Best Mac Personal Finance Software 2018

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

May 21, 2020  Luckily, Quicken is not your only choice for personal finance software. These days, you have plenty of options to manage your money. Even better, some of the best Quicken alternatives are actually free! So, if you’re looking for a new money management program, you’re in the right place. Check out our list of the top alternatives to Quicken.

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 $4.92 a month service (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):

• Imports data from Quicken and Mint
• Thousands of financial institutions
• Multi-factor login protection
• Android and iOS apps
• Category customization (add, delete, rename)
• Tags (add, delete, rename)
• Reporting for Account balances
• Reporting for Category activity
• Reporting for Tag activity
• Report exporting
• Attachments

• Individual Account QIF importing
• Budgeting
• Running register balances
• Account reconciliation
• Graphs for Income & Spending
• Recurring transactions
• Investment balances by Institution
• Memorized transactions
• Split transactions
• Description renaming
• Invoicing

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.

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).

Free Personal Finance Software Mac

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.

Ten years ago, there were no solid personal finance apps out there. If you wanted to track your money, you didn't have many options beyond websites like Google Finance.

I got my start tracking our budget and net worth with a spreadsheet. I would learn about Intuit's Quicken software but it felt silly to pay for software to help me save money. It wasn't until later that other options, like Mint, started to appear.

A great personal finance app can help you save more money and give you an instant snapshot of your financial situation in seconds. A lot of the problems we face when dealing with money have to do with decisions and information. We need to make a decision but we don't have enough information! To get it, we have to log into a lot of accounts, track a lot of data, and then analyze it before we make a decision. That's a tremendous amount of time that can be saved if you use a good personal finance app.

Today, you have free personal finance apps that are better than what you had to pay for years ago. Personal Capital, SigFig, Mint, YNAB, Mvelopes, … the list is long and distinguished.

Money apps have taken over and we all can benefit.

That's why earlier this year I polled the readers of Wallet Hacks for their “must-have, can't live without” money apps and here's what they said.

Best Money Management App – Personal Capital

A financial dashboard is a place where you can see everything involving your money in one place. Your assets, your liabilities, your net worth – all your financial accounts visible on one convenient page.

This is important because when that information is easily accessible, it's easily remembered and understood. We use it to pull in all of our data, though we ignore the credit card debt piece because we pay off our bills every month in full.

What's easier – logging into one account or logging into a dozen?

When it comes to a financial dashboard, the clear leader is Personal Capital. It has a rich suite of tools built around investments, with a nod towards expense tracking similar to Mint, so you can get a sense of where everything is at a moment's notice. If you're interested in a consultation with a financial advisor, they have that built-in as well and it's something that helps them stand out from other similar services. It's how Personal Capital makes the money that supports the free tool.

This app is for you if: You want an instant snapshot of your finances, from your investments to your budget, in one place. Personal Capital is free.

Best Budgeting App – You Need a Budget

If you want to change your budget, You Need a Budget (YNAB) is one of the most powerful tools you can use because it does more than track your expenses – it actually helps you build and stick to a budget.

One of the biggest challenges in money management is in near-term planning. What are you going to do next week and next month?

Retirement can be decades away but you are spending money today and tomorrow. By getting the next month right, you go a long way towards getting your money situation under control.

YNAB has a four rule methodology that has worked well for its users.

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

Another reason why YNAB is powerful has to do with its educational tools and community. You will not find this with financial tools like Mint. There are no Whiteboard Wednesdays to help you understand your money a little better. This is what separates them from the pack in many ways. Our You Need a Budget review goes deeper into the app and the company if you wish to learn more.

This app is for you if: You want to transform your budget and get your spending in line with your financial goals. YNAB costs $6.99 a month after a 34-day trial.

It's this methodology around the tool that makes it powerful.

Budgeting Runner Up – Mint

For tracking a budget, Mint is one of the most popular free budgeting tools out there and we wanted to list them because they are free to use.

If you don't have sizable investments, Mint is a very powerful tool that is better for budgeting but less effective for investments. I felt like Mint was fantastic up to a point. Once you focus more on investing than budgeting, Personal Capital has far more tools to help you succeed.

This app is for you if: You want to know where your money is going each month without having to log into multiple accounts. Mint is free.

Best Support Tool – Tiller

Tiller is a service that will connect with your bank and credits card to pull daily transaction data into a sheet on Google Docs. No other service out there offers this. You can choose to start from half a dozen templates or roll your own, but Tiller will update it automatically from 100,000+ financial institutions.

Best Personal Finance Software Mac

If you see a list of “best apps” and it doesn't list a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel at #1 — they didn't actually survey. They made it up. 🙂

That being said – Microsoft Excel is all about finding a template and customizing something that fits your exact needs. It can be a lot of work but that hands-on interaction means you know the data is pristine. You can rely on tools like Tiller to pull the transaction data too so you get the automation (it works with Google Docs).

I use Microsoft Excel to track our net worth, with Personal Capital pulling the data.

The apps on this list are pre-built, faster to get into, and free. If you're starting from scratch, these apps will get you there faster but will not fit you like a glove. Excel is like a custom-tailored suit, these are off the rack.

Tiller automates your custom spreadsheet so it fits you perfectly. Don't change the way you do things to match a tool, add Tiller and bring your spreadsheet into the 21st century.

Tiller is a monthly subscription but it won't inundate you with advertisements or pitch you on their financial planning services as an upsell. (to be fair, other companies need to do that because they are free – the bills have to be paid!)

You get the customization of a financial spreadsheet but the automation piece so you don't need to login to all of your accounts and update everything manually. Removing that hurdle makes money management that much easier. They offer a free 30-day trial.

This app is for you if: You love spreadsheets or have one you've tailored but need a tool to help you pull the data for you. Tiller costs $4.92 per month after a 30-day trial. (here's more about Tiller)

Best Mac Personal Finance Software 2018 Price

Best Investing App – Robinhood

Robinhood is a stock brokerage that offers commission free trades through their app or web interface. They're like any other brokerage, they use Apex Clearing Corporation, are a member of FINRA, and have SIPC insurance for up to $500,000 like any other brokerage. There is no account minimum, no maintenance fee, and you can even trade crypto if you're so inclined.

They make money by offering a Robinhood Gold subscription service that gets you margin and after-hours trading. If you want to trade stocks, I find it difficult to argue against a Robinhood and their free trades.

For a limited time, you can get a free share of stock from Robinhood.

Best Micro saving App – Acorns

One of the newest innovations in personal finance apps is the idea of a micro-savings app – where you can automatically save small amounts of money and have it invested in the market. The idea is that these apps will figure out how much they can transfer into an investment account without you, or your budget, realizing. It's less active than traditional saving but more effective if you're the type of person who doesn't actively manage your budget daily.

One of the best in class is Acorns, which doesn't rely on a black box “guessing” how much to save. When you make a purchase, the amount is rounded up and transferred. This predictability is often seen as a better process than some other apps, which “guess.” Guessing can be a little scary.

They also have a “Found Money” feature with some partners where if you purchase with a merchant, they may contribute a small bit to your Acorns account.

Here is our full review of Acorns.

Best Mac Personal Finance Software 2018 Free

Best Personal Finance Assistant – Trim

If robots can help you invest, perhaps they can help you do some of the more mundane jobs you don't want to?

That's the idea behind Trim, and a whole host of similar apps.

Trim is free to use and they can help you renegotiate your bills like with your cable provider, including Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter. They connect to your accounts, analyze your recurring subscriptions, and identifies areas where you could be saving money. The cable is just the start, they will look at other subscriptions too including your car insurance.

The best part is that they handle the negotiations for you. No more calling Comcast and navigating the phone menu for ages – they do it for you. If you want to cancel, they'll do that for you too.

Here is our full review of Trim.

Summary

There are a lot of apps, many of them free but some of them paid, that will help you save time, save money, and save gray hairs.

Take advantage of them!