Best Mint Alternatives in 2026 After the Shutdown

Mint is gone. Here's a breakdown of the best replacements in 2026, from privacy-first PDF tools to full-featured financial platforms.

What Happened to Mint

Intuit shut down Mint in March 2024, pushing users toward Credit Karma. For millions of people, Mint was their first budget app. It was free, simple, and effective at showing where money went. Its closure left a gap in the market that no single app has fully filled.

Two years later, the landscape has shifted. New tools use AI for categorization instead of rigid rules. Privacy concerns have made bank-login-free alternatives more popular. And the best options today do things Mint never could.

Why People Loved Mint

Before we look at replacements, it helps to understand what made Mint so popular in the first place. At its peak, Mint had over 20 million users. That is a massive number for a personal finance app. Here is what kept people coming back.

It Was Free

This was Mint's biggest draw. You got automatic transaction imports, categorization, spending charts, and budget tracking without paying a dime. Mint made money through targeted financial product recommendations (credit cards, loans, insurance), not subscriptions.

Most of today's alternatives charge $10 to $15 per month. For someone used to getting all of this for free, that is a tough sell. It is one of the main reasons so many ex-Mint users still have not committed to a replacement.

Automatic Categorization

You connected your bank account, and Mint would pull in every transaction and sort it into categories automatically. Groceries, gas, restaurants, shopping. It was not perfect. "Amazon" ended up in "Shopping" whether you bought groceries or electronics. But it was good enough for most people.

Visual Spending Breakdown

Mint had a simple pie chart that showed your spending by category. You could see at a glance that 30% of your money went to rent, 15% to food, 10% to transport, and so on. For many users, this was the first time they actually saw where their money went.

Alerts and Budgets

You could set a $500 budget for dining out and get notified when you hit 80% of it. Mint would also alert you about large transactions, low balances, and upcoming bills. These notifications kept people engaged without requiring them to open the app every day.

What Each Alternative Replicates (and What It Misses)

No single app replicates everything Mint did. YNAB has better budgeting but costs money and requires more hands-on work. Monarch comes closest to the full Mint experience but charges $9.99/month. Copilot is beautiful but Apple-only. Spend & Invest matches the categorization and visual breakdown features while adding AI queries, but it works through PDF upload instead of live bank connections.

The honest answer is that you will need to pick which Mint features matter most to you, then choose the app that does those specific things best.

What Mint Got Wrong

Mint was not perfect. Looking back, several of its core design decisions created real problems for users. Understanding these issues helps explain why privacy-first alternatives have gained so much ground since the shutdown.

It Required Your Bank Credentials

To use Mint, you had to hand over your bank username and password. Mint passed these credentials to Plaid (or similar aggregators), which would log into your bank account on your behalf to pull transaction data. This meant a third party had ongoing access to your bank account.

In 2024, the CFPB finalized rules around open banking that were supposed to make this safer. But for years, millions of users were giving their most sensitive credentials to intermediaries with varying security track records. Several Plaid-related lawsuits alleged the company collected more data than users realized, including transaction histories beyond what apps actually needed.

Intuit's Data Harvesting

Mint was free because Intuit monetized your data. Your spending patterns, income, and financial habits were used to serve you targeted financial product ads. Got a credit card balance? Here is a balance transfer offer. Spending a lot on travel? Here is a travel rewards card.

Intuit knew more about your financial life than most financial advisors. The recommendations were not always in your best interest. They were in the best interest of whichever bank or lender paid for the placement. This is the tradeoff you made for a "free" product.

Aggressive Upselling

In its later years, Mint became increasingly aggressive about pushing Intuit products. TurboTax promotions, Credit Karma cross-sells, and in-app ads for financial products cluttered the interface. The app that once felt clean and simple started feeling like an ad platform that happened to show your transactions.

This gradual decline in user experience is a big reason many people were already looking for alternatives before the shutdown was announced.

Why This Matters for Your Next App

When choosing a Mint replacement, ask yourself: how does this company make money? If the product is free, your data is probably the product. If it charges a subscription, at least the incentives are aligned. You pay for a service. They provide the service.

Better yet, pick a tool that does not need your bank credentials in the first place. PDF upload is a fundamentally different model. The app never has ongoing access to your accounts. You choose what to share, when to share it, and nothing happens in the background without your knowledge.

What to Look for in a Mint Replacement

Not every budget app is a true Mint replacement. Here's what made Mint work and what your next app should do better:

• Automatic categorization: Mint auto-categorized transactions. Your replacement should too, ideally with higher accuracy.
• Spending breakdowns: Visual charts showing where your money goes by category and over time.
• Month-over-month trends: Not just current spending, but how it compares to previous months.
• Free or affordable: Mint was free. You shouldn't need to pay $100/year to see your own spending data.
• Privacy: After years of data breaches and aggregator lawsuits, privacy matters more than ever.

The Top Mint Alternatives in 2026

1. Spend & Invest (Best for Privacy)

Spend & Invest takes a fundamentally different approach: upload your bank statement PDF instead of connecting your bank account. AI categorizes every transaction, builds dashboards, and lets you ask questions in plain English. No bank login, no Plaid, no ongoing data access.

• Supports credit card, bank, and debit card statements
• AI categorization that learns from your corrections
• Natural language queries ("How much on coffee this quarter?")
• Free during early access
• Works with any bank worldwide

Best for: People who want spending insights without sharing bank credentials. International users whose banks aren't supported by Plaid.

2. YNAB (You Need a Budget)

YNAB is the gold standard for envelope-style budgeting. It connects to your bank via Plaid and uses a zero-based budgeting philosophy where every dollar gets a job. It's powerful but opinionated, and you have to buy into their methodology.

Best for: People who want hands-on budgeting with a proven methodology. Costs $14.99/month.

3. Monarch Money

Monarch is the closest spiritual successor to Mint. Clean interface, automatic categorization, investment tracking, and net worth dashboards. It connects via Plaid and has solid multi-account support.

Best for: People who want the full Mint experience with a modern UI. Costs $9.99/month.

4. Copilot Money

Apple-only budgeting app with beautiful design and smart categorization. Connects to banks via Plaid and provides clean spending visualizations. Limited to iOS and macOS.

Best for: Apple users who want a premium, well-designed experience. Costs $10.99/month.

5. Goodbudget (Manual Entry)

Goodbudget is the no-tech approach: manual envelope budgeting with no bank connection at all. You enter every transaction by hand. Maximum privacy, maximum effort.

Best for: People who want complete control and don't mind manual entry. Free tier available.

Detailed Comparison Table

Here is a feature-by-feature breakdown of the four main Mint alternatives worth considering in 2026. This covers the factors that matter most when you are choosing a new home for your spending data.

The biggest pattern here is clear: every major alternative except Spend & Invest requires you to connect your bank account through Plaid. If you are comfortable with that, you have several good options. If you are not, PDF upload is the only path that gives you real spending analytics without handing over credentials.

Migration Guide: Moving On After Mint

If you are a former Mint user looking to set up a new system, here is a practical plan to get going without losing your financial history.

Export Your Mint Data (If You Still Can)

When Mint shut down, users were given a window to export their transaction history as CSV files. If you did that, great. You have a backup of your categorized transactions. If you did not export in time, that data is gone. Credit Karma imported some Mint data, but the format and categorization did not carry over cleanly.

If you still have those CSV exports, keep them. They can serve as a reference when you are setting up categories in a new tool. Even if you cannot import them directly, seeing your old category structure helps you recreate it.

Start Fresh with PDF Uploads

The simplest way to rebuild your spending history is to download your last 3 to 6 months of bank statements as PDFs and upload them to your new tool. Most banks keep at least 12 months of statements available for download. Some keep 7 years.

Start with your most recent statement. Set up your categories, review the AI categorization, and correct any mistakes. The tool learns from your corrections, so the second statement will be more accurate than the first. By the third or fourth statement, most vendors will be categorized correctly without any input from you.

How to Rebuild Your Spending History Quickly

Here is the fastest approach. Download your statements for the last 6 months from each bank account and credit card you use. Upload them in chronological order, starting with the oldest. This way, the AI learns your vendor preferences early and applies them to later statements automatically.

Six months of data is enough to see meaningful spending trends and month-over-month comparisons. If you want a full year of history, download 12 months. The upload process takes about a minute per statement, so even 12 statements can be done in under 15 minutes.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of a New Tool

• Set up categories before uploading. Think about what spending groups you actually care about tracking. 10 to 15 categories is enough for most people. Too many categories makes the data harder to read.
• Correct categories on your first statement carefully. The corrections you make on the first upload teach the AI about your preferences. Spend an extra 5 minutes getting it right, and every future statement benefits.
• Upload from all your accounts. Your credit card, checking account, and debit card all tell different parts of your spending story. Upload statements from each to get the full picture.
• Check your dashboard after 2 to 3 months of data. One month shows you where money went. Two months show you patterns. Three months show you trends. The value of a spending tracker grows with each statement you add.
• Use natural language queries. Instead of clicking through charts, just ask "How much did I spend on dining in January?" or "What is my biggest spending category?" It is faster than navigating dashboards manually.

The Bottom Line

If you loved Mint's simplicity and automatic tracking, Monarch is the closest match. If you want serious budgeting discipline, YNAB is unbeaten. But if privacy matters to you and you don't want to share bank credentials with anyone, Spend & Invest is the only option that gives you full spending analytics without any bank login.

The best time to set up a new budgeting system is right now. Download your most recent bank statement PDF, create a free account, and see your spending breakdown in under a minute. No bank login required, no credit card needed.

Learn more about budget apps that don't require bank login or see how spending tracking works without Plaid.