Spend & Invest vs Mint (Credit Karma): What Changed and What's Better

Mint shut down in March 2024. Intuit pushed 3.6 million users to Credit Karma. Two years later, many of those users are still looking for something better. Here's how Spend & Invest compares to what Mint was and what Credit Karma is now.

7 min read·February 2026

Comparison at a Glance

Before we get into the details, here's a side-by-side comparison of all three products. Mint is included for reference since many people still remember what it offered.

Feature	Spend & Invest	Mint (was)	Credit Karma (now)
Price	Free	Free (ad-supported)	Free (ad-supported)
Bank login required	No	Yes (Plaid)	Yes (Plaid)
AI categorization	Yes (learns from you)	Rule-based only	Basic rule-based
Privacy approach	No credentials shared	Full bank access	Full bank access + credit data
Ads and upselling	None	Heavy (credit cards, loans)	Heavy (credit products)
Custom categories	Yes, fully customizable	Limited customization	Minimal
Multi-currency	10+ currencies	USD only	USD only
Transaction splitting	Yes	No	No
Recurring charge tracking	Yes	Yes	No
PDF upload	Yes	No	No

What Happened to Mint

In November 2023, Intuit announced it would shut down Mint and migrate users to Credit Karma. By March 2024, Mint was gone. The shutdown displaced roughly 3.6 million active users who relied on it for daily budgeting.

The migration to Credit Karma was rocky. Many users reported lost transaction histories, broken category structures, and a completely different interface. Credit Karma was built as a credit monitoring tool, not a budgeting app. Bolting Mint's features onto it was always going to be awkward.

Two years later, the budgeting features inside Credit Karma still feel like an afterthought. The app's primary goal is to show you your credit score and recommend financial products. Spending tracking is buried under layers of credit card offers and loan promotions.

Credit Karma's Limitations

Credit Karma is a good credit monitoring tool. It is not a good budgeting app. The spending features it inherited from Mint are limited, and the app's business model creates real problems for anyone trying to use it as their primary budget tracker.

Ad-Supported Means You're the Product

Credit Karma makes money by recommending credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, and insurance products. Your spending data and credit profile are used to target these recommendations. When the app suggests a credit card, it is because the card issuer is paying for the placement, not because the card is the best fit for you.

Limited Budgeting Features

The spending tracker in Credit Karma shows basic transaction lists and simple category totals. There are no month-over-month comparisons, no trend analysis, no natural language queries. You cannot ask "How much did I spend on groceries last quarter?" and get an answer. If you want to know, you have to scroll through transactions and add them up yourself.

Your Data Fuels Marketing

Credit Karma combines your transaction data with your credit report data to build a detailed financial profile. This profile is used to serve you targeted product recommendations. The more you use the spending tracker, the more data they have to refine those recommendations.

This is the same model Mint used, and it is one of the reasons Mint felt increasingly cluttered with ads toward the end. Credit Karma has taken the same approach and doubled down on it.

What Spend & Invest Does Differently

Spend & Invest was built on a different premise: you should be able to understand your spending without sharing your bank credentials or sitting through ads. Here is what that looks like in practice.

No Ads, No Upselling

There are no credit card recommendations, no loan offers, no insurance pitches. The app shows you your spending data and nothing else. Your financial information is not used to sell you anything.

Privacy-First PDF Upload

Instead of connecting to your bank through Plaid, you upload your bank statement as a PDF. This means the app never has your bank username or password. It never has ongoing access to your accounts. You choose exactly which statements to share and when.

This approach works with any bank in the world, including institutions that Plaid does not support. If your bank can generate a PDF statement, Spend & Invest can read it.

AI Categorization That Learns

Mint used rigid rules for categorization. "Whole Foods" always went to Groceries. "Amazon" always went to Shopping, even when you bought groceries. Spend & Invest uses AI that learns from your corrections. Fix a category once, and the app remembers for next time.

Ask Questions in Plain English

Type "How much did I spend on dining in January?" and get an exact answer with supporting transactions. Neither Mint nor Credit Karma offered this. It is one of those features that feels obvious once you have it but was never available before.

Free Tier That Actually Works

The free tier is not a 7-day trial or a stripped-down version. You get full access to upload statements, AI categorization, dashboards, and natural language queries. Mint was free but showed you ads. Spend & Invest is free and shows you nothing but your data.

For Former Mint Users

If you used Mint, a lot of what Spend & Invest does will feel familiar. Automatic categorization, spending pie charts, monthly trends. The core idea is the same: see where your money goes without manual data entry.

What You'll Recognize

Category breakdowns: Visual charts showing spending by category, just like Mint's pie chart.
Transaction lists: Every transaction with vendor name, amount, date, and category.
Month-over-month comparisons: See how your spending changes over time with percentage indicators.
Multi-account support: Upload statements from credit cards, bank accounts, and debit cards.

What's Better

Smarter categorization: AI instead of rigid rules. It learns your preferences over time.
No bank login: Upload a PDF instead of handing over your credentials.
No ads: Zero credit card offers, zero loan promotions, zero insurance pitches.
Natural language queries: Ask questions about your spending in plain English.
Works internationally: Any bank that produces PDF statements. 10+ currencies supported.

Getting Started with PDF Upload

The transition is simple. Log into your bank's website, download your most recent statement as a PDF, and upload it to Spend & Invest. The AI processes it in about 30 seconds, categorizes every transaction, and builds your dashboard immediately.

For the best experience, upload 3 to 6 months of statements. This gives you enough data to see real trends and month-over-month comparisons. Most banks let you download at least 12 months of statements from their website.

The Bottom Line

Mint is gone. Credit Karma is not a real replacement. It is a credit monitoring tool with a basic spending tracker attached. If you want actual budgeting features, clear spending insights, and no ads, you need something built for that purpose.

Spend & Invest gives you everything Mint did well (automatic categorization, spending breakdowns, trend tracking) without the parts that made Mint problematic (bank credential sharing, ad-driven recommendations, data harvesting). Upload a statement and see for yourself.