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AI · alternatives · 2026

MS

21 alternatives to My side project is helping me manage my finances

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.

Below are 21 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. My side project is helping me manage my finances launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    Ray▲293

    I've been using this daily for 4 months and figured others might find it useful. This is my first open source project so would love any feedback. Ray connects to your bank via Plaid, stores everything in an encrypted local SQLite database, and lets you ask questions about your finances in natural language. No cloud, no account, your data is stored on your machine. Before anything reaches the LLM, all PII is stripped — your name, companies, transaction details are redacted and replaced with tokens, then rehydrated locally in the response. The AI never sees who you are.

    Apr 2026 · rayfinance.app · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    WeFIRE▲103

    AI-empowered personal finance copilot

    2024 · wefire.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3IB

    Hey, just wanted to share with you guys and app that I built and deployed in a day with Lovable. So, as a founder I always wanted to have an advisor but my budget would always be less, then on the other hand hand I had Paul's essays on Startup Advice, which I never read because I was busy building stuff. Hence, I built this product which comes into a sweet spot of both at the same time being more reasonable and capable than the alternative. ps: it's running on a reasoning model and tbh I've been able to gather pretty good insights from it. Note to PG: If you're seeing this. I'm your big fan.…

    2025 · paulgraham.resurrect.space · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    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 →

  5. 5IM

    Hello everyone. I'm a relatively new developer and I started my first project to go full production recently. It is a directory of payment processors and payment service providers. It's free to use and gives detailed info on their pricing, business model, supported business types, available countries, prohibited businesses and high risk business support. So far only 40 have been added with more to come. And I allow processors to contact me so that they're details can be added to the database. I'll eventually automate this and add verification the months to come. I hope you'll find it useful.…

    2025 · sourcefees.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6MS

    I’m excited to share Savewise Cashback, a powerful new tool to help you save money on every online purchase. I was inspired to build this after I realized that cashback offers vary every day across every shopping portal. I imagined a “Google Flights” for cashback offers was something that would save me so much time, and help me earn more cash back and miles while shopping. With this tool, you no longer have to check every shopping portal to find the best cashback or mileage offers before making a purchase. It also shows you some historical data on offers by portal since the rates change…

    2024 · cashback.savewise.xyz · its alternatives →

  7. 7IB

    I'm Canadian, live abroad, and my money is scattered across two countries, multiple currencies, banks, brokerages, real estate, and some private equity. No app could hold all of it, and none could answer a simple question like "what's my actual USD exposure?" Brisa pulls everything together (Plaid + manual accounts + real estate + PE, all multi-currency) and puts an AI on top that has my full financial picture in context. Instead of clicking through charts, I can just ask. Would appreciate any feedback!

    Jul 2026 · demo.joinbrisa.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    This is the first version of an app idea I had last month as a way to dip my toes into some of the AI APIs. The idea is you can record yourself answering and rehearsing what you'll say to common interview questions, and receive AI feedback on how you did and how you can improve. In the future I may expand into other subject areas, but wanted to scope it to the behavioral interview format for the time being. Super open to feedback and suggestions!

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9WP

    I've been working some software to make capturing feedback cheap and easy. I think it can be much less expensive if we put our friends and family to use.

    2012 · moustach.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    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 →

  11. 11

    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 →

  12. 12

    Fully leaned into vibe coding this time around. Started on v0, at some point ejected into running locally (getting v0's exported folder to run locally was a challenge), then iterated with Cursor over the course of a few hours. Really neat how much can be accomplished just conversationally these days.

    2025 · macrodata-refinement.arjit.me · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    For the last few months I have been analysing Peter Lynch’s books on stock picking and doing prompt engineering to check if AI could create useful stock analyses. To my surprise it started making reports that allow me to understand companies much faster with well cited sources. I hope you find it interesting and useful :) Perter Lynch’s books I analyzed: Learn to earn, One up on Wall Street, Beating the street

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14IB
  15. 15IM

    Hey HN! Thank you for all the support and feedback on my original submission 2 months ago. I've been improving the backend using a MCTS/AlphaZero approach and it's currently producing much better results. My long term goal is to allow users to manage multiple projects, deployed autonomously, both from scratch and by making continual updates all prompted with natural language. The cost of each project has been lowered to $9 as performance with smaller models has improved (I migrated from Claude-3-Opus to gemini-1.5-flash). Thanks for checking it out!

    2024 · saas-quick.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16IB

    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…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  17. 17IH

    Hey there, While searching for my next role as a PM in Blockchain + AI, I started building an AI-powered notetaker called MindNote: https://www.mindnote.online. The idea is simple: you input your thoughts, and AI helps you complete or modify them. If you decide to test it, try using the prompt: Keep this text and…"(add budget, complete list, organize alphabetically, add their translation, etc.). The first big release is all about modifying your notes with AI prompts. The next big step? Capturing thoughts directly from the mind using brain-to-text technology. There is a 3 days free…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    legit▲2

    Score "make money with AI" posts on feasibility, not hype.

    Jun 2026 · uselegit.app · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    I built Track Budget to simplify how I manage my finances — most tools felt bloated or unintuitive. This app aims to strike the balance between simplicity and power. Core features: Upload and parse bank or credit card statements (CSV, XLSX, XLS) AI-powered transaction categorization Shared expense tracking Budgets by category Clean, focused UI The app includes a 7-day free trial — no setup needed, just sign up and start exploring. It’s still under active development and I’d love feedback or feature ideas from early users. Feel free to email me directly at [email protected]. Thanks for…

    2025 · trackbudget.app · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Save money grow money

    Jun 2026 · rupalik.gumroad.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Track spending. Save more. Powered by AI

    Apr 2026 · money-mind-guide-83.lovable.app · its alternatives →

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