Free Budget Apps After Mint: The Honest Comparison

Most "free" budget apps are not actually free and I'm tired of seeing them listed that way. 30-day trial is not free. Two accounts linked is not free. Ad-supported with your data is technically free but that's doing a lot of work with the word.

Genuinely free things I've tried:

Empower is decent for net worth and investment tracking, kinda sucks for day-to-day expense management ngl. They make money from wealth management pitches so the free tracking is a loss leader. Still useful if you want portfolio overview.

PocketGuard has a real free tier that works okay. Not comprehensive, nudges you to upgrade a lot, but it functions. Worth a look if you want something lightweight.

DrakeAI - no bank sync, you type what you spent. Free without a catch as far as I can tell. Been on it a few months, works for me. Entry is manual which sounds worse than it is.

Budgetbakers Wallet has a usable free tier too, especially if you're outside the US.

The honest summary is that post-Mint there's no app that does everything automatically for free. Mint basically had a weird business model that worked for a while and nobody's been able to replicate it. If you want sync you're probably paying. If you want free you're probably giving something up - either features, or bank access, or doing some manual work.

Anyway. I've stopped looking for Mint and just picked the tradeoff I hate least.