Our methodology for rating the best budgeting apps

When crafting a budget, you could do worse than follow the advice of famed personal finance author Sylvia Porter.

“[T]here is no such thing as an average budget, and you should not even look for a standardized format,” she wrote in “Money Book.” “Search instead for a simple, flexible financial outline to help you achieve the goals you truly want.”

That is the ethos we brought to bear when crafting the methodology for our best budgeting apps ranking.

We wanted to identify apps that are customizable to different sorts of people, allow them to easily determine how much they’re spending compared to how much they’re earning and search for ways to create more savings.

How we rate budgeting apps

We reviewed 25 budgeting apps, looking at 19 data points for each, narrowing down our choices to the top seven contenders and then spending hours interacting with each to thoroughly evaluate them based on a five-star rating system.

The best budget apps are easy to use, have low costs and offer great security.

See the results of our analysis in our article on the best budgeting apps

How we choose the products we ranked

To be considered for our ranking, budgeting apps had to be one of the 25 most popular available nationwide, as determined by SEO search results.

Budgeting app ranking factors

• Account integration: 30%.
• Cost: 25%.
• Security: 15%.
• Mobile app rating: 10%.
• Shareability: 10%.
• Availity of browser version: 10%.

We judged that the top aspects of the best budgeting apps were getting the full picture of your financial accounts for a reasonable price (the cost being free, preferably). Often an invisible assumption, cyber security is a vital underlier to financial apps. We also looked at the ratings earned for iOs and Android platforms, the ability to share your budget with trusted individuals and the availability of accessing your budget with a full-size computer.

Account integration: 30%

One of the most powerful tools in your budgeting arsenal is consolidation: Combining multiple financial accounts in one view so you can better track, understand and plan your cash flow.

Without synchronization, you may as well copy-paste numbers into a spreadsheet. (No shame, though, if you like this old-school method.) For the rest of us, we evaluated the following:

• Account integration (15%). Real-time connection with multiple financial accounts is beyond convenient and can help you stay on the ball, preventing overdrafts and catching fraud early.
• Amount of accounts that can be integrated (15%). A budget app is more valuable if it lets you see all of your accounts rather than some. If you can’t see the entirety of your savings and spending in one account, then it doesn’t really give you the full picture of your real budget.

Cost: 25%

Most things taste better when they’re free. While you may crack open your digital wallet to access more advanced tools, paying to track your money is counterintuitive.

• Cost of a paid version (10%). We think that the paid version of a budgeting app should be affordable so that more powerful tools are still somewhat accessible. We rewarded apps that have low paywalls.
• Free mobile app (5%). To start, we rewarded platforms that offered free apps. Free trail versions are all well and good, but we looked for truly no-cost editions of budget apps.
• Quality of the free version (5%). It’s not enough to simply offer a gratis version of the app — it has to actually be good.
• Availability of a paid version (5%). The presence of a paid edition counted for 5% because, after using the free app for a while, you may find that insight offered by extra financial tools is worth testing out or having, and switching to a whole new platform could be annoying.

Security: 15%

Considering that the app will have much of your financial information in one place and that it still needs to be easily accessible, we looked at the cybersecurity offered.

• Biometric sign-in (5%). Typing login data when you’re on the move isn’t the easiest. Accounts that offer biometric sign-in, such as recognition of facial features, fingerprints and irises earned full points in this category.
• Encryption (5%). Encryption transforms your data into unreadable ciphers so your financial information can’t be easily gleaned. Any app worth its salt uses encryption.
• Multifactor authentication (5%). It’s much harder for thieves to access your account if you have to sign in using more than one method. In addition to a password, multifactor authentication will ask you to enter a code sent to you via text or email, scan your fingerprint or answer a security question you established.

Mobile app rating: 10%

Although we spent hours with these apps, we wanted to consider the experience of others. To that end, we looked at the ratings on the Apple App Store (5%) and the Google Play Store (5%).

Shareability: 10%

Sharing your budget with a partner, friends and family can be essential to helping the household budget, increasing financial transparency in a relationship and having accountability.

Availity of browser version: 10%

While budgeting on your phone is great for convenience, sometimes it’s easier to work with a bigger screen and a full-size keyboard. We considered whether you could access the budgeting platform via a web browser.

How we collect data

After determining the 25 budgeting apps to research, multiple team members spent hours gathering data about the platform. All product information comes directly from that product’s website, from an official company representative or from a clearly-cited third party (such as the mobile app stores).

Every data point included in an article is viewed and confirmed by at least four people at USA TODAY Blueprint.

How often we refresh our research varies. We typically reconsider the best budgeting apps annually. The article is stamped with the most recent update in the introduction.

USA TODAY Blueprint’s editorial standards

Budget app companies are not able to purchase editorial coverage of their platform in any way. We maintain editorial integrity: Our reviews and recommendations are based only on our own opinions gained from interacting with and researching the apps.