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Commerce · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to I built my own financial planinng app

A few years ago, I started managing my finances using Google Sheets. It worked fine for a while, but then I hit some limitations. As my financial planning needs grew more complex, I found myself struggling with tracking assets and forecasting future financial scenarios. Thus, I started to work in my spare time on building FinancialAha: https://www.financialaha.com - a financial planning app designed to do everything my spreadsheets couldn’t. It is completely free and I intend to add some paid features later on as listed on the pricing page, but I want to keep it free for people…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. I built my own financial planinng app launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey everyone! After another year of building as a solo dev on nights and weekends, I'm back with an update on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31083093. TL;DR - ProjectionLab (https://projectionlab.com) is a privacy-friendly personal finance planning tool where you can create financial plans that go beyond the standard online retirement calculators. And by popular request, it now supports self-hosting for Lifetime users! Something I'm grateful for is that our community here on HN is the difference between PL existing and not. There was actually a time…

    2023 · projectionlab.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Everyone’s chasing AI hype. I built a Google Sheet and it quietly took off. In 2020, I made it to track my own finances for income, expenses, savings, yearly summaries etc. I shared it once on Reddit, forgot about it for a year… When I checked back, it had over 130k views and I was honestly stoked! No launch. No funding. No AI. Just a spreadsheet people actually stick with and find useful. I finally gave it a proper home: write-it-down.com Now, more than 2,300 people use it. It’s intentionally boring and that’s why it works. People don’t always need AI. They just need something that actually…

    2025 · write-it-down.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Planswell▲112

    Building unbiased financial plans for free in under 3 mins

    2018 · planswell.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    This thing made me unbroke, one of our users

    2023 · budget.vision · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Monifi▲69

    Excel alternative for personal finance management

    Dec 2025 · monifi.app · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I got frustrated with every financial calculator requiring an email before showing results. So I built alternatives. 28 calculators - retirement, FIRE, compound interest, rent vs buy, debt payoff, etc. Everything runs client-side. No data tracking - full privacy.

    May 2026 · financialaha.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hi HN, I wanted to share an app I've created recently since it might be useful for you: guitos is a free open-source budgeting app that helps you figure out where your money went and plan your budget ahead of time. It was initially created to replace a spreadsheet I created based on the budgeting advice given on the r/personalfinance subreddits and as an opportunity to learn React. The app stores data in your browser's local storage (IndexedDB). Your private financial data doesn't leave your browser. (If you're wondering what the app's name means: "guitos" is portuguese slang for…

    2023 · guitos.app · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Investments tracker, from bank transactions to Google Sheets

    2022 · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Ready-to-use templates to plan, track, and project finances

    2025 · financialaha.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hi HN, I’ve been working on a project called My Financial Pal, a free web app that generates personalized financial plans in just a few minutes. The way it works: You answer a short questionnaire about your income, expenses, debts, and goals The app uses AI to analyze your answers You immediately receive a custom PDF report with actionable advice tailored to your situation The advice focuses on practical decisions like: Should you prioritize paying off debt vs. investing? How can you budget more effectively? What’s the best strategy to save for a major purchase? My motivation: financial…

    2025 · my-financial-pal-baf4b5e07c1c.herokuapp.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    The aha! in financial planning: plan your personal finances

    2024 · financialaha.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    It’s pretty simple: ask us absolutely anything about your finances (it’s okay to be really specific to your situation!) and our algorithm backed by a Certified Financial Planner will give you a hyper-personalized spot-on answer, for free. Go ahead and stump us! Let’s really kick the tires on this thing :) Up until now, we've been doing comprehensive financial advising for free. Our most popular feature is the ability to just ask us anything so we figured why not make that feature available for everyone? Also for free :) Some more context: Uprise’s mission is to make wealth…

    2022 · app.uprise.us · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Hi! I built PaperRight.xyz because I've tried everything: - AI-assisted budgeting tools that promise to "optimize" your spending - Spreadsheets with lots of formulas and color-coded cells - Apps that gamify saving and tell you your financial horoscope, or whatever None of them stuck. They were either too rigid, or too automated, or just too much. I don't need a terminally confused AI financial advisor (or a confused human financial advisor). I just needed something simple that showed me some metrics I couldn't find in any other budgeting app so I built paperright.xyz!

    Nov 2025 · paperright.xyz · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Finzen▲3

    Over the years, I've tried pretty much every personal finance tool out there. Loved some, hated others, but in the end, I always came back to using my trusty google sheet. I needed something that combined YNAB's envelope budgeting with what a multi-asset portfolio tracker does. For me, your budget and your investments are linked. Obviously, never invest more than you can afford to lose - but how are you supposed to know how much that is for you without understanding your spending habits? So I built Finzen Finzen = budgeting + portfolio tracking + rich visual reports and stats Currently in…

    Jun 2026 · finzen.org · its alternatives →

  15. 15MS

    For years, I have struggled to understand my cash flow and save for the future. In addition to that, my wife has many credit cards and accounts that complicate matters. I am building a tool that connects all our accounts, helps us create a budget, and tracks and adjusts expenses on the fly. I am also sprinkling some AI magic on it for financial suggestions. I am looking for feedback on the implementation. More importantly, I am looking for more beta testers to improve the product.

    2023 · financemadelovely.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hello HN! As apps grow increasingly complex, I started to question whether only feature-packed apps are truly helpful. That led to what I call the *Small App Project*—a philosophy of building small, focused tools that do just what you need, and nothing more. Money Keeper is one of the apps I created as part of the Small App Project. It’s a small expense tracker built for clarity and efficiency. --- What it does: - Fixed Expenses. Easy to Grasp at a Glance. - Payday Calendar. Customize Your Start Day. - Monthly Summary. Expense Visualization. - Customizable Categories. - No Ads. No Data…

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I’m a financial analyst, and for years I managed our family budget in a massive Excel sheet. I loved the control, but it eventually became an "unpaid second job" of fixing broken CSV formats and patching formulas. The real problem: The spreadsheet was a barrier, not a bridge. It didn’t help me have better money conversations at home. Telling my wife “Dining is high” wasn't helpful; we needed to see where we were overspending (e.g., that one specific cafe vs. grocery runs) without me having to act as a "human pivot table" every Sunday night. I didn't want an app that required our bank…

    Feb 2026 · opboard.io · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    VuFi▲8

    After graduating from college I quickly realized that my money was ending up in a lot of different places. I was frustrated having to log in to different bank accounts, retirement accounts, and investment accounts, and tally everything up at the end of the month in a spreadsheet. So I created VuFi, which does it for me, automatically, every day! I've been building the app myself over the last few years, and it's finally gotten to the point where I believe it can be useful for other people as well. I would love any feedback on the idea, UI, or features that I should add in the near future!

    2025 · vufi.app · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hey guys, I built an app that follows the envelope budgeting philosophy like YNAB and with beautiful expense breakdown displayed in sankey, line, bar charts. It also tracks your crypto wallet (BTC & ERC20), bank connections through Plaid and brokerage accounts through SnapTrade. Create unlimited categories, cash/loan/credit accounts and start budgeting at https://buildyourbudget.com/

    Nov 2025 · buildyourbudget.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Instantly Create & Visualize Your Budget for Free!

    2025 · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Spend smart, stress less.

    Mar 2026 · dub.sh · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Plans your financial future

    2024 · its alternatives →

  23. 23FA

    I've developed a web app that organizes financial statements from SEC. There are similar products on the Internet, but all of them I found just "abstracts" raw information into something. For example, typical website has "Revenue" as a top-line metrics. In reality, that can be "Total Revenue", "Net Sales", "Operating Revenue", and so on. Those website can't cover exceptional values in same reason. I believe serious investors need raw financial statements aggregated because each number reflect the companies' financial performance. Major platforms like Bloomberg does that but too expensive for…

    2024 · finboard.net · its alternatives →

  24. 24IM

    Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…

    2024 · creativewidgets.io · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →