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

Intuit retired Mint on 23 March 2024. If you are still looking for a replacement two years later, you are not alone, and you are probably tired of “Mint alternative” lists that all recommend the same apps that all link to your bank through Plaid.

This is a different list. Every app below either does not link to your bank at all, or 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 monetised your aggregated transaction data through ads, “personalised offers” and referral commissions on financial products. Meanwhile, running cloud bank-aggregation infrastructure (Plaid licences, fraud monitoring, compliance) is expensive at scale.

When Intuit shut Mint down, it moved 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 was not profitable enough, it was retired.

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

5 private Mint alternatives that don’t share your data

1. HeyJerni: receipts, voice and Apple Pay on the iPhone, no bank linking

Platform: iPhone (iOS 16.4 or later) · Price: free with a small banner ad; a one-time purchase removes the ads. Optional monthly support tiers also unlock the Accountant Pack export, and the first export is free.

No bank linking, no account, and no servers of ours. You log an expense by photographing a receipt or a whole stack, by tapping + then Say it, or by typing; with one Shortcuts automation, Apple Pay purchases log themselves. A bank statement comes in only if you choose to import its PDF, and a GPS logbook records work drives. Receipt reading, categorisation and Ask HeyJerni run on a local AI model on your iPhone.

It is the opposite trade-off from Mint. HeyJerni never connects to your bank; your Apple Pay purchases still arrive on their own, on the phone, and the rest goes in by camera, voice or statement. In exchange, the people who make the app cannot read your data, because it never reaches them.

See the full HeyJerni vs Mint comparison →

2. Actual Budget: open source, self-hostable

Platform: web, desktop, and mobile through the browser · Price: free to self-host; paid managed hosting is available (check current pricing).

A zero-based budgeting tool with an open-source codebase. You can run the sync server on your own machine, so your transaction history never touches a third party. Bank files import as OFX, QIF or CSV, and bank sync is optional. It is the most private option here if you are comfortable with a little technical setup.

3. Buckets: local-first envelope budgeting

Platform: macOS, Windows, Linux · Price: a one-time licence (check current pricing).

A desktop envelope budgeting app where your data lives in a single local file. No cloud, no account, no bank linking. A good fit if you want the discipline of envelope budgeting, which Mint never really offered, and want the data to stay on your computer.

4. Goodbudget: envelope budgeting, manual entry

Platform: iOS, Android, web · Price: a free tier with a limited number of envelopes, and a paid plan (check current pricing).

Manual-entry envelope budgeting that syncs across a household. 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 users who want a shared household budget often land here.

5. A spreadsheet

Platform: anywhere · Price: free

This is not a joke. The 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 at no cost. The downside: no AI, no receipt reading and no automatic categories. It is private by being primitive.

What about Monarch, Copilot, Rocket Money?

Monarch Money, Copilot Money and Rocket Money are the apps most often recommended as Mint replacements in the mainstream press. They are good products. They are also Mint’s direct architectural descendants: they connect to your bank through Plaid, store your transactions in their cloud, and use that aggregated data to power categorisation and insights.

If that is the trade-off you want, automatic sync in exchange for cloud storage, pick one. They are 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 as Intuit moved Mint’s.

If “private” means “my records never reach a company’s servers”, none of those three is the answer.

How to choose

• Want automatic bank sync and accept cloud storage: Monarch or Copilot.
• Want privacy on an iPhone, with Apple Pay purchases logging themselves and receipts scanned: HeyJerni.
• Want privacy and you are a technical user: Actual Budget, self-hosted.
• Want envelope budgeting shared with a household: Goodbudget.
• Want total control and do not mind setting it up: a spreadsheet.