The Budgeting App That Won't Let You Down
Budgeting apps keep raising prices, breaking bank connections, and shutting down. We looked at what people actually complain about and built something different.
Budgeting Apps Keep Raising Prices
118%
YNAB price increase since 2015
50%
Simplifi renewal hike over promo price
~1 in 3
budgeters use spreadsheets instead
The Problem
YNAB went from $50/year to $109/year. Simplifi advertises promotional pricing as low as $48/year, but many users report renewals jumping 50% or more. Legacy users who were promised grandfathered pricing saw their bills double overnight. Only about 16% of people who budget use a dedicated app—about a third use spreadsheets, mostly because of cost.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize’s core features are completely free—income, bills, assets, debts, net worth, scenario planning, a debt payoff planner, and family sharing. The Free plan isn’t a trial that expires—it’s permanent. Every new account also starts with 30 days of Pro on top; after that you keep the Free plan—no charge, no card. When you’re ready for retirement projections, business tracking, and AI, Pro is $9/month, or $90/year against YNAB’s $109. The bigger gap is what you get for it: retirement projections are included in PiggySize Pro, while Monarch puts retirement forecasting in its $199.99/year Plus tier. And the price isn’t a promotional rate that resets on renewal—it’s what the software actually costs to run, from a company with no investors to repay.
Switching from YNAB: what maps to what
Your recurring categories become bills. Your account balances become assets and debts. Your categorizing habit becomes… nothing—there are no transactions to categorize, ever. Setup is an evening; then it's about 15 minutes a month.
Bank Sync Is Broken—and a Privacy Risk
$58M
Plaid privacy settlement
98M
people affected by Plaid data collection
41.8%
of fintech breaches from third-party vendors
The Problem
Every app that uses Plaid, MX, or Finicity has the same problems: connections break every 60–90 days, duplicate transactions, banks requiring re-authentication. Plaid settled a $58 million class-action lawsuit for collecting more financial data than users realized. A 2025 SecurityScorecard report found 41.8% of fintech breaches originate from third-party data aggregators.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize never connects to your bank. No Plaid, no screen-scraping, no third-party financial aggregators. You enter your financial data manually—it takes about 15 minutes a month. Your bank credentials are never asked for—anywhere, ever.
Budgeting Apps Can’t Answer "Can I Retire?"
0
retirement features in YNAB
$199.99/yr
Monarch’s Plus tier, where retirement forecasting lives
62–70
SS claiming ages modeled by PiggySize
The Problem
YNAB is budgeting-only—no investment tracking, no retirement projections, no Social Security modeling. Monarch offers retirement forecasting, but only in its Plus tier at $199.99/year rather than the $99.99/year Core plan—and it’s a cash-flow timeline, not a full year-by-year simulation with a Monte Carlo success rate. If you want to know whether you can actually retire, you generally need a separate tool, a financial advisor, or a spreadsheet you built yourself.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize Pro includes a full retirement simulation engine: year-by-year projections to age 95, Social Security claiming-age comparison (any age 62–70), IRS contribution limit enforcement for 401(k)/IRA/HSA, spouse retirement coordination, business exit strategy planning, and an "Already Retired" mode for withdrawal-phase projections—plus pensions with cost-of-living adjustments, Monte Carlo success rates, required minimum distributions (RMDs), and Roth conversion ladders.
Free Finance Apps Keep Dying
20M
Mint users at peak before shutdown
3.6M
active users displaced in March 2024
2
major free finance apps shut down since 2024
The Problem
Mint shut down in March 2024 after Intuit decided the free model wasn’t profitable. Users were migrated to Credit Karma, which has no budgeting features at all. Zeta, a free family finance app, shut down in May 2025 after 7 years when Acorns acquired it and discontinued the product. Notice what these have in common: neither app ran out of money. Mint had Intuit behind it and 20 million users. It closed because it didn’t earn enough to justify its place inside a large company. That’s the real risk with a free app—not insolvency, but being shut off the day it stops being strategically interesting to whoever owns it.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize is not exposed to that failure mode, because there is nobody it has to impress. No investors expecting a return, no acquirer who can shelve it, no quarterly review where it has to justify its growth rate. It costs about as much to run each month as a phone bill, and Pro subscriptions cover that many times over—so it gets better as people upgrade, and it survives if they don’t. And if PiggySize ever does wind down, you get at least 90 days’ notice and a full export of everything, in writing. Your financial history is yours—downloadable as JSON and CSV, on every plan, any time you want it.
Finance Apps Are Built for Individuals, Not Families
66%
of parents consumed by money worries
34%
of couples say money causes conflict
45%
of couples lack full financial transparency
The Problem
Most budgeting apps are designed for one person. Couples who want to share a budget face workarounds: Copilot Money has no couples or family plan, so each partner needs a separate $95/year subscription—$190/year for two. YNAB allows multiple users but has no family roles. Monarch is built for adults—there’s no concept of children in the financial picture. Meanwhile, 34% of partnered Americans identify money as a source of conflict, and 45% of couples lack full financial transparency.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize models your household as a family unit. Owner, spouse, and child roles with granular permissions—per feature, per operation (create, read, update, delete). Everyone sees exactly what they should. Retirement projections account for both spouses. Income and bills are tracked per family member. If the app your household relied on shut down, this is a stable home: separate logins, same numbers, one subscription covers everyone.
Your Spreadsheet Can’t Do This (and It Breaks)
~1 in 3
budgeters use spreadsheets instead of an app
0
formulas for you to write, fix, or lose
62–70
Social Security ages calculated automatically
The Problem
Spreadsheets are free and endlessly flexible—until a formula reference breaks, a cell gets overwritten, or the IRS changes a contribution limit and nobody updates the sheet. About a third of people who budget use a spreadsheet instead of an app, mostly to save money. But a spreadsheet doesn’t know this year’s 401(k) limit, can’t calculate what Social Security pays at any claiming age from 62 to 70 for two spouses, and only lives on one device unless you remember to re-share the latest version every time it changes.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize replaces the spreadsheet with software that can’t break. IRS contribution limits are enforced automatically and kept current by our team every year. Social Security is calculated for any claiming age 62–70, for both spouses, using the real SSA rules—not a formula you built yourself. Every number recalculates the instant you change an input, your data syncs to every device you sign into, and one-click snapshots keep a dated history—so there’s no file-naming scheme and no "which version is current" guessing game.
The 1% Advisor Fee, Every Year
~1%
of your portfolio, every year, for a typical advisor
$5,000
a year in fees on a $500k portfolio at 1%
$90
PiggySize Pro’s entire year, flat
The Problem
A typical assets-under-management (AUM) financial advisor charges about 1% of your portfolio every year, whether the market is up or down. On a $500,000 portfolio, that’s roughly $5,000 a year—and it compounds, because a dollar paid in fees is a dollar that stops growing. Flat-fee and fee-only advisors who charge a set price instead of a percentage do exist, and are worth asking about.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize Pro is $90/year, flat—never a percentage of anything you own, no matter how your net worth grows. It’s a planning tool, not financial advice: many members use it to walk into a meeting with a fee-only advisor already knowing their numbers, so they’re paying for judgment, not data entry. PiggySize is not a financial advisor, investment advisor, or tax professional—consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
36% of Americans Have a Side Hustle—No App Tracks It
36%
of Americans have a side hustle
$891
average monthly side hustle income
$557B
global gig economy value
The Problem
Over a third of Americans earn income outside their W-2 job. Millennials (44%) and Gen Z (48%) are even more likely to have side income. Yet consumer finance apps rarely handle W-2 + 1099 + rental + business expenses in one place. Users on Hacker News describe wanting to "run finances like a business" with P&L statements—and finding nothing that does it.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize lets you track multiple businesses alongside your personal finances. Each business gets its own income, expenses, assets, and debts. Shared expenses are split at configurable percentages. Your personal dashboard shows the full picture—W-2 plus side hustle plus rental income—in one view.
AI Financial Advice Shouldn’t Require Your Bank Login
66%
of Americans have used AI for financial advice
55%
cite data security as a barrier to AI finance tools
82%
of Gen Z/Millennials have used AI for money guidance
The Problem
Two-thirds of Americans have already used AI for financial advice, and the number is even higher among younger adults. But 55% cite data security concerns and 54% cite privacy as barriers. Monarch’s AI requires bank sync. YNAB has no AI at all. ChatGPT doesn’t know your actual financial data. There’s no option that combines personalized answers with genuine privacy.
How PiggySize Solves This
PiggySize’s AI assistant "Piggy" answers questions about your finances in plain English—using the data you’ve entered, not data scraped from your bank. It can look up current IRS limits, run precise calculations, walk you through the app with on-screen highlights, and escalate to human support. No bank credentials involved.
Side-by-Side Comparison
How PiggySize stacks up against the two most popular budgeting apps.
| Feature | PiggySize | YNAB | Monarch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $9/mo | $14.99/mo | $14.99/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | No | No |
| Bank credentials | Never asked for | Default (manual possible) | Default (manual possible) |
| Retirement projections | Yes | No | Plus tier only |
| Social Security modeling | Yes | No | Plus tier only |
| Business tracking | Yes | No | Plus tier only |
| AI assistant | Yes | No | Yes |
| Family roles & permissions | Yes | No | No |
Ready to Switch?
No bank login. Transparent pricing. Paid for by subscriptions, not venture funding—built on revenue, not runway. Just a clear picture of your family's finances.
Accuracy Disclaimer: All competitor pricing, statistics, and claims on this page are accurate as of July 2026 and are sourced from publicly available information including official pricing pages, published research reports, court filings, and community forums. Competitor features and pricing may have changed since this page was last updated. Source links are provided for independent verification. PiggySize is not affiliated with any competitor mentioned on this page.
Statistical Sources: Plaid settlement (Lieff Cabraser, plaidsettlement.com), fintech breach data (SecurityScorecard 2025), budgeting statistics (Debt.com 2018/2024), side hustle data (Bankrate 2024, LendingTree 2025), AI usage (Intuit Credit Karma 2025, Financial Health Network 2024), couples finance (Ipsos/BMO 2024, Bankrate 2024), Mint shutdown (CNBC/Bloomberg 2024), Zeta shutdown (2025), Copilot Money pricing (2026), YNAB and Monarch pricing (official pricing pages, verified July 2026), financial advisor fees (NerdWallet 2026), parent financial stress (NCBI, Bankrate).