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Looking for a Copilot Money alternative

By , who built Keep the Diff

Copilot Money is one of the best designed money apps around. It pulls in your accounts, sorts transactions for you, and puts spending, budgets, investments and net worth on one clean screen.

People still leave it, usually for one of three reasons.

Reason one: the devices

Copilot lists iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web. If you or anyone you share money with uses an Android phone or a Windows PC, that person gets the web version or nothing.

If this is you, look for an app with a real build on every device you own, rather than a web page on some of them.

Reason two: the price and the connections

Copilot is a paid subscription after a free trial, and it is designed around connected accounts. You can create manual accounts and transactions, but the automatic sorting that makes it worth paying for depends on the connection.

If this is you, the apps that do not ask for bank access at all are in budget apps that don't connect to your bank.

Reason three: tracking everything

A complete picture of every transaction is interesting for a while. For some people it turns into a daily review of the past that does not change what happens next.

If this is you, you may want less recorded, at a better moment: the moment you decide.

What Keep the Diff is, and what it is not

It is not a Copilot replacement. It shows no net worth, no investments and no list of transactions. It records one thing: at the moment you decide not to buy something, you log what you were ready to spend and what you actually spent. The difference is money you kept, and it adds up by week, by month and toward a goal.

It runs as its own app on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Android, Wear OS and Windows. There is no bank connection, because there is no bank integration in the app at all, and there is no limit to go over: buy the thing anyway and there is simply no difference to record that time.

The honest comparison

  • Copilot shows your whole financial picture. Keep the Diff shows one running number, what you kept. If you want net worth and investments in one place, Copilot is the better tool.
  • Copilot sorts your transactions for you. Keep the Diff has nothing to sort, because you only log the moments you chose not to spend.
  • Copilot does its best work with connected accounts. Keep the Diff does not ask for them, on any device.
  • Copilot costs a subscription. Logging in Keep the Diff is free forever, with no ads and no limit. Premium adds full history, categories, goals, widgets and sync across your devices.

If what you want is to save on purpose rather than to watch everything, you can try it in your browser without installing anything, or read how to save money without a budget.

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