FYN vs Monarch Money.
3. Quicken Simplifi: a spending plan and a credit score in one app
If you want to replace Credit Karma with one app rather than add a second, Simplifi is the closest fit here. It offers a free VantageScore 3.0 credit score based on Equifax data, for US residents. On the budgeting side it builds a Spending Plan for you (monthly income minus bills and subscriptions, updated as you spend) and forecasts your future balances from your income and spending. It also tracks investments, lets you share your account with a partner or advisor, connects to more than 14,000 institutions, and includes Quicken Assist, an AI chat in beta.
Pricing: $6.99/month billed annually ($83.88/year); new members get $3.99/month for the first year. Honest limitation: no free plan, and the first-year price renews at the then-current rate. A refund within 30 days ends access to your data right away. See FYN vs Quicken Simplifi.
4. YNAB: hands-on, give-every-dollar-a-job budgeting
YNAB is a method as much as an app: you give every dollar a job, set targets, and use Auto-Assign (including Average Spent) to fund categories. YNAB Together puts up to six people on one subscription, and it runs on iPhone, Android, the web and Apple Watch, with Direct Import in North America and 18 European countries.
Pricing: $14.99/month or $109/year, after a 34-day free trial with no card; college students get a free year. Honest limitation: YNAB categorizes by payee and you approve, so it is the opposite of Credit Karma's hands-off feed. If you want the app to do the sorting, it will feel like work. See FYN vs YNAB.
5. Rocket Money: budgets plus subscription and bill help
Rocket Money suggests budget amounts from your spending and detects bills and subscriptions on its free plan. Premium adds a cancellation service, partner sharing and credit score tracking, so it can cover both halves of what Credit Karma users want. Premium+ adds Rowan, an AI agent you reach by text.
Pricing: free plan; Premium is $7–14/month; Premium+ is $15/month. Honest limitation: the credit score and cancellations are paid features, and from November 2, 2026, new bill negotiations require Premium+ (the 35–60% success fee ends). See FYN vs Rocket Money.
6. PocketGuard: one safe-to-spend number
PocketGuard is built around Leftover, a near real-time figure of what is safe to spend after bills and goals. That is a close cousin of Credit Karma's Left After Bills, with full budgets behind it: zero-based, envelope, 50/30/20 or custom, with rollovers. It adds a debt payoff planner (avalanche or snowball), alerts for fees and over-budget categories, and unlimited bank accounts through Plaid and Finicity.
Pricing: $12.99/month, $74.99/year or $149.99 lifetime, after a 7-day trial. Honest limitation: no free plan, and bill lowering runs through partner Billshark, which PocketGuard says keeps roughly 40% of the first year's savings. See FYN vs PocketGuard.
7. Empower: free net worth, light budgeting
Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly Personal Capital) is free. It puts checking, savings, cards, loans, mortgages, investments, IRAs and 401(k)s in one net-worth view, with a Retirement Planner and portfolio analysis. An optional daily email lists every transaction from the last 24 hours, and bill reminders cover linked cards, loans and mortgages.
Pricing: the dashboard is free; Empower also sells advisory services at 0.89% a year from $100,000, and you can enroll from the dashboard. Honest limitation: the budget is one monthly total, not a budget by category. Pair it with a budgeting app if you need both. See FYN vs Empower.
Which Credit Karma alternative should you pick?
You want a budget without setting one up: FYN builds it from your last 60 days and categorizes every transaction itself; keep Credit Karma alongside it for your score. Rocket Money also suggests amounts from your spending.
You want one app for budgeting and a credit score: Quicken Simplifi, or Rocket Money Premium. You want long-range planning and investments: Monarch, or Empower's free dashboard if a single monthly budget total is enough. You want to change how you spend, dollar by dollar: YNAB. You want one number that says what you can spend: PocketGuard.
You want to stay free: keep Credit Karma for credit and add FYN's free plan for receipts, Apple Pay and Google Wallet taps, and Ask FYN. If you later want your accounts to sync on their own, that is Pro. Try FYN free and see whether a budget built from your own spending fits how you manage money.