Monarch: Budget & Track Money Reviews

by Scottakyle

Such a frustrating experience with this app. I purchased a subscription via iTunes and when my 14-day trial ended, the subscription I purchased was not recognized and I was asked to resubscribe (and locked out of my account even though I had already paid for a 1 year subscription). I reached out to this app support and was reassured that my paid subscription would kick in once the trial ended, but it did not. As a paid subscriber, I no longer have access to my budget or the this app platform. I was left with limited options to fix the issue, so I requested a refund via iTunes, hoping I could resubscribe and start over. That did not work either. this app has some issues to work through — and it’s disappointing and frustrating because this is the best budgeting app I’ve found.

by Mpls55412

But 7 of my 9 financial institutions are currently listed on their known connectivity page: Wells, BOA, Fidelity, Vanguard, Cap1, Synchrony, and Amex. Only 1 of my accounts works and that’s Chase. My main credit union is not supported: Alliant Credit Union. So 1 out of 9. Umm.

For $80 a year you need to offer syncing capabilities that at a minimum exceed that of your free rivals Mint and PC. Which both have minimal day to day issues syncing all 9 of my accounts.

I’m grateful apps like MM and Simplifi are coming into the market to offer choice. But for now, they lack connectivity and refinement that the older apps have. Usually that is ok if we are comparing free apps to free apps. But premium apps such as MM shouldn’t come to the market offering syncing capabilities as limited as they have and anticipate making a name for themselves. Well, a positive name I should say.

by RobDowntownNYC

The syncing with financial institutions is not done real-time, only once every 12-24 hours, and even then, the correct balances don’t always update within Monarch . I’m guessing this app has to pay fees to the financial institutions to access their APIs and they are cheaping out on the number of times they are accessing the balances/transaction activity. This is not what I expect from a financial app today. Spend the money and make it real time, sell your company to a bigger financial services company if you need the money to make a better financial app.

by Tpierce71

I love the clean, fluid interface. The fact that it has a web counterpart is a big plus. The only real negative is that there’s no way to track bills, subscriptions, or any type of recurring transactions. Hopefully this is in the works and will be added eventually. Other than that Monarch is off to a fantastic start.

by Nordj8698

Like many we have tried Mint, YNAB, Everydollar, and a few others. They all have decent features but for one reason or another lack something. The UI of this app is great, adding accounts is a breeze. Our one complaint is that it is hard to track our monthly budget on Monarch and how we are doing to our target. Not sure if this is a legal limitation or something else that is holding back the team. Net worth tracking is great as well.

by Rachael____

I love this app! I have tried several of the main competitors’ budgeting software, and I never stuck to them because they were difficult to use and hard to track your spending in real time. this app is SO easy to set up, intuitively laid out (both their website and app), and I love that it reminds you to check your budget as well as notifies you when you exceed the set amount for a category. I could go on, but you get the point. This is the BEST budgeting app out there! Worth every penny, and has helped me save.

by I Am Jedi

First I love the UI and experience. Very easy to see spending by month as well as categorizing transactions.

However, I can’t depend on Monarch yet to have an up to date financial picture. Too many of marquee financial service company connections don’t work. For example Capital One, Charles Schwab to name a couple.

What makes this worse is that I can’t manually add transactions nor import CSV/Quicken files. I understand that getting transactions from financial institutions is not easy. However, we need the ability to keep our financial picture up to date when the connections fail.

I have a paid subscription and really hope they can either get better financial institutions integration or support manual transactions. I really enjoy using Monarch but it’s not quite ready to be dependable for my financial picture.

by Casmith07

I decided to try this app based off of a few other comments as well as the very pretty UI — happy to report that this is virtually the same as Mint, which is also popular, but without the constant barrage of ads that you get in Mint.

I paid for a year with their current promotion and will be using this to serve as my own financial advisor for some time - please please please never go ad-supported like Mint! The ads and constant promotional pop ups are nauseating.

by Parkerbro9

Ive tried a ton of personal finance abs budgeting apps over the years. I wanted out of the world of data scraping apps and so far this app is my favorite alternative. Simple, clean interface. The basics (auto categorizing, budgeting, etc) are solid-which is surprisingly hard to find in other personal finance apps. I’m excited to see where they take it

by Corrupt Episodes

this app is legit the most user friendly budget app out there. I love being active in our household budget and seeing where my wife and I are at has been a game changer for us financially. I submitted a request for my main credit card bank to be added (mid florida credit union) and hope it will be in the near future. In the mean time I just manually add in the charges which isn’t a big deal. I use Monarch daily and recommend it for anyone.

by This Game Rocks!!!!!!

this app has given me a new perspective on how I view my money. Being able to allocate each month toward a goal all while having a simplistic- yet functional and elegant design. You can use this to track large accounts or small account with small transactions. this app really has reached multiple target groups. If you don’t want something overly complicated, but want lots of functionality this app is for you.

by Brandonj258

I usually don’t write reviews, but felt compelled due to how good it was. I started using after getting all of those Facebook ads. I’ve used Mint, YNAB, and more. Yes, it’s not free, but it’s good software and doesn’t have ads. It’s very simple, automated with the ability to set up category rules, and has a progress review where you see where you are in the month versus your budget. They are also experimenting with a forecasting feature. Lastly, you can submit and vote for the features you want. It’s a new software, but that last feature I believe will make this become the type of app it’s users really want. 5 stars.

by GRM0909

I’ve been tracking my budget with spreadsheets for years. I tried mint because it’s free and co-pilot for a free trial. So far, this is definitely the best, most user friendly, and practical one. It allows for useful customization and provides the information o need to get a clear financial picture. Totally worth the small investment for subscription.

by Themidnighteagle

Monarch is hands down the best experience I’ve had with managing my money and expenses. It is modern, clean, easy to use and absolutely killer at the organization and using categories to track my expenses to the tee. I use it everyday and am super confident in what is going in and what is going out. In my top 5 apps of the AppStore.

by Kraigory23

I’ve tried all the “free” options and this app blows them all away for a low cost. I vastly prefer to pay for a good product instead of being bombarded by ads, upsells, or having my data sold. Plus their functionality is superb and well thought out!

by Sergiobuckets

I’ve been using this app for a few months now and love it. It’s a great way to track your spending and establish a monthly budget. There are no disruptive ads either. It’s just a nice, clean interface to manage your finances. Excited to see the new functionality they add in the future!

by Ryan Orion

Monarch is go great - stays in sync with sources better than mint or others I’ve used in the past and it keeps getting better every month. I also love that I don’t get credit card and insurance offers constantly. Thanks this app!

by Mstou

I was in the somewhat early beta of this app off the wait list and it was pretty stripped down. You could see the vision for a super-clean subscription pfm app, but they weren’t there yet on features. Now… iPad app. Zillow integration for home values, crypto features. Much more transparency around account connection states, which generally work well. I love the monthly lookback feature to see my progress. They have achieved a UI where they can add features without it feeling cluttered, and they’re adding away, generally with high quality stuff. Happily paying the sub.

by Wplay

I’ve tried several financial apps and this is by far the best and most integrated one. All of my accounts seamlessly connect (although I wish they would update faster). I use the iOS app and the browser version on my iPad. I hope they release an iPad version soon. The UI and product experience is great, although I do wish that they made the “planning” experience feel a bit more intuitive and structured. I found it difficult to understand how to set my budgets and where to compare what my typical spending for each expense type was. Even though that was part of the process it wasn’t immediately apparent how to set things and what they meant. It’s still a better experience than any of the other apps I’ve tried. I really like that I can add my fiancé and that we can both begin to see how our combined financials look like. I like that they show what features they are currently working on and allow users to provide input directly. I look forward to using this app and to see them improve on an already great experience.

by AmandaCendejas

I don’t think I’ve ever written an App Store review. I just downloaded this software last night and I’m obsessed. I’ve been looking at different budgeting software for about a week now, and before then was always open to it, but nothing ever seemed better than my spreadsheet.

Other apps are very invasive and also force you to budget in a way that feels extremely manual. this app allows you to look at your month as a whole, while also having the flexibility to correctly categorize, split, and even hide transactions from your monthly spending reports. This is awesome for splitting restaurant or grocery tabs and omitting your friend’s tab from yours.

Onto the design - Monarch is so intuitive and easy to understand. I opened it up and the Onboarding experience was so simple and delightful that I spent a couple of hours getting everything set up. Navigating the platform is really a delightful experience. The dashboard for your net worth, goals, transactions, etc. is customizable.

I also love that they have a “feature request” option on the menu and are open to hearing customers’ feedback.

I’ll be purchasing the annual plan shortly. Awesome app!

by Melhoshy

I’ve been using this for a few days now and would say it’s a nice alternative to Mint that has more focus on cash flows and categorizing transaction to better understand your monthly income vs expenses, and helps you budget against them. I really like the monthly summary page, in addition to the ability to quickly see category spend and allocate against it.

I personally have a bit of an interest in the space and use Mint and Personal Capital currently, in addition to aggregating my accounts via Bank of America and Chase as well. I am always curious to test out different features, and help me understand financial picture including investments and RSUs and such — and Monarch seems to “just get it”.

I am quite impressed in first few days of use and will definitely be shifting more of my focus from Other apps to this.

by Dreamer-NY

this app Money is by far the best personal finance app around. I have tried them all. They frequently release new features, listen to customer feedback, provide great product marketing updates, and make UX/UI a priority. Keep up the great work!