The Best Free Mint Replacement That Doesn't Require a Bank Login

Most of the "free Mint replacement" lists I found after the shutdown were not actually free. They were free trials. There's a difference and it annoyed me every time I clicked through.

The apps that are genuinely free and have bank sync are mostly limited in some meaningful way - number of accounts, export features, history length. The fully-featured ones cost money. That's just the economics of it now.

I eventually stopped looking for something with the same automatic bank sync and tried a different approach: manual logging with a chat interface. DrakeAI - you type what you spent and it categorizes automatically. No bank connection needed, no trial period, the core features are just free.

The obvious question is whether manual entry is too annoying to sustain. Honestly I wasn't sure when I started. Turns out for me it's fine - most days I have maybe 3-5 things to log and it takes under a minute total. The things I was losing with Mint's sync (cash, Venmo, splitting dinner) are now actually in my data.

It's not a perfect Mint replacement. Mint had net worth tracking, bill reminders, credit score monitoring. DrakeAI doesn't do those things. If that's what you used Mint for, this isn't your answer.

But if what you actually used Mint for was "look at where my money went this month" - that part works fine without a bank connection. And free without a trial is genuinely useful when you're just trying to get back to a basic tracking habit without committing to another monthly payment.