Free Quicken alternative Archives

If you’ve finally had it with the Mac version of Quicken, we’ve taken a closer look at the best Quicken alternatives for Mac of 2020.

Quicken for Mac has lagged behind the Windows version for years and even though Quicken 2019 For Mac was an improvement, the decision to make Quicken subscription only was the final straw for many faithful users.

The good news is that nowadays there’s some great personal finance software for Mac that not only do a better job, they don’t require a monthly or annual subscription to use.

We found the best alternative to Quicken for Mac is Personal Capital which blows Quicken out of the water when it comes to investment tracking and even better, is FREE with no subscription or commitments.

You May Also Like:

Apart from price, other reasons the apps here are better than Quicken include:

• Bank Syncing: Quicken is notoriously bad at syncing with bank accounts. You’ll find the apps here that support connecting to financial institutions far more reliable.
• Mobile Support: Quicken’s mobile app is limited and nowhere near as useful as the desktop app. Most of the apps here have well designed iPad and iPhone apps which are clear and easy to use.
• Investment Tracking: The Mac version of Quicken has never been good at tracking investments. You’ll find software here that do a much better job of managing car loans, home loan amortization, stocks, retirement funds and more.
• Less Paperwork: By centralizing all of your accounts and bill payments with some of the tools here, you should also find that they help you if you want to create a paperless office on your Mac.
• Better Tax Tracking: You’ll also find that many of the apps here do a better job of preparing your accounts when it comes to filing taxes on your Mac.

With this in mind, here then is our list of the best personal finance software for Mac to replace Quicken in order of ranking.

1. Personal Capital (Free)

Personal Capital is the best alternative to Quicken for Mac and best of all, it’s actually free to use.

If you already use Intuit’s other budgeting tool Mint (see review later), you’ll really like Personal Capital because it’s got the same feel but with far more powerful investment tracking.

Around 1.8 million people use Personal Capital and many of them have switched from Quicken, especially those with investments.

Here’s a summary of why Personal Capital is the best personal finance software for Mac users.

Hard to believe for a personal finance software worth its salt but Personal Capital is 100% free to use for as long as you want with no limitations.

Personal Capital only charges you a small commission if you decide you want to maximize your investments via a personal consultation with one of its own Financial Advisors.

This is completely optional and not obligatory but is there if you want it.

• It syncs accounts seamlessly in one place

If you’re tired of constant syncing issues and problems with Quicken, Personal Capital is a breath of fresh air.

It syncs extremely well with all major financial institutions, aggregates your accounts and makes it easy to get an overview of your finances.

This includes checking, savings, 401k, mortgage and investment accounts.

That’s not to say that hiccups don’t happen as much depends on technical changes made by financial institutions but it’s so much more reliable than Quicken.

You can also download any transactions synced with Personal Capital in CSV format.

• It analyzes your investments to save you money

What makes Personal Capital different to many budgeting apps is that it also helps you save money on existing investments.

One of the ways it does this is via a fee analyzer and an investment analyzer.

For example, the retirement fee analyzer immediately identifies areas where you may be getting ripped-off or over charged with 401K admin or management fees.

The investment analyzer does the same for your investments to see where your existing investments and holdings can be diversified to improve your returns.

• It helps you plan for the future

By telling Personal Capital exactly how much income you expect to have in retirement, Personal Capital calculates exactly how on or off track you are.

It can also assess the impact on your 401k of major life events such as the birth of a child, illness, college fees etc.

Or it can be used to assess how your immediate finances could be improved if you get a lump sum and eliminate expensive premiums by getting an estimate on selling your life insurance policy.

There’s also a comprehensive cost of living retirement calculator which gives you useful insights into your average net worth by age.

In fact Personal Capital is easily the best retirement planning software for Mac available.

• It’s as secure as any bank out there

Like any major financial institution, Personal Capital is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and has to adhere to the same security standards and procedures.

What’s reassuring about Personal Capital is that it doesn’t actually handle your log in details at all. It uses Yodlee which is a highly secure financial credentials management system used by major banks and investment institutions worldwide.

This is bank level, military grade security that’s about as secure as it gets nowadays.

Even if your account were somehow compromised, Personal Capital doesn’t actually allow transferring of funds via the interface so they cannot be touched anyway.

There are other measures that Personal Capital takes to encrypt and protect your data which you can read more about here.

• You can talk to a human if you want to

Sometimes an app just isn’t enough if you really want to grow your money.

Especially if you’re investing large sums, Personal Capital allows you to consult with a Personal Capital advisor who can make specific recommendations based on your personal situation and minimize tax liabilities.

You need a minimum of $100,000 to use this service and Personal Capital charges a commission for it but for serious investors, this is a unique bonus of the app.

Personal Capital obviously encourages you to use one its Financial Advisors but there’s no hard sell if you’re not interested.

• You can check your finances on the move

The Personal Capital iOS app is one of the best personal finance apps for iPad or iPhone we’ve tried, allowing you to manage and monitor your finances wherever you are.

It’s clear, easy to use and has lots of features compared to most mobile budgeting apps.

So what are the drawbacks to all this? Well, like any finance tool for Mac Personal Capital is not perfect.

The biggest gripe we have with Personal Capital is that you can’t import Quicken QIF or QFX files. This is definitely disappointing if you have years of Quicken accounts although even apps that do import Quicken files don’t usually do it very well due to the complexities of the format.

However, this is less of an issue now anyway since Quicken 2019 has removed the option to export files in QIF format from the Mac version anyway (although the Windows version of Quicken still exports to QIF). Quicken for Mac now only exports in QXF which is a proprietary Quicken format that can’t be imported into any program. Therefore, there’s no way to import Quicken 2019 files into Personal Capital unfortunately.

Unfortunately as well, you can’t change transaction dates in Personal Capital. If you have a fixed payment (such as salary or pension) that posts on the 1st of every month and it falls on a weekend or holiday, the transaction will appear in Personal Capital as the last banking day before that. This means Personal Capital will show that you have a double payment in the same month which messes up your budget.

Finally, another slight drawback to Personal Capital is that it doesn’t help you much at tax time.

Although there’s dedicated tax software for this, there seems little reason why Personal Capital can’t make things easier when it comes to declarations.

Overall though, Personal Capital not only helps you budget better but it manages your investments too and it’s so convenient to have that all in one app.

For more information, you can check out our full Personal Capital review.

You can also open a Personal Capital account for free to judge for yourself.

Pricing: Free

2. Moneyspire

If Cloud based apps are not your thing and you want a dedicated Mac desktop app, Moneyspire 2020 (formerly Fortora Fresh Finance) is an excellent no-nonsense personal budget software for both Mac and Windows.

Moneyspire doesn’t store your accounts in the Cloud, doesn’t require you to upgrade regularly or subscribe like Quicken and you can download it onto your Mac.

Even better, at the moment, Moneyspire is 40% off at just $29.99 compared to the normal price of $49.99 which is definitely a good deal for a desktop personal finance software for Mac on this level.

You can import QIF files from Quicken and likewise, export your accounts to QIF if you move back to Quicken at a later date.

If you’ve got a lot of accounts saved in Microsoft Money on Windows, Moneyspire can also import MS Money files.

Moneyspire supports online bill payments though via both Direct Connect and its own Moneyspire Connect service both of which are free to use.

Moneyspire Connect supports over 15000 financial institutions so it’s safe to say, your bank is probably supported if Direct Connect doesn’t work for any reason.

Like many personal finance app bank syncing services, Moneyspire Connect doesn’t always work perfectly but this is often due to security changes on the bank side.

Generally, you’ll probably find Direct Connect more reliable although that isn’t without its problems too.

Moneyspire is a very complete alternative to Quicken on Mac which tracks bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments and more.

You can set bill reminders, budgets and generate detailed reports and charts to monitor your outgoings and if you run a small business, you can also create professional invoices and track payments.

It can even print checks which most finance apps no longer support anymore on Mac.One of the things we like most about Moneyspire is that it doesn’t over complicate things. It gives a very clear overview of everything from accounts and details of spending to bill reminders and budgets.

The Bill & Deposit Reminder provides a very clear overview of upcoming payments:

You can generate detailed reports and charts to see exactly where your money is going to make tax reporting less stressful and much easier.

Other useful features in Moneyspire include Balance Forecast, Reconcile Statements, Online Banking, Import & Export of Data and Cloud syncing.

Reconciling of accounts in particular is a very useful feature when it comes to budgeting and you can see how it works below.

For mobile users, there’s a free Moneyspire app for iPad and iPhone which allows you to check your account balance, edit transactions, see upcoming bills and keep an eye on how your budget is doing.

Moneyspire used to be available in different versions but has now simplified its pricing policy and there’s now just one version of Moneyspire for $29.99 which includes Direct Connect access.

Normally it retails for $49.99 so that’s 40% off.

The impressively reliable Moneyspire Connect service is even included in the price (which previously used to cost an extra $49.99 per year).

If you do decide to purchase it, you have a 60 day money back guarantee if you’re not happy with it.

Unlike with Quicken, updates to Moneyspire are free but major updates usually require an upgrade fee.

Currently if you upgrade from Moneyspire 2018 to Moneyspire 2020 you can get 60% off.

You can also try Moneyspire on Mac for free if you want to see what it’s like for yourself.

You can also check our full Moneyspire review for more.

Pricing: $29.99 (40% off, normally $49.99) – Free Trial

3. Banktivity

Banktivity (formerly iBank) is designed specifically for Mac and has long been one of the most popular desktop replacements for Quicken on Mac.

Long before Quicken for Mac, Banktivity supported things like online banking integration, bill pay, envelope and full year budgeting, loan amortization and multi-currency support.

Some of these things have now been introduced in the latest version of Quicken 2018 for Mac but Banktivity still remains an excellent personal finance app for macOS.

Here are some of the things we like the most about Banktivity:

Banktivity will import your accounts from Quicken and other finance software.

Although it’s not perfect, the import tool does a pretty good job and saves valuable time manually entering old accounts. You can see how this works below.

Banktivity will automatically connect to and download transactions from your bank or other financial institution in real time.

It offers various ways of doing this with the most reliable and widely supported being Direct Access.

Direct Access is Banktivity’s own syncing service and generally works very well although it costs an extra $44.99 on top of the cost of Banktivity. Other free ways of connecting are available though.

• Detailed & Customized Reports

The reports generated by Banktivity are very well-organized due to tags and categorization.

There are Quick Reports for instant overviews of the essentials and you can create highly customized reports for virtually any kind of spending.

Banktivity supports traditional and envelope budgeting with useful setup wizards to get you going.

You can filter budgets by time frame to see exactly when you’ve gone under or over budget and set budgets for scheduled and unscheduled expenses.

• iPad, iPhone and iWatch Apps

Banktivity is designed exclusively for the Apple ecosystem with iOS apps to help you monitor and enter transactions on the move.

The apps sync with the desktop version of Banktivity and there’s even an iWatch app with spending alerts to help keep you on budget.

Investment management isn’t Banktivity’s strong point but there is a separate free Banktivity Investor app (formerly iBank Investor) which syncs investment data specifically.

So for example, you can see all of your holdings with the current gains or losses in real time with data pulled from Yahoo Finance.

Banktivity 6 costs $64.99 but you must pay an additional $44.99 per year for Direct Connect access.

You can also try a 30 day free trial.

For a more in-depth look, you can also read our full Banktivity review.

4. Moneydance

Moneydance has many satisfied customers that previously used Quicken and is an excellent desktop equivalent to Quicken on Mac.

Moneydance has all of the features of Quicken including online banking and bill payments, bill attachments and arguably has better investment tracking and budgeting tools than Quicken.

Moneydance is particularly good at handling investments and transactions in multiple currencies so is an excellent choice for those that hold investments or make purchases in currencies other than US dollars.

Moneydance provides a very clear overview of your finances. It gives you all the essentials such as account balances, upcoming and overdue transactions and exchange rate information.

The calendar overview is particularly useful for a quick oversight of upcoming credits and debits so you can manage your finances for that month more easily.

Moneydance can import Quicken files in QIF format although we noticed several duplicate transactions which had to be manually adjusted.

Moneydance can automatically download transactions and make bill payments online to hundreds of financial institutions. However, online banking is only available via Direct Connect and we found this can be tricky to setup in Moneydance.

Moneydance can sometimes be unreliable at retrieving bank data especially from credit card accounts and there’s no enhanced online bank connection service that you can pay extra like with Moneyspire and Banktivity.

Investment tracking is also easier to navigate and more powerful than Quicken, with support for stocks, bonds, CDs and mutual funds among others.

You can see the total value of your investments or the performance of individual stocks and mutual funds over time. Moneydance will also download stock prices automatically in real time.

Moneydance also has some powerful reporting tools that compare favorably with Quicken and it can generate reports for any of your accounts, savings or investments.

The Moneydance iPad and iPhone apps are both free so you can manage your budgeting on the move although it’s only really useful for manually inputting transactions.

Slightly concerning though is the fact that Moneydance only syncs the Mac and iOS app via Dropbox which doesn’t feel very secure compared to Banktivity’s encrypted Direct Access features.

You can also extend its functionality with add-ons and extensions for such things as a Balance Predictor, Debt Insights and a Find and Replace extension.

Overall Moneydance is a solid financial software for Mac to replace Quicken especially if you need reliable online banking integration.

Moneydance is $49.99 from the Mac App Store with a 90 day money back guarantee and there is also a free Moneydance demo for up to 100 transactions.

You can also check out our full Moneydance review.

Pricing: $49.99

5. Mint

Mint is owned by Intuit the makers of Quicken and is basically a free, lighter and less powerful version of Quicken.

The biggest difference between Mint and Quicken is there is no automatic online bill pay feature in Mint so if this is a deal breaker for you, move on.

Mint has improved a lot over the years and has faced less criticism than Quicken, partly because it doesn’t cost a cent to use.

In fact many people use Mint for day-to-day budgeting alongside Personal Capital to manage their finances.

Mint is all about getting your money in order and is based around three things:

• Budgeting: Mint will automatically suggest a budget for you based on your income and goals. You can factor in one off expenses and of course recurring monthly costs.

• Bill Tracking: All your bills are clearly labelled and managed in one place. You can see when bills need paying and set alerts to let you know before they’re overdue.

• Credit Score Analysis: Mint performs a free credit score analysis if you verify your identity. It also gives you recommendations on how you can improve it.

• Spending Summary: You get a weekly summary of where your money has gone. This is useful for seeing which areas you’re spending most in and is handy to compare month-by-month. Mint will also alert you to unusual or large transactions.

• Spending by Category: Mint can also categorize transactions to make it clearer where you spent your money. If you’ve ever looked through your bank statement and can’t understand the codes and jargon used for certain transactions, this is useful. It also separates ATM withdrawal amounts from ATM withdrawal fees so you can see just how much your spending in charges and other hidden fees.

• Investment Tracking: The investment tracking features in Mint are very basic and certainly nothing like the financial tools in Personal Capital but for 401(k) accounts, mutual funds and IRAs it gives a basic overview.

Mint also has one of the best mobile apps out there for budgeting. The Mint iPad and iPhone app looks good, gives a clear overview of your finances and is easy to navigate.

The biggest problem you”ll encounter with Mint is connecting to banks to update your accounts.

Like many personal finance apps, Mint can take time to update your balances and transactions and can be affected by changes made by your bank to the way third-party apps communicate with it.

Sometimes this means you have to delete an account in order to reconnect it and the problem with this is that you lose your account history in Mint.

It’s also important to note that although Mint and Quicken are both Intuit products, there is no integration between Quicken and Mint. They are completely separate products.

Overall however, as a more basic free alternative to Quicken, Mint is an excellent budgeting tool for Mac users.

Pricing: Free

6. SEE Finance 2

SEE Finance 2 is designed specifically for Mac and used to be the closest thing you could get to Quicken before Intuit finally released Quicken for Mac.

Despite the launch of Quicken, the makers have continued to develop SEE Finance into a very reliable, robust and feature packed personal budgeting app for Mac.

In fact the latest version of SEE Finance 2 has been built from the ground up and is a big improvement on SEE Finance 1 in terms of both looks, functionality and affordability.

We found that SEE Finance 2 is one of the best personal finance software for Mac when it comes to importing Quicken QIF data accurately.

Unlike apps such as Banktivity and Moneydance, there’s less chance of duplicated transactions when importing large QIF files into SEE Finance. You can import files in QIF, QMTF, CSV, QFX and OFX format.

Investment tracking is also very well done in SEE Finance 2 with a clear and varied overview of your investments with lots of different reports.

SEE Finance 2 is also very good at handling multiple currencies with over 150 different currencies supported.

You can connect to banking institutions via Direct Connect which will automatically download transactions and import data from others.

This is easy to setup and use in SEE Finance and pretty reliable at syncing and updating account. Note however that SEE Finance 2 does not support Bill Pay.

More recently there’s now an SEE Finance iOS app for iPhone and iPad that syncs with the Mac version via iCloud. It also works with OFX Direct Connection downloads if your bank supports it.

SEE Finance 2 is a massive improvement on the first version and remains a fast, reliable and slick app to manage your finances on Mac.

Note that SEE Finance 1 is still available in the Mac App Store but we strongly recommend using SEE Finance 2 instead as it’s far more modern, includes an iOS app and is more likely to be supported by the developer in the future.

You can also try a 30 day free trial of SEE Finance.

Pricing: $39.99 – Free Trial

7. YNAB

Although You Need a Budget (YNAB) can’t fully compare with Quicken, if it’s mainly budgeting you use Quicken for, it’s definitely a contender.

YNAB claims that new users save on average $200 in their first month and more than $3000 by month nine although this of course won’t be true for everyone.

Because of the way it approaches budgeting, YNAB has proved very effective at helping users to save money and get their finances in order which is made it very popular with Mac and PC users alike.

More recently, it’s now added online banking support via Direct Connect to conveniently sync and update all of your accounts and transactions in one place so you can keep tabs on your money better.

There is no support in YNAB for Bill Pay however.

The developers of YNAB strive to help you manage your money more efficiently by encouraging you to use a Four Basic Rule method which can genuinely help you save money or get out of debt.

The four golden rules are:

1. Give Every Dollar A Job: Every cent is accounted for
2. Embrace Your True Expenses: Break down large purchases into monthly payments
3. Roll With The Punches: Create an overflow for the unexpected
4. Age Your Money: Deal with bills as they happen

YNAB is structured around these four principles and helps you to structure your budget accordingly.

YNAB can import bank files and transaction ledgers and can retrieve your balances from over 12,000 banks.

If you're looking to replace Quicken, you're in the right place.

Before web-based personal finance tools, Quicken was one of the best personal finance budgeting and bill management software available. Where else could you get software that pulled all your financial information, organized your bills, helped you pay for those bills, and was basically a money consigliere? The only “downside” was that you had to pay for it.

But over the years, other companies brought new offers, built from the ground up, and took advantage of the technology available. They use code that runs faster, connects seamlessly with other financial companies, and just has fewer issues doing regular tasks. Most importantly, many are free so you can try them yourself.

I was a fan of Quicken but let's accept reality – Quicken breaks a lot. It doesn't sync your accounts randomly sometimes, you have password problems, screens that should appear are blank or lag, and it's just not a great user experience.

The bottom line:

If you're tired of Quicken, its support and sync issues, and want a suitable free alternative or replacement – we have some options.

Here are some of the best Quicken alternatives available:

Our Favorite Picks

16 Best Quicken Alternatives:

1. Personal Capital – free financial dashboard and wealth planner
2. Tiller – spreadsheet automation for full customization
3. You Need a Budget – best in class budgeting tool & mindset
4. CountAbout – can import data from Quicken
5. Pocketsmith – a budget planner, calendar, and projector
6. Mint – ad-supported budgeting tool
7. Banktivity – native Mac application
8. MoneyDance – not cloud-based
9. EveryDollar – follows Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps
10. GoodBudget – follows envelope budgeting method
11. GnuCash – open-source and free
12. DollarBird – date & calendar based budgeting
13. MoneyWiz – freemium app with cryptocurrency support
14. PocketGuard – freemium budgeting focused app
15. Wally – completely free budgeting app
16. HomeBudget – beautiful color-coded budgeting app

1. Personal Capital

If you're a long time user of Quicken, you're probably beyond the “help me build my budget” phase when it comes to picking personal finance software.

If you're interested in how your investment account is performing and whether you can retire (and less interested in just knowing how much you're spending on groceries), Personal Capital is a great Quicken alternative that does all that. (it'll also pull your credit card transactions so you will know how much you spent on groceries if you want!).

Personal Capital is a full-featured, free, personal finance management tool that does the basics of managing your finances but it also helps you build wealth and track your progress.

You can access Personal Capital through a web browser or with an app on your phone. The service is free because they also offer wealth management (optional, you can just use the tools) and those fees help pay for the upkeep of the tools. This also means you won't be inundated with advertisements like the ad-supported tools. You can read my full review of Personal Capital.

Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: It's better than Quicken because it's updated regularly, has a rich set of tools for investment and retirement, and it has a budget and expense tracking component. While not technically personal finance software, it's a website and not an application so there's nothing to download and patch or update (ugh) – that's all done automatically.

I am a fan of their retirement planner, a tool that helps you project your future financial needs and whether you'll get there. It's worth checking out.

One other vote of confidence for this Quicken replacement is their CEO – Bill Harris. He was formerly the CEO of Intuit and PayPal. Intuit used to own Quicken so you know he has the leadership skills and the ability to lead teams to build financial systems that are top-notch (the rest of the leadership team is very impressive in their own right!).

What could be better? The budget and expense tracking are good but it's not as old as Quicken so they aren't as complex. You can't, for example, manage your bill pay through Personal Capital. I don't find it to be a negative because it works for me, but people with really complicated budgets may find it limiting.

(since you access it with a browser, it is compatible with Mac OS!)

2. Tiller

One of the most popular personal finance tools out there is a little software application known as Microsoft Excel.

People love spreadsheets. (I love spreadsheets!)

You can customize it, tweak it, and get it tailored to exactly what you need. The only downside to spreadsheets is how you need to pull the data yourself… and who wants to do that? Quicken was great back in the day when there weren't nearly as many sync issues because it pulled the data for you.

There's a solution:

Welcome Tiller – a $6.58 a month service ($79 per year after a free 30 day trial) – that pulls your data for you and puts it into a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel document.

You can start with one of their free templates or build your own, but after the initial work, you'll have a fully automated spreadsheet tailored to what you need. You can use this to track your net worth, set a budget, or anything else you can imagine. (see our review of Tiller)

Why it is better than Quicken: Quicken is now cloud-based so if you want to avoid putting your data into the cloud, going with a spreadsheet is your best option. Tiller makes it possible for you to get automation AND keep your data locally.

3. You Need a Budget (YNAB)

You Need a Budget is a powerful budgeting software but it also can help you build a budget that you can grow into – it does more than track your money.

Think of it like Mint with a personality and a philosophy.

YNAB's philosophy revolves around four rules:

1. Give Every Dollar a Job
2. Embrace Your True Expenses
3. Roll With The Punches
4. Age Your Money

Those four pillars form the foundation for a budgeting app that has helped many people transform their financial lives and improve their spending habits.

If you're looking to transition to a financial tool that will help you (as in help you make the change, not just record expenses), you should take a look at YNAB.
(or, read our You Need a Budget review for more)

Why it is better than Quicken: Quicken only tracks your budget, YNAB does that AND helps you build a budget that meets the demands of your life and your savings needs. Sometimes you need something more than an app that connects to your bank account. If you want to change the way you budget, while still tracking it, YNAB is your solution.

YNAB is not an entire personal finance management suite – it focuses on budgeting and only budgeting. You won't get investment tools, retirement planning, or wealth management. It's strictly about building, maintaining, and transitioning into the budget you want.

4. CountAbout

The founders built CountAbout to be a Quicken alternative. Founded in mid-2012, it is one of the only personal finance apps that will import data from Quicken (and Mint!). If you're looking to transition away from Quicken but worry about losing all your data, you can feed it your Quicken file and it'll populate itself. That'll make the transition far less painful!

Like Quicken, CountAbout isn't free but it costs $9.99 for the Basic subscription and $39.99 for Premium subscription. The Premium subscription includes automatic transaction downloads. A subscription model means you have complete data privacy and you won't get annoying ads like with Mint.

Why is it a good alternative to Quicken? CountAbout has a lot of similar features to Quicken’s: split transactions, recurring transactions, attachments, budgeting, and more.

CountAbout is web-based, with multi-factor account security, so you don't have to download a program onto your computer, and there's no need to deal with unwieldy syncing issues – all you need is a web browser. And with CountAbout’s iOS and Android apps, your financial information is always at your fingertips.

Check out the key features (reminds me a lot of Quicken):

5. Pocketsmith

Pocketsmith is a freemium budgeting tool that uses calendars and the concept of “event-based budgeting.” Being calendar based means that rather than viewing your transactions as merely a long list of transactions, the calendar helps you understand when those transactions are happening and if they are doing so on a regular basis. This helps inform you about your spending and one of the more visual ways, when compared to others on this list.

It's freemium with the Basic option giving you 12 budgets, 2 accounts, and the ability to project 6 months into the future. If you upgrade to the Premium level, which is $9.95 per month, or $7.50 when you pay annually, then you get automatic transaction importing (you can still do it manually if you wish) as well as categorization of spending. You also get unlimited accounts and projection out to ten years. The Super, which is $19.95 per month or $14.16 when paid annually, gives you unlimited accounts and 30 years projection.

We do have a promotion code for Pocketsmith, gives you 50% off the first two months of Premium – make sure to enter the code 50OFFPREMIUM-5G7T to get 50% off the first two months.

Check out our comprehensive review of Pocketsmith to learn more.

6. Mint

You might have heard of these guys since they're now owned by the same company that once made Quicken.

Intuit acquired them in 2010 and that's the reason why they shuttered Quicken Online shortly thereafter.

Later, Intuit sold Quicken to H.I.G. Capital and that's when you knew the end was near!

Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: Mint is free and very powerful on the budgeting and expense tracking side. They do not have much to help you with investment and retirement savings, which I think you'll find is a huge limitation as you get older. The goal of Mint was always to be a budgeting app and with that in mind, they do a very good job.

If you are sick of Quicken and focus entirely on expense tracking, Mint is a good Quicken alternative. It, like Personal Capital, is cloud-based so there's no software to download, patch, or update. If you have investments and want to manage those, Mint will not be able to adequately fulfill your needs.

7. Banktivity

Built specifically for MacOS, Banktivity is a personal finance money manager that will import data from Quicken so you don't lose anything in the transition process. It'll do everything you want in a personal finance app, including budgeting, track spending, schedule and pay bills, monitor your investments (including real estate), and pull data from financial institutions.

It also has some powerful reporting options that, if you're a report junkie, you will probably really enjoy building, tweaking, and rebuilding. All this is also possible across iOS devices too with seamless mobile app synchronization.

It is not free, it costs a one-time fee of $69.99 but there is a 30-day trial (no credit card required).

8. MoneyDance

MoneyDance is not as well known as some of the other alternatives I've listed but I wanted to mention them because they're one of the few money apps that don't rely on the cloud. If you are concerned about your data being stored online, this solution is an alternative that keeps your data local to your computer.

You can still link your accounts online, so they pull your transactions automatically, but they only store them on your computer. You can enter transactions manually if you didn't want to link your accounts.

MoneyDance looks and feels like a checkbook, with the check register for transactions, but has charts and tables for reporting. It does budgeting but can also track your investments as well, albeit not as feature-rich as others.

MoneyDance is free to download and try but it costs $49.99. The free version has all the features as the paid version. The free version's limitation is that you can only enter 100 manual transactions.

9. EveryDollar

Have you heard of Dave Ramsey?

Many folks swear by his approach and EveryDollar is built with that in mind. His approach takes into account human psychology, rather than relying solely on math, and explains why it is so effective. It also explains why ideas like the debt snowball work so well, we need to work with our biases and tendencies if we hope to succeed. EveryDollar is a budgeting tool affiliated with Dave Ramsey's group, the Lampo Group.

Much like YNAB, it's a budgeting tool that uses the principles of zero-based budgeting.

In zero-based budgeting, you assign every dollar to a category (or job, in YNAB parlance). It's a level of rigor that can be refreshing or restricting, depending on your personality. The app itself is beautiful, available on your smartphone, and there is both a free and paid version. The paid version costs $129 a year.

(paid version offers phone support and automated transaction importing… which is a big time-saver; otherwise, you must manually enter the data)

10. GoodBudget

GoodBudget is a free budgeting app based on the envelope budgeting method. Envelope budgeting is when you set aside a prescribed amount for each category of spending, then spend it down each month.

It's one of the most popular money management techniques in personal finance. The envelope refers to the manual method of managing these types of budgets where you put the money into an envelope. When you run out of money, you either borrow cash from another envelope or you make do.

GoodBudget adds technology to the mix and will synch up bank accounts to help track your income and your spending. You set the amount for each category and then watch as your spending nears the limit each month. It's available for both iOS and Android phones.

11. GnuCash

GnuCash is a free open-source accounting software that, if you're willing to put into the work, can replicate a lot of the Quicken experience for those who are willing to scale the learning curve. It features double-entry accounting (every transaction must debit one account and credit another), which is effective but will require an adjustment if you're not used to it.

It offers a lot of the functionality of Quicken like splitting transactions, categorizing transactions, managing multiple accounts, schedule transactions, and reporting that includes all kinds of charts and reports (balance sheet, P&L, portfolio valuation, etc).

The big benefit is that it does budgeting as well as investments. It's not strictly a budgeting tool.

Lastly, it offers QIF importing, so you can import your Quicken files, plus OFX (Open Financial Exchange) protocol. So you can pull in your data if your bank offers you the ability to export transactions.

12. Dollarbird

Dollarbird is another personal finance app with an eye towards collaboration and a monthly calendar. You synchronize your accounts (banking, brokerage, and credit cards) with Dollarbird and they build a schedule of future income and expenditures to help with planning. Dollarbird also offers a 5-year financial plan that lets you establish longer-term financial goals and track your performance against them.

The innovation they bring to the table is the idea of calendar-based money management. You can collaborate with other people (partner, family, or a team) to manage a team budget, though the collaborative piece requires the Pro version ($39.99 / year).

13. MoneyWiz

Of all the alternatives on this list, I know the least about MoneyWiz despite them being around since 2010. They support practically every operating system you can imagine – everything from Windows to Android to iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad – and it'll sync them in real-time.

It's a powerful budgeting tool that integrates with 16,000+ banks in 51+ countries – which includes cryptocurrencies if you're in that investment class. If importing from your financial institution concerns you, you can manually enter data as well and it works just as well. For budgeting, you can work with their categories (which are multi-level) or add your own (and subcategories). You can split transactions, bulk edit, tag, and create powerful reports. It won't pay your bills for you but does have notification features.

It's a freemium product with the free version that has all the functionality minus synching across multiple devices and automated transaction downloads. For that, you need to buy the Standard ($49.99) or Premium ($49.99/yr or $4.99/mo).

14. PocketGuard

PocketGuard is a fairly simple budgeting app that links your credit cards, checking and savings accounts, investments, and loans all in one place. It has a complete picture (or at least what you tell it) of your finances but its strengths are in the budgeting – how it updates and categorizes your spending as it happens and looks for opportunities to save. Using your spending, it also builds a personalized budget based on your data as well as the goals you set for yourself.

They have a free version and a Plus version. The free version has all that you need for tracking your expenses and keep an eye on them. Plus allows you to add custom categories, track cash transactions like income and bills. Plus costs $3.99 per month or $34.99 per year.

15. Wally

Wally is the last app on the list because they only handle budgeting. Most people who start using Quicken often do so to help understand their spending. It isn't until your savings start growing that the investment portion becomes a bigger and bigger piece of the financial picture.

If that describes you and budgeting is what you care the most about, Wally may be for you. It's a beautifully designed app that helps you track your spending and understand your budget. Users have reported a few hiccups with the interface but if you get over the learning curve, and are OK with not having automatic transaction downloads, it's worth a try.

It is free though, which is why they can't offer automatic transaction downloads. One could argue that manually entering them puts you closer in touch with your spending.

16. HomeBudget

HomeBudget is a beautiful looking budgeting app that is essentially an expense tracker. It can track your income, expenses, and account balances – including bills that will be due in the future. Once bills are paid, they shift over to becoming expenses, in a transition that is well designed. There is a family sync feature that allows you to sync up the budgets on multiple devices so you share and exchange budgeting information. They also have reporting features so you can see your trends over the last six months, charts that break down your spending and saving, plus exporting those reports and data via email or WiFi.

It's available for iOS ($4.99) and Android ($5.99) devices. There is a “lite” version that you can use for free to see if you like it.

One of these will make a fine replacement for Quicken.

Common Questions about Quicken Alternatives

Is there a free program like Quicken?

On this list, the best free alternatives to Quicken are Personal Capital and Mint (if you don't mind ads).

Personal Capital won't be as robust as Mint in the budgeting department but it has far better wealth building and investment tools. You can see a comparison of Mint vs. Personal Capital vs. Quicken to make your determination of how they stack up.

What happened to Quicken Online?

Intuit created Quicken Online to try to compete with Mint. Near the end of 2009, they gave up and acquired Mint.

Afterward, they opted to shut down Quicken Online and sold the entire Quicken unit to H.I.G. Capital in 2016. Quicken Online no longer exists.

Quicken does have an online experience, something they've only recently created, but it's not free and it's playing catch up.

What is the best non-cloud-based Quicken alternatives?

Some of the best tools out there are cloud-based. Personal Capital, Mint, and many on this list store your information online. If they are somehow compromised, they potentially could leak your data. They have a lot of security protocols in place to prevent this type of thing, but nothing is 100% safe. The ones that do not store your data in the cloud are less powerful, but … they don't store your data in the cloud.

Moneydance Personal Finance, which is included in the list above, is one alternative that is a local program and stores your financial data locally. It still has the functionality of pulling data from hundreds of financial institutions so it will still save you time.

Tiller is a tool that integrates with a Google Sheet (which is cloud-based) and Microsoft Excel (which local). They do store some of your information since they have to get the credentials to pull your data but it's not like other services that contain the credentials and the data.

What is a good accounting software alternative to Quickbooks?

I haven't used Quickbooks and I'm not familiar with the world of accounting, but GnuCash is often cited as a powerful and free alternative to Quickbooks and Quicken.

It has a lot of features present in accounting software, like double-entry accounting and small business accounting, but many folks have success using it as a personal accounting software package. It's a software program you download and install locally, which means it's not cloud-based, and it's completely free.

Which Quicken alternatives work on Mac?

Any cloud-based alternative will work on the PC and a Mac. It's cloud-based so they work in your browser, which makes them operating system agnostic.

If you want a piece of personal finance software designed specifically to run on Macs, Banktivity is your best option. It's one of the few personal finance applications built specifically for the MacOS and it has the richest feature-set. Most importantly, especially if you use an iPhone or iPad, it seamlessly integrates among the three.

Our Top Picks

 

1. Personal Capital

Personal Capital is our favorite free Quicken replacement. We’ve used it for years and continue to love this powerful program.

What’s so great about Personal Capital? For starters, it’s free. They offer a comprehensive collection of money tools in one convenient place, so we think that’s pretty awesome.

With Personal Capital, you can track your spending, net worth, and investments. You can also use it to check your investments for expensive fees and calculate whether you’re saving enough for retirement. Again, these tools are all 100% free and at your disposal after a simple sign up process.

So, how does it work?

In short, Personal Capital synthesizes the data from all your accounts and delivers a complete financial picture that’s easy to understand. Just link Personal Capital to your bank, credit, and investment accounts. Then, let the program do the heavy lifting for you. The software will import your transactions and calculate how your spending aligns with your budget.

Why We Love It: Unlike some other alternatives to Quicken, Personal Capital is more than just budgets. And, since it is free, it makes a great compliment to some of the other programs as well.

Personal Capital also offers a powerful investment management tool. Its user-friendly interface tracks your asset allocation, monitors your investment performance, and analyzes your fees. It even takes your retirement goals into account and estimates your retirement income/expenditures based on your financial data. And, of course, Personal Capital also calculates the value of your assets relative to your debt (i.e. your net worth).

What’s Not to Like: Although the budgeting and expense tracking tools work well for us, some users may find them to be a bit too basic. When directly comparing Personal Capital vs. Quicken, this program lacks online bill management capabilities. Don’t let that be a deal breaker, though.

You can always take advantage of Personal Capital’s tools while using another Quicken alternative for your day-to-day money management needs. Plus, these tools are free so you’ve got nothing to lose! Check out our complete Personal Capital review for more information.

 

Personal Capital
Price: FREE

Personal Capital is our choice for the top Quicken alternative. This free software automatically tracks your savings, spending, investments, net worth, and more. It’s easy to use and the free price tag makes it an excellent replacement for Quicken. We’ve used it for years and think you’ll love it too! 

 

2. Tiller Money

If you’re used to Quicken, you already know your way around a spreadsheet. Good news: Tiller Money offers a familiar spreadsheet environment with supercharged money management capabilities.

Tiller Money connects with more than 20,000 financial institutions to import and categorize data from your bank, credit card, mortgage, and brokerage accounts into Google Sheets or Excel.

The Foundation Template is the easiest way to get started. It’s a ready-to-go- spreadsheet package that helps you build monthly and yearly budgets based on customizable spending categories. It tracks your spending, financial standing, and balances in one place to give you a clear sense of your situation.

For customers needing a more customized experience, Tiller add-ons and Tiller Money Labs offer additional spreadsheets to meet your unique needs. A zero-sum budget, debt snowball template, and net worth tracker are just a few of the more popular options. For the spreadsheet nerds among us, there is even an option to build your own spreadsheet.

Here’s a bonus that many money apps don’t include — tools specifically for freelancers and small business owners. These tools include things like quarterly tax estimation and business-expense tracking.

Why We Love It: Tiller Money harnesses the power of spreadsheets to offer a customizable financial management experience. It’s especially great for people who like to be a little more hands-on with their money.

Tiller Money is an ad-free subscription that packs a lot of value for only $6.58 a month ($79 per year). Like most paid financial tools, you can try it risk-free with a free 30-day trial. Students can also use it free for a whole year.

 

Tiller Money
Price: $6.58/month ($79/year)

Need a budgeting tool that also runs some basic financial reports? Tiller Money is it. This program takes spreadsheet budgeting to the next level by helping you create a monthly budget and automatically tracking your results. When it comes to tax preparation, Tiller also runs detailed reports on itemized deductions, your annual spending by category, and more. Start with one of their templates, customize it to meet your needs, or build your own. Get it free for the first month, then it’s less than $7 a month.

 

3. MoneyPatrol

MoneyPatrol is a money management tool that excels at financial tracking . It also offers some solid budgeting help.

The app itself connects to more than 15,000 financial institutions and automatically imports financial data from your bank, credit card, mortgage, student loan, and investment accounts. It displays a summary of your overall financial picture on your dashboard, which is especially useful for people who have accounts at more than one bank. 

Then, MoneyPatrol sorts your bank and credit card transactions into customizable spending categories, labeling them by merchant. It produces a slew of charts, graphs, and reports to help you understand exactly how, when, and where you’re spending your money. The budgeting function allows you to plan a monthly budget for each category and tracks how your spending aligns with those budgets.

As if powerful financial tracking and solid budgeting capabilities weren’t enough, MoneyPatrol takes it one step further with a comprehensive alert and notification system. You’ll get text or email notifications whenever money moves out of your account. MoneyPatrol also monitors your spending history for patterns and irregularities, using that data to remind you of upcoming bills and alert you to potentially fraudulent transactions.

A MoneyPatrol subscription will run you $84 per year, which works out to $7 per month. They also offer a 15-day trial before you buy it.

 

MoneyPatrol
Price: $7.00/month

MoneyPatrol combines powerful financial tracking with solid budgeting options. It also comes with an excellent alert system that let’s you know when money is moving in and out of your accounts. MoneyPatrol uses this information to look for spending patterns and monitor your accounts for fraud. Start with a 15-day free trial. After that, MoneyPatrol is just $7 a month when billed annually.

 

4. CountAbout

CountAbout is another web-based alternative to Quicken. This program actually supports importing data from both Quicken and Mint, which is nice if you’re making a switch.

When you use CountAbout on a computer, there’s no app to install; you simply log in to their website. They do offer a mobile app for iOS and Android, but not all the features are available through the app.

Why We Love CountAbout as a Quicken Replacement: Like most of these programs, you can use CountAbout to create a fully customizable budget. Then, simply sync it to your bank account to automatically import your transactions and track your spending. Pretty sweet right? But, that’s not all it does.

With CountAbout, you can also run financial reports at any time throughout the year. The program also offers invoicing capability for small business owners as well as the ability to attach receipts. So, it is a pretty powerful alternative to Quicken and can replace much of the old program’s functionality – even beyond budgeting.

CountAbout offers two membership options: basic for $9.99 a year or premium for $39.99 a year. The only difference between the two is that the basic membership does not support syncing with online bank accounts. That means if you opt for the basic membership, your transactions will not be automatically downloaded. Your options are to enter transactions manually or import QIF files from your bank if they make those available.

You can even try CountAbout before committing. Simply sign up and take advantage of the 15-day free trial on their premium membership.

 

CountAbout
Price: $9.99/year (Basic) or $39.99/year (Premium)

If you’re making the switch from Quicken, CountAbout serves as a good replacement. With CountAbout, you can create a budget and customize it to suit your needs. The software also offers invoicing capability, unlimited financial reports, and more. Take advantage of a 15-day free trial by clicking below.

 

5. YNAB

You Need a Budget (YNAB) has long been considered one of the best budgeting apps available. Althouhg it doesn’t offer a whole suite of money tools like Personal Capital, it focuses on two important things things: building a realistic budget and tracking your spending. Personally, I think that is great because it does them both very well.

I say a “realistic” budget because YNAB’s philosophy is that a budget is fluid. Therfore, they believe your budget should be adjusted frequently in response to whatever is going on in your life. That’s why YNAB makes it so easy to move money between spending categories to keep your budget balanced.

For example, if you’ve budgeted $300 for groceries but your transactions indicate that you’ve spent $340, YNAB will notify you that you’ve overspent. Then, they’ll prompt you to deduct that $40 from another category. This system is especially useful if your goal is to maintain a zero-sum budget.

Why YBAB Is a Good Quicken Alternative: With YNAB, you have two choices: You can automatically import your transactions by connecting to your bank and credit providers, or you can enter your transactions manually. Obviously, automating things is easier, but some may appreciate the option to do things the old-fashioned way. Once it is there, the info is added to the budget template, and you’re good to go.

YNAB offers a free 34-day trial, so you can try a full month of budgeting with no commitment. After that, the cost is just $7/month when billed annually ($11.99/month if billed monthly). That means once a year, you’ll pay $84 to use the app/software. Like some other programs, students can enjoy 12 months for free – which is a pretty cool benefit.

Also cool is that YNAB offers a 100% money-back guarantee. So, if you buy the app and decide it’s not helping you take control of your finances, YNAB will give you a full refund. I can’t argue with that!

 

You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Price: $7.00/month (billed annually)

YNAB is an excellent choice for anybody who needs help building a budget or tracking their spending. The program adheres to the “zero-based” budgeting system, making it easy to see exactly where all of your money is being spent each month. You can try YNAB free for 34 days. After that, it is just $7 per month.

 

8. Empower Finance

If you’re looking for a Quicken alternative that helps you budget, tracks your spending, and actively saves you money, Empower Finance is it. Oh, and it includes a bank account!

Like most money management apps, Empower works by connecting to your financial accounts and importing your transactions. You can build a daily, weekly, or monthly budget with custom categories and track how your spending compares.

But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. While most apps help you save by making you more mindful of your spending, Empower actually finds you savings opportunities.

Its AutoSave feature helps you meet your weekly savings goals by analyzing your income and spending patterns to discover surplus cash. Empower transfers that excess money into a separate account up to four times a week — cha-ching!

Empower Finance also takes stock of your regular bill payments and presents you with lower-cost alternatives. It will even work with your current service providers to negotiate you a better deal. Lost track of your subscriptions? Empower rounds them up and cancels the ones you don’t want. That’s pretty incredible.

If you need further convincing, Empower Finance includes an interest-bearing checking account and access to a human money coach via live chat.  

Why We Love It: Empower Finance harnesses the power of financial tracking to make personalized recommendations that save you real money. You can try Empower Finance for free for 30 days. After that, you get access to all its features for just $6 per month.