5 Best Free Budgeting Apps

Take a ten-minute scroll on TikTok or Instagram and you’ll be hard-pressed not to run into a post or video discussing the rising cost of living. From the increasing cost of housing and rent to the overwhelming amount of student loan debt, most people are struggling to find some breathing room in their finances. Despite your financial struggle, budgeting is the best jumping-off point to taking control of your finances, and thankfully, there are plenty of free budgeting apps out there to help.

“Taking the first step toward creating a budget may seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be,” Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma tells POPSUGAR. “Know that you may not build the ‘perfect’ budget on your first try. You will likely adjust your budget over time, which is completely fine.”

Creating a way to manually track your budget on your own can seem like a good idea – I know I certainly thought so once upon a time – but it may not be the most effective. And paying for a financial expert or budgeting tool seems counterintuitive when trying to save money, so what’s the solution? Free budgeting apps are a welcome resource for anyone looking to create a budget and stick with it.

“With personal finance apps,” says Julie Ramhold, consumer analyst at DealNews.com, “you usually just pick and choose which features you want to use and you may have to play around with how you want to track items, but for the most part the best apps will have the legwork done and you just have to input the basic info.”