5 Private Mint Alternatives That Don't Link Your Bank (2026)

Intuit retired Mint on March 23, 2024. If you're still searching for a replacement two years later, you're not alone — and you're probably also tired of the same five "Mint alternative" listicles that all recommend the same five apps that all link to your bank via Plaid.

This is a different list. Every app below either (a) doesn't link to your bank at all, or (b) lets you opt out of bank linking. If privacy was the reason you never quite loved Mint, this list is for you.

Why Mint died, briefly

Mint's business model was always tense. The app was free because Intuit monetized your aggregated transaction data through ads, "personalized offers", and referral commissions on financial products. Meanwhile, running cloud bank-aggregation infrastructure (Plaid licenses, fraud monitoring, compliance) is expensive at scale.

When Intuit shut Mint down, they migrated existing users to Credit Karma — which has the same data model and a more lucrative referral funnel for credit cards and loans. Mint's users were the product. Once the product wasn't profitable enough, the product got sunset.

The lesson worth taking: when a free app holds your financial data on its server, you don't control when, how, or whether that data survives the next strategy review.

5 private Mint alternatives that don't share your data

1. HeyJerni — voice + on-device AI, no bank linking

Platform: iPhone only · Price: Pay-what-you-want $2.99–$9.99/month, first month free

The hard pitch is also the literal product spec: no bank linking, no cloud sync, no account. You log expenses by speaking ("Coffee $4.50"), by snapping a photo of a receipt, or by typing. Voice transcription, receipt OCR, and categorization all run on Apple's Neural Engine on your iPhone — nothing leaves the device.

HeyJerni is the opposite trade-off from Mint. You give up automatic transaction sync. In exchange, you get a financial app that cannot read your data — not as a policy, but as an architectural fact.

See the full HeyJerni vs Mint comparison →

2. Actual Budget — open-source, self-hostable

Platform: Web, iOS, Android, desktop · Price: Free (self-host) or $4/month (managed)

A zero-based budgeting tool with an open-source codebase. You can self-host the sync server on your own machine — your transaction history never touches a third party. Bank import is supported via CSV or optional plugins; nothing forces you to connect a bank. It is the privacy-maxed option if you're comfortable with mild technical setup.

3. Buckets — local-first envelope budgeting

Platform: macOS, Windows, Linux · Price: Pay-what-you-want one-time

A desktop envelope budgeting app where your data lives in a single local file. No cloud, no account, no bank linking. Good fit for people who liked the discipline of envelope budgeting in Mint's Goals feature but want the data to stay on their computer.

4. Goodbudget — envelope budgeting, manual entry

Platform: iOS, Android, web · Price: Free tier (20 envelopes); Plus $10/month

Manual-entry envelope budgeting that syncs across household members. Goodbudget stores your data on its servers, but it does not link to your bank or read your transactions — you decide what to log. Mint refugees who want shared household budgeting often land here.

5. A spreadsheet

Platform: Anywhere · Price: Free

This isn't a joke. The single most-recommended Mint replacement in Reddit threads since 2024 is "I just use a spreadsheet now." Numbers, Google Sheets, or Excel give you total control over your data and zero subscription cost. The downside — there's no AI, no voice input, no receipt OCR, and no auto-categorization. It is privacy-maxed by being primitive.

What about Monarch, Copilot, Rocket Money?

Monarch Money, Copilot Money, and Rocket Money are the apps most commonly recommended as Mint replacements in mainstream press. They are all good products. They are all also Mint's direct architectural descendants — they connect to your bank via Plaid, store your transactions in their cloud, and use that aggregated data to power categorization and insights.

If that's the trade-off you want (auto-sync in exchange for cloud data storage), pick one. They're not bad apps. They're just not private apps in the strict sense — your financial data lives on their servers, and the next strategy review can move it elsewhere just like Intuit moved Mint's.

If "private" is closer to "I want my data to never leave my device", none of those three are the answer.

How to choose

Want auto bank-sync, accept cloud storage: Monarch or Copilot.
Want privacy, comfortable with manual/voice entry on iPhone: HeyJerni.
Want privacy and you're a technical user: Actual Budget (self-hosted).
Want privacy, envelope budgeting, household shared: Goodbudget.
Want total control, don't mind manual setup: a spreadsheet.

The honest pitch for HeyJerni

HeyJerni is the option in this list we built. The privacy is not a marketing claim — it's how the app is architecturally constructed. We have no servers that receive your expense data. We cannot read it, recover it, or sell it. The voice transcription and receipt OCR run entirely on your iPhone via Apple's Neural Engine. We can't see your data even if we wanted to.

If that matches what you wanted Mint to be, the first month is free. You can also read the full feature comparison before installing.