Buddy: Budget Planner App Reviews

by SoulxFetcha

I downloaded Buddy on my iPad and signed in using a regular email. Purchased the premium, then downloaded it on my iPhone and tried to sync my purchase. Nothing. No option to reset password so I read up on it and it states to email support to reset password. I sent two emails and it’s been over a week and a half, no reply from them at all.
I do not recommend this for anyone who may have an issue in the future because of this is any indication to their support, it’s non existent. I am filing a claim with Apple with proof of my sent emails with no replies to help me sync my two devices, and possibly even going to contact Discover to charge back on it. I don’t mind paying for anything, but when there’s no assistance when a customer has an issue, I don’t think that company should be allowed to continue to be on this platform. Total rip-off. Bad business. There really are better apps out there with amazing support from the developer, don’t waste your money on this one. It’s all good until you have an issue….

Note to the developer: please don’t bother replying to this review with any fake attempts to finally help. You could’ve done that to the email I sent about two weeks ago.

by Hungryonfriday

Buddy needs many improvements.
1. When I return an item to a store, the only way to indicate that is through income. That’s the only way to add money into your account. But that inaccurately makes your income to expense ratio different because it looks like I’m making more income than I’m actually making.
2. All my transactions are lining up with my bank account, yet my balance is ALWAYS lower in this app, by a few hundred sometimes.
3. In order to “finish setting up my account” (I purchased premium unlimited) I have to add another user. I’m a single household.
4. When I try to pull up the calendar when adding an expense at a later time than the day I made the transaction, Buddy won’t allow me to select the date I want. So I end up having to hit the back or forward errors until I get to the date I want to use.

I only purchased Buddy because I knew others who were using it (although they didn’t recommend it). Had I known all these inconveniences, I would have just kept Mint. It’s free and I’m my opinion, much more convenient on how it allows you to sync all your accounts and see real time balances and transactions.

by ElchononS5775

I fell in love with Buddy as soon as I saw it. It is designed almost perfectly, its beautiful and very easy to use on a daily basis. Really loved it!! Unfortunately it has proven over and over again to be extremely unreliable. All of a sudden a category will disappear, making me lose all my data for that category. Things get randomly moved around. Numbers change on their own. Its become extremely frustrating! I don't want to leave Buddy because i like it so much, and I don't like any of the other ones as much as I do this one. But as much as I like it, if I cant rely on it for my data to be as its supposed to, the whole thing is useless. PLEASE FIX THIS!!! So we can enjoy this amazing app you’ve created.

by MLStobe

My search for a budget/spending app continues. The graphics on this one are about the best I’ve seen, easy to interpret. Seems it would keep just the right amount of data for those of us don’t want to link to bank accounts and credit lines. I know what’s in my checking account. What I want to know is where my money is going and where I could most comfortably save money. My problem with Buddy is with the user interface. I simply could not get it to let me add a new category to the budget section. And I am not sure why the categories in spending and budgeting are different. These should be the same and linked. Also I should be able to click through on a nonbudgeted item and move it to a budget category. And every time I set up a new category for spending, I should immediately be able to attach it to a budgeted category/amount.

I will keep an eye on upgrades to Buddy if I don’t find the right thing soon because I see the potential. Just not there for me yet.

by Meb87

I’ll start by saying that I lost all of my data—just gone. Somewhere between trying to create a new budget for next month and deciding to cancel my subscription, everything just disappeared without warning. I’m inclined to give Buddy the lowest rating possible for this sort of a thing. (If Buddy loses data, Buddy actually has negative value.)

That being said, I feel the developer did a lot of things well. Buddy looks great, which was part of what made it stand out among the others. The feature set is decent, and I appreciate being able to do a biweekly budget, but in my opinion the $4.99/month subscription plan doesn’t really make sense. I’ve read the developer’s reasoning regarding it, but as a consumer I’ve got to say that it should probably be priced around $0.99 or $1.99.

In conclusion, Buddy was almost good enough to keep me using it, but the $4.99 per month has me walking away, and the loss of data has me writing the review.

by NekoEsmahh

I see so much potential for Buddy. Quite literally the best one I’ve seen yet! However, I sometimes find myself wondering if I’m using all of its functionalities. Please make a tutorial for everything Buddy has to offer; that way we can use it to its full potential. And maybe add a feature where we can set an expense budget of the week, month, etc. that would help so much!

Might I add that it would be more than incredible if Buddy had a full calendar area where we can see the dates, make plans and the amount of money that we will be spending on that day and have it also say the money that you have spent throughout the whole day, week, month. I just really would love to have a full calendar feature. It would help so much to visualize better :)

by Risroogtjvsf

I've been using Buddy for a year or so. I love the update that allows you to have different accounts to keep track where your spending is coming from. But the transfer function is messed up. Every time I go to enter my credit card payment, it adds the balance to my total money spent. That doesn't make sense because the transactions on my credit card have already been logged in Buddy . Nothing is changing as far as total money spent goes. It's just a rearrangement of my money. I'n trying to understand why transfers need to be in a category. They should have their own category that doesn't effect your total spent at all.

by Pcs689

Amazing app with an easy to use UI. I really think it is very well done and enjoy using it.

I would like to suggest some improvements though. It would be extremely helpful to have the ability to include future transactions into the current month range rather than having to click ‘add now’ on every transaction that I want added. That way today’s transactions would be at the top of the list rather than seeing the last transaction of the month.

It would also be helpful to have search functionality within the recurring transactions tool. I have a lot of them and it would make it so much easier to find a specific one.

I think having the ability to add a photo to each transaction along with the ability to add a reminder for each one would be a great feature.

It would also be nice to be able to have different tiers of premium. So if I wanted to pay to have unlimited categories or to have the ability to export, I could pay for those separately. Any opportunity to put more money in the developers hands would be beneficial as some users don’t want to pay the full price or don’t want all of the premium features.

by Alicekim1995

It does EXACTLY what I want except… I wish the rollover (which is a feature you don’t have to use if you don’t want to!) was by category so that I can “save up” in certain categories almost like a savings account. For example, I want to have a budget of $50 for gifts that would rollover to the next period so I have $100 the next period. This would help for things like birthdays and holidays!

Also the transferring money between accounts is bit confusing. For example, I used a credit card to pay for several things, then eventually I’ll use the money in my checking to pay the card. This can be done as a transfer between accounts, but a transfer requires a category (when all the transactions have already been accounted for in their respective categories!) Maybe an option set as “paying off a card” that doesn’t affect the budget itself? Because it’s not existing debt, but debt accumulated that period. Am I making sense? 😂😅

Regardless, I love Buddy and even if I have to do something manually, it’s superior to other apps, and the free version is not limiting at all! I’m considering upgrading to the paid version.

by Queenbee689

I LOVE Buddy. Its super user friendly, modern and cute! I paid for the lifetime premium and I’m so happy I did. I love how you can change and customize different categories, make an unlimited amount of categories, can use emojis instead of the standard things provided, and I like the different colors you can choose from for your theme. Some things I don’t like is that you cannot change the order of the bills, I prefer to have my bills organized in terms of xyz bill $100, abc bill $200, efg bill $300, etc. But the system chooses the order for you. Its not a big deal but just kind of annoying to me. I also do not like how you cannot change the order of the sections. For example, mine defaults to Bills, Lifestyle and Savings. I’d prefer to be able to choose the order myself, again not a big deal but kind of annoying. Other than that, I’m very pleased with Buddy and love using it!

by Tugrockz99

I spent a week looking for a great budget app, but everyone app I downloaded wanted me to connect my bank account and they budgeted the transactions automatically. this app is a awesome app for people who want to manually control their budget without having to deal with automatic settings (automatic budgeting never let me take into account money that was sent to me to pay for something for someone else)
The interface of Buddy has a easily layout and has a perfect amount of personalization options. this app has plenty of preset options to choose from for your budget and for adding transactions, plus you can add your own transaction title with a icon and color choice.
I highly recommend Buddy for people who like to be in complete control of their budget and manually entering their transactions.

by Croods Lover

I have been using the this app App for over a year now. I purchased premium so that I could add additional categories to further customize the way I use Buddy . I absolutely love the fact that as you add expenses that’s amount is deducted from your overall balance. I can choose to create a monthly budget or weekly or biweekly which is absolutely great.
I still haven’t been successful with the savings option because it does not decrease the dollar amount which it should when those funds are no longer available in your running balance. I would absolutely love if they Inter grate savings into the budget as well as credit card as it’s paid down.
Overall this has been the simplest, non invasive, financial app that I have used. Keep up the great work!

by Rinnyyy

After downloading and trying out many apps, this seems to be the best one for me. First and foremost, it does exactly what I need with a great looking UI and UX as a graphic designer myself. Contrary to what most other apps offer, I actually love the fact that it doesn't need to connect to a bank account to put in transactions! I think having to manually type every transaction keeps me more on top of my spending, and all it takes is a few extra seconds to input expenses. With that being said, I would love a widget where I could type things in on the go since I don't always save receipts etc. for later input (yay environment). Another thing i love is how easily one can add unforeseen income that doesn't affect total monthly salary! Totally awesome app, and I pretty much wouldn't change anything about it!

by Arsalkassim

I have used a lot of apps but this is my first review. I’m writing this review for 2 reasons. The first, kudos to the developer for creating such a practical, functional and aesthetically appealing application. It gets the work done and makes things look minimal and cool.

The second reason being the two things I would seriously request for this to become my all time favorite app. The first, support for using multiple currencies. I travel a lot, and live in multiple countries and I am stuck with a budget that just covers my home country for now. The other thing I would request is extensive support for savings/investment where I can create entries of money investment in different streams and their current value/income.

All in all, super work!

by Kadamac

This is a really great app that I have been using for the past couple of years to track my budgets. Always worked perfectly but after the most recent update I have been having issues with the alignment of some of the buttons being off for instance the three buttons underneath the budget (list, categories, split) the margin is way off to the left where it actually pushes it off the screen in landscape mode. I have to actually close Buddy to get it centered again but the issue happens again once switching between screens. Mainly happens on my iPad Air 4 but also experienced this on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Already on the latest update for all devices so definitely seems like an issue with the coding.

by Lea Sue

It took going through about 10 other apps to finally find this one and I LOVE it. I tried the trial for premium and saw all the additional benefits including adding my loan information so each monthly transaction logged takes it off my loan account to keep track of how much I have paid off etc and how much to go on the graph - that’s what I’ve always wanted and same with adding to my retirement accounts, shows automatically how much I’m saving after I add a transaction - plus all my bills. I instantly paid for premium. Instead of 3 apps, I just use this one now and the interface is so easy and not confusing. It was definitely worth $99 for lifetime. Thank you!!

by Kbjones16

As much as I desperately want my finances to be totally automated and never have to think about them, I am just set up for failure without intentionally checking in and logging expenses throughout the month, especially when operating a shared budget with a spouse. It just gets out of control more quickly than I’d like to admit. Buddy is extremely clean and user friendly, and easy to share with another user to add expenses. I have tried what feels like all of them, and of course I would love if it were free but I have not found a better one yet.

by Newdorktimesreview

I’ve tried Mint YNAB Goodbudget and Truebill - and this is by far the best one. Definitely worth the lifetime premium. It’s the same cost as six months of You Need a Budget for unlimited premium features. I love how much control you have over the additions and set up. It really gives a clear picture of your situation. I’ve already gotten set up to get out of debt seven years early! I am very pleased with this purchase. Mint would be my second choice. Some might not like the manual input but it actually helps me to track my overall costs. Great for those with variable incomes and changing monthly costs. I don’t use the partner features, but it seems like an amazing feature as well. The manual aspect really allows you to do everything with your goals in mind. Highly recommend.

by CourtCos

I have been struggling to find a good budgeting method for a long time, as I have had my budget worked out in a spreadsheet, but previously had no convenient way to track it. Other account-linked budgeting apps like Mint just don’t process the transactions the way I would like and it ends up being more work to try to maintain it than it would be to do it manually — and even then it still wasn’t totally correct. With this app I have been able to exactly translate my budget into it and I am so pleased with all the customization options (even in the free version!). I love that I can schedule recurring payments and choose to account for them in advance so that I know how much I actually have left for discretionary spending. After using for 2 weeks this has already helped me to be more engaged with my day to day spending and stay on track! I could not have designed the features better myself. Thank you!!!!!

by Jourdan94

I normally don’t write reviews but I have literally tried several other budget apps that cost way more than this one and although this one doesn’t link your accounts I find that manually budgeting everything forces you to actually keep up with Buddy more and be more accountable with your purchases and more aware of how it’s actually affecting your budget. I’m trying to pay off debt and I feel like Buddy is actually incredibly user-friendly and not over-complicated in the setting up process. You have to do a little more leg work to manage your purchases, yes, but I feel like the benefits of Buddy outweigh that. Also, a lot of apps that do link your accounts automatically tend to categorize things incorrectly which( to me) means I actually have to go through and spend more time correcting it rather than just putting it in where it’s supposed to be( manually) and having it be a one-and-done type deal. Very helpful app overall!

by Atelier~ma-mé

I’d love to have been able to rate this after properly trying it out but I wasn’t even able to use it for more than 10min. There is a limit on how many categories useable in the trial, which I thought would be fine. I started adding in my transactions and editing the already existing categories to fit my needs and suddenly it tells me I’m out of free trial categories. Apparently any modifications made to existing categories then counts them as new categories thus costing you in your allotted free number. I was so excited to have finally found a nicely done budgeting app that didn’t require linking a US bank account as I no longer live in the US. So disappointing.

by Rad.KKB

I have a feeling that it would be the perfect budgeting app for me, but even the premium option doesn’t have syncing with bank accounts. We’re adults with a small child—we need to be able to track 401ks, savings accounts, student debt, credit cards and general spending in one app.

I have time to approve transactions that an app has uploaded for me, but literally zero time to constantly import the massive amounts of money-moving that being an adult involves.

I think this would be a great starting app for a teenager, or a college student, but it’s just not for a more established audience.

by ShravanSP

I love Buddy. The premium features are subscription based. Usually, if it is a subscription based app, then there needs to be some service provided. Apart from syncing the expenses, I do not see any services being provided which warrants subscription based model. Also, if it is being synced to my iCloud for which I already pay, there is no need to pay again for it in Buddy . I wish there was a way to pay to upgrade to a pro version. I really do want to support the developer but subscription doesn’t make sense to me. Please do help me understand.

by Aria549

I really like Buddy. It’s simple, helps me plan my budget, and doesn’t force me to link it to my bank account. I would give it five stars, but the fact that it doesn’t have bill notifications is really disappointing. The most it does is send you one notification once a month reminding you to pay your bills. However, this is hardly helpful when my bills are spread out throughout the month. I would really like it if the developers added bill reminders for each individual bill where you can set the day/time for the reminder for each bill. If they added that, then Buddy would be perfect.

by TrapLordFerg

If you’re like me, you started your budgeting using Mint. The issue is is that Mint is generally only helpful in seeing where your money is going after the fact. I can’t automatically set monthly recurring debts and paycheck amounts. I’m not sure how much I should spend a day. Various business reimbursements and Venmo’s screw up my calculations (eg I spent 2x on my food budget because I paid for the meal and my friend Venmo’d me!)

this app has been life changing. By necessarily having to manually input every non-recurring expense, it forces you to be aware and mindful of your budget. You know how much money you have remaining for the month, and it even breaks it down into a daily figure. It’s a beautiful app, and super easy to add expenses.

I purchased the monthly $5 pro version just to support the developer (is this made by only 1 person?! What an accomplishment). I guarantee this will save you several times that amount of money!

Only feedback: add dark mode and more categories for expenses (although I also think it allows you to create expense categories, so this is less of an issue).

by Abcrinfhkn

If you’re looking for a budget app that connects to your bank accounts, there’s tons of them out there! this app isn’t meant to be used that way and I LOVE that about it. If you have fixed expenses, you’re able to set those up on a recurring basis. Being able to manually input transactions is also ideal for those who want to stay on top of their expenses as they’re made. If you’re not a fan, you can always schedule transactions ahead of time too!

I used to use the Daily Budget App, but I honestly enjoy the UI of this app so much better that I can see myself using it more. 👌🏼

by Jacksonlewis97

I love how Buddy allows for multiple budgets and customer categories. I think the premium subscription is a good value and I think it is fantastic that Buddy has continuity between my iPhone and iPad. My only complaint is that there isn’t really keyboard support for iPad. When I am making changes to a budget or adding a transaction my changes are only saved if I use the on-screen keyboard instead of the Smart Keyboard attached to my iPad. If this got fixed it would be a five star app, no questions asked.

by WinningBean

I downloaded literally every budget app and found this one to be the absolute best so far. I love the visualization of my budget and how pretty each category looks. I also love that it shows a daily budget and allows me to put in expenses and income I’m anticipating ahead of time. I tried some apps that link to my bank account, but I like this better. It causes me to think more about what I’m spending beforehand, instead of looking at my poor spending habits after the fact. Buddy should be more popular! Amazing job.

by Kimjz7474

I kept searching and searching for budget apps that would provide me with an easy way to view and keep track of my money that I work hard for. And, even though Buddy cost 4.99 per month, it’s work keeping Buddy and paying the fee because I could be spending a lot more not keeping track of my money. The features are clear, easy to understand, and of good quality. Love the colors and the ability to use a lot of different emoji’s. Great choice. My searching is complete!!

by @imizamb

Ok. I love Buddy. Aesthetics mean a lot to me and if I don’t like the way it looks, 9x out of 10 I won’t use it. Buddy is beautiful, and equally useful. Just like the other reviewer stated, I too, hate the apps that want my login information so that was a big bonus.

My only gripe is that I would like a bill icon/section/page, so I can enter in my bill due dates, have Buddy to remind me to pay them, keep track of what is past due and have it all tie to my budgeted categories once I mark them paid.