Mint alternative
Mint is gone and nothing has really replaced it.
Mint was free, it linked your accounts, and it sorted last month into categories. Then it shut down. Most of the apps people moved to ask for a bank login and a monthly fee, and they still mostly tell you where the money went. Wiggle Budget works the other way round. You enter what you actually have and what is actually coming, and it shows you the balance you will be left with on any day ahead. No bank login, and the free plan is genuinely free.
Mint and Wiggle Budget, side by side
| Feature | Mint | Wiggle Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Shut down (Intuit, early 2024) | Active and independent |
| How it got data | Bank-linked, ad- and offer-supported | Manual by design, no bank login, field-level encryption, never sells data |
| Direction | Categorized your past transactions | Projects your balance by date; shows the lowest point and what is truly free |
| Ads | Ad-supported, partner offers | No ads, no offers, no data selling |
| Price | Free (monetized via ads/offers) | Free plan + a 30-day Pro Max trial |
Mint is great if…
Mint was good at one thing. It pulled everything in automatically and showed you a tidy summary of what you had already spent. If that is all you want, any bank-linked tracker will do it, and several charge for the privilege now.
Wiggle Budget fits if…
Wiggle Budget suits you if the question you actually have is whether you can afford something this week. You type in your real balance and the bills you know about, and it tells you the lowest point your money reaches before payday. Nothing connects to your bank, and you can leave out anything you would rather not record.
Mint alternative: common questions
What is the best Mint alternative that does not link my bank?
Wiggle Budget never asks for a bank login. There is no Plaid connection and no read access to your accounts, so nothing can pull your transactions in the background. You decide what goes in, the financial fields are encrypted before they are stored, and there are no ads or partner offers anywhere in it.
Is there a free Mint alternative?
Yes. There is a free plan you can stay on, and a 30 day Pro Max trial that does not ask for a card. Most people who came from Mint want to know whether they will be nickel and dimed later, so it is worth saying plainly that the free plan is a real plan and not a countdown.
How is Wiggle Budget different from Mint?
Mint looked backwards. It connected to your accounts, sorted what had already happened, and paid for itself with ads. Wiggle Budget looks forwards. You put in the bills and income you know about, and it walks your balance day by day so you can see the tight week coming before you hit it. That is a different job, and it is the one most people were doing in a spreadsheet on the side anyway.
What did bank-feed apps like Mint get wrong about pending payments?
A feed only knows what the bank has told it. You pay for something on Friday, the charge does not land until Tuesday, and for four days the app quietly tells you that money is still yours. In Wiggle Budget you mark the entry processed the moment you pay it, so the number you are looking at is the number you actually have.
I miss the automatic categories. Is manual entry a lot of work?
Less than people expect, because you are not logging every coffee. You add the things that are big enough to change a decision, which is usually rent, bills, debt payments and payday. When it drifts, you type in your current bank balance and everything ahead recalculates from there. That reset is the part former Mint users tend to like most, because it means falling behind costs you thirty seconds rather than an evening.
Why people move to Wiggle Budget, and how to check it
Mint is a real product with real strengths, described above. What follows is not a claim that one tool beats every other: it is the four things about this one that can be verified before paying anything.
No bank login, at all
There is no connection to your bank, no aggregator, and nothing to revoke. You enter what you know, which is also why the plan can hold a transfer you made a minute ago or a bill you know is coming.
The maths is published
Every figure comes from a formula written out in the open: balances, projections, safe to spend, debt payoff and interest, with where each one runs. You can check the arithmetic against your own numbers.
Built from the awkward parts
Transfers that are neither income nor spending. A payment the bank has not taken yet. A bill that lands on the 15th when the template says the 21st. A month where a recurring payment never made it onto the timeline. These exist because they happened.
The free plan has no timer
Tracking, running balances, and importing your own data are free and stay free — bringing your numbers in is not the thing we charge for. Paid plans add projections, debt tools and the assistant, and the prices are on one page.