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Looking for a YNAB alternative

By , who built Keep the Diff

You Need A Budget is a genuinely good piece of software, and saying otherwise would be silly. It has a coherent method, people who stick with it get real results, and its four rules are better thought through than most of what is written about money.

It also has a high floor. People leave it for three distinct reasons, and the right replacement is completely different depending on which one applies to you.

Reason one: the upkeep

YNAB asks you to give every dollar a job, and then to keep doing that. Categories need maintaining, overspending needs covering from somewhere, and the method only works if you stay current. Fall a few weeks behind and catching up is a genuine chore, which is how most lapsed users describe leaving.

If this is you, do not move to another zero based budgeting app, because the upkeep is the method rather than an implementation detail. You want something with no reconciliation step at all.

Reason two: the price

YNAB is a paid subscription with no meaningful free tier, and it is priced as a serious tool because it is one.

If this is you, the honest advice is a spreadsheet. The method is public and there are good free templates for it. You will lose the phone app and the automatic import, and you will keep the part that actually does the work.

Reason three: the bank connection

YNAB imports transactions through an aggregator. If you would rather not have a third party holding continuous read access to your accounts, that is a reasonable position and it rules the app out regardless of how good the method is.

If this is you, there is a whole category of options, laid out in budget apps that don't connect to your bank. YNAB can also be run fully manually, which is worth knowing before you switch at all.

What Keep the Diff is, and what it is not

It is not a YNAB replacement in the sense of doing the same job more cheaply. It does a different job, and it is only the right answer if reason one is why you left.

YNAB assigns money forwards and measures you against the assignment. Keep the Diff records one thing backwards: 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.

There are no categories to maintain, nothing to reconcile, and no bank connection, because there is no bank integration in the app at all. There is also no way to go over, so a bad month does nothing: buy the thing anyway and there is simply no difference to record that time. The running total does not fall.

The honest comparison

  • YNAB tells you where your money is going. Keep the Diff cannot, and does not try to. If that is what you need, this is the wrong tool and a manual expense tracker is the right one.
  • YNAB works for debt payoff and tight months. Keep the Diff has nothing to say about either. It suits people who are broadly fine and want to save more.
  • YNAB requires upkeep to stay true. Keep the Diff is only ever as complete as what you chose to log, and it is still useful when you log half of it.
  • YNAB costs a subscription. Logging in Keep the Diff is free forever, with no ads and no limit. Premium adds history, export, categories and goals.

If the maintenance is what wore you down, that trade is probably worth making. You can try it in your browser without installing anything, or read reverse budgeting for the method on its own.

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