Mint alternative 2026: what to use after Mint shut down

It has been just over two years since Intuit closed Mint, and the search for a real Mint alternative finally has clearer answers. Here's what actually happened, why Credit Karma isn't really an answer, and the six honest replacements ranked by what you valued in the original.

What actually happened to Mint

On November 1, 2023, Intuit announced it was sunsetting Mint and migrating users to Credit Karma. The shutdown took effect on March 23, 2024. Users had about five months to export data, and most didn't.

Mint had been around since 2007, free since Intuit bought it in 2009 for $170 million. The free model never paid for itself; the original idea was that Mint would refer users to financial products and Intuit would earn affiliate revenue. That funnel never delivered the margins Intuit wanted.

In 2020, Intuit acquired Credit Karma for $7.1 billion. Credit Karma's business is more profitable: it monitors your credit, then recommends cards and loans you'll qualify for, then earns a commission when you sign up. The economics are obvious. Mint was a museum of personal-finance taste; Credit Karma is a product-recommendation engine. Closing Mint and pushing the audience to Credit Karma is a margin decision dressed up as a product decision.

Credit Karma is not Mint

Intuit said this themselves. From the company's own statements at the time of shutdown: Credit Karma "does not currently provide budgeting features the same way that Mint has in the past." That hasn't changed in 2026.

What you got after the migration: your account balances showed up in Credit Karma. What you lost: monthly budgets by category, custom categories, the ability to set goals, the spending breakdown chart, alerts on category overruns, and the ability to view historical transactions in any meaningful way. Credit Karma is a place to see your credit score, watch for fraud, and get pitched on cards. It is not a budgeting app and Intuit hasn't tried to make it one.

The six honest Mint alternatives, ranked by what you valued

Different people loved different things about Mint. The right Mint alternative depends on which thing was the thing for you.

If you loved the dashboard: Monarch Money ($99.99/yr)

Monarch is the closest thing to old Mint, by design. It was founded by Val Agostino, who was an early product lead at Mint before Intuit. The dashboard view is what dashboard people miss most; Monarch rebuilt it with better automatic categorization, cleaner design, and household sharing built in from day one. The trade-off is paying $99.99 a year for what used to be free. The upside is a product that is the company's main product, not a side bet being sunset to fund something else.

Best for: fully-banked US households who valued Mint's "one place to look at everything" promise.

If you loved the budget envelopes: YNAB ($109/yr)

You Need A Budget has the strongest philosophy in personal finance and the most disciplined audience. Every dollar gets a job, you reconcile weekly, you move money between envelopes as the month evolves. If Mint was your envelope tool and you actually used the categories, YNAB is the upgrade. If Mint was a thing you opened occasionally to see where money went, YNAB is going to feel like homework.

Best for: people who actually do weekly habits and want to change spending behavior, not just observe it. Free for college students with a .edu email.

If you loved the speed of logging: Capi (free, $9.90/mo, $99/yr couples)

This is the option that wasn't in the field when Mint existed. Capi is a money tracker that lives inside Telegram. You don't open an app to log a transaction; you type one sentence into a chat you already have open. "Coffee 4.50." "Uber 35 dollars airport." A photo of a receipt works the same. Voice in any of seven languages works the same.

If what you actually liked about Mint was that it was always there, in the background, and the friction to log something was low: this is the closest replacement. It's also the only option in this list that handles non-USD natively without a workaround. Capi Together at $99/year covers two partners with a shared household ledger.

Full disclosure: I built Capi. I'm including it because Mint refugees who cared about logging speed have nowhere else to go and I think they should know it exists. The other apps in this list compete with Capi on different axes; I've tried to be honest about where they win.

Best for: people who valued Mint's lightness, anyone outside the US, anyone with a partner, anyone tired of opening apps.

If you wanted the cheapest paid option: Quicken Simplifi ($35.88 first year)

Simplifi is Quicken's lower-tier modern app. Promotional pricing is around $3 a month for the first year (annual billing), regular pricing around $6 a month. It does most of what Monarch does at half the price, with slightly less polish. Single-user only. US-first. If you want a paid dashboard but $99 feels like a lot to pay for tracking, Simplifi is the move.

Best for: solo trackers in the US who want the dashboard experience without Monarch's price.

If you mostly used Mint to find subscriptions: Rocket Money ($72-$144/yr)

Rocket Money's flagship feature is a subscription-canceling assistant. It scans your statements, finds recurring charges, and either cancels them on your behalf or negotiates them lower. Pricing uses a slider you set yourself between $6 and $12 a month, billed annually, which is unusual. The budgeting layer is light. Use Rocket for the cancellation pass once a quarter and pair it with another tracker for actual budgeting.

Best for: people who used Mint as a "what am I paying for that I forgot about" tool.

If you wanted free and only need wealth tracking: Empower Personal Dashboard ($0)

Empower (formerly Personal Capital) gives the dashboard away and earns money by selling advisory services on top. The free tools are genuinely useful for net worth tracking, investment performance, retirement projections, and a basic spending view. Budgeting inside Empower is lighter than the paid apps, and there's a soft funnel into talking to a human advisor that you can ignore. If you mostly want to watch wealth and your tracking needs are light, this is the strongest free option.

Best for: investment-focused users who don't need granular daily-spend tracking.

The decision tree

If you're not sure which to pick, run yourself through these questions in order. Stop at the first one that applies.

1. Do you live or earn outside the US, or with a partner who does? Capi. The US-first apps will fight you on banks and currencies in ways the US-only audience never sees.
2. Do you have a partner you want to track money with? Capi Together ($99/yr both) or Monarch (unlimited collaborators).
3. Are you the kind of person who keeps weekly habits? YNAB. The method is the product. If you'll do the work, nothing else gives you the same control.
4. Do you want a calm dashboard and you bank in the US? Monarch if you'll pay $99.99, Simplifi if you want it cheaper.
5. Did you mostly use Mint to find recurring charges? Rocket Money for the cancellation pass.
6. Do you mostly want to watch your net worth? Empower free.

How to migrate your data (if you have it)

If you exported a transactions.csv from Mint before March 23, 2024, most modern trackers will accept it. If you didn't export, the data is gone; Intuit deleted it with the service. There is no recovery path.

Assuming you have the file:

1. Pick your destination. Use the decision tree above. The CSV import is most painless into Monarch, YNAB, Simplifi, and Capi. Empower and Rocket Money don't have first-class CSV import.
2. Clean the CSV. Open it, glance through the header. Mint's export includes Date, Description, Original Description, Amount, Transaction Type, Category, Account Name. Most trackers want a subset of those. Trim rows older than 24 months; most importers don't accept older history anyway.
3. Import.
   • Monarch: Settings → Data → Import Transactions. Map the columns when prompted. Categories will need re-mapping; expect 30 minutes of cleanup.
   • YNAB: Account → File-Based Import. YNAB's importer is strict; if it rejects the file, open in a spreadsheet and re-save as plain CSV.
   • Simplifi: Add Account → Import from CSV.
   • Capi: In Telegram, find @MeetCapi_Bot, send the CSV file as an attachment, confirm the preview. Capi will parse columns automatically and ask for the source currency if it's ambiguous. Pillar comparison here for context.
4. Verify totals. Pick three months. Check that spend total and income total match what you remember from Mint. Categories will not match perfectly; that's fine, just spot-check the obvious ones (rent, groceries, restaurants).
5. Go forward. Stop importing the past. Whatever you didn't migrate by month two, leave behind. Habit changes are about going forward.

What I'd do if I were starting over today

I'd ask one question: do I want to look at money, or do I want to track money?

"Look at money" means a dashboard. Monarch, Simplifi, Empower. You log in once a week, you see a chart, you make a decision, you close the app. The output is awareness.

"Track money" means a habit. Capi, YNAB. The transaction gets logged within ten seconds of happening, by you, in a sentence. The output is a clean ledger and a behavior change.

Most people pay for a dashboard and then don't open it. They wanted the habit but they bought the dashboard because the dashboards are prettier in screenshots. Be honest about which one you'll keep up with for the next year. The right tracker is the one you'll still be using in November.

Frequently asked questions

When did Mint shut down?

March 23, 2024. Intuit announced the closure on November 1, 2023.

Why did Intuit shut down Mint?

Mint was free and had been since 2009. Intuit acquired Credit Karma in 2020 for $7.1 billion and Credit Karma's business model (recommending credit cards and loans) is significantly more profitable than Mint's affiliate model ever was. Sunsetting Mint and pushing users to Credit Karma was a margin decision.

Did Credit Karma actually replace Mint?

Officially yes, practically no. Intuit acknowledged at the time of shutdown that Credit Karma does not provide budgeting features the same way Mint did. Two years later, that's still true.

What is the closest replacement to Mint?

Monarch Money, founded by an ex-Mint product lead, is the closest spiritual successor. Quicken Simplifi is the cheapest paid alternative. Capi is the closest match for Mint users who valued logging speed over dashboards.

Can I still recover my Mint data?

Only if you exported your CSV before March 23, 2024. Intuit did not preserve historical data after shutdown.

Is there a free Mint replacement?

Empower's Personal Dashboard is the strongest free option for net worth and investments. Capi has a free tier of permanent free tier. Rocket Money has a free version with ads. Honest take: the daily budgeting layer of Mint hasn't been fully replaced for free.

Is Monarch worth $99.99 a year?

For US households who valued Mint's dashboard, yes. For everyone else, the answer depends on the decision tree above.

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Written by Daniil Kozin, who spent 12 years inside finance before building Capi. I was a Mint user from 2012 until shutdown; this guide is the version of "what should I move to" I wish someone had written for me in 2024.