Mint Shut Down. Here Are the Privacy-First Alternatives.

Intuit shut down Mint in 2024 and pushed everyone toward Credit Karma. For a lot of users that was the wake-up call: the "free" app they'd trusted with a decade of financial data was always going to be moved, sold, or shuttered when the business case changed. Here's what to look at if you want a tool that won't pull the same trick.

What Mint actually was

Mint was a free product whose business model was selling you financial products — credit cards, loans, refinancing — based on the transaction data it collected. That's not a moral judgment; it worked because the data was good. But it does explain why "free" was sustainable, and why your spending habits ended up in the same database as the lead-gen engine.

The honest categories

• Bank-syncing budgeters with subscriptions. Monarch ($99/yr), Copilot ($95/yr), Rocket Money. They've replaced Mint's "free + monetize you" model with "paid + maybe also monetize you". Read the privacy policy.
• YNAB. The serious option if you want to actually budget, not just track. Pricey and has a real learning curve. Bank sync optional.
• Manual / privacy-first trackers. Things like BillBox. No bank login, no subscription, on-device only. Less flashy, dramatically more private.
• Spreadsheets. Still a perfectly good option if you don't mind the friction. See our take on spreadsheet bill tracking.

If your main need was bill reminders

Most people used Mint for two things: a "what did I spend" view and "don't forget to pay this bill". If your need is the second one, you don't need a bank-syncing app at all. BillBox handles recurring bills, due-date notifications, payment history, and CSV export — all without ever talking to your bank.