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Work · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Write It Down – Personal finance tracker

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…

Write It Down is a personal finance tracker built as a Google Sheet that helps users manage income, expenses, savings, and yearly financial summaries. Designed for anyone seeking straightforward financial management… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1
    Ray▲298

    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
    Stated▲78

    Privacy-first AI finance tracker

    Apr 2026 · statedmoney.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    My Expenses is a very simple app to track expenses for one-time budgets. Let's say you're going on vacations in Italy and you want to allocate $1.500 to this trip. You create a budget "Italy" in 30 seconds and you're ready to go. Each time you make an expense in Italy, you add it to the app in a few seconds and you instantly know you're remaining budget. I'm bored of super complex apps. Yes, they do a lot of things, but it often takes a while to get used to the app and understand all its features. That's why I created this app. I want people to be able to track their expenses in seconds, as…

    2023 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Write what you want. Track when it happens. It works.

    Feb 2026 · itworks.now · its alternatives →

  5. 5KT

    I started to track my expenses on excel sheets earlier this year. It was interesting to see how much I spent casually on just another hangout with friends or on education. Excel sheets are painful, at least for me. So I built this with my friend: (it's just MVP) http://accountant.besperk.com Edit: Coming up next: > Mobile site and apps asap. > Graphs and reports > SSL > Custom Alerts (when you cross a certain limit, that you define, for certain tag) > Pre populated tags. Tech used: > Rails > on Heroku My co-founder is offline will ask him to add more details on…

    2011 · accountant.besperk.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    The Privacy-First Expense Tracker. No Bank Login Required.

    Jul 2026 · spendkeep.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7YP

    Care to share a screenshot and the 'killer feature' of any of your personal, self-built productivity tools? eg. I made my own calendar and money-tracker last year - there are no other users, it makes no money, I have no plans to make it public, but it holds my life together :) http://i.imgur.com/h2keJDg.png GREAT BECAUSE... it tells me how much I'm going to get paid this month. Absolutely no ulterior motive here (ie. I'm not canvassing opinions for a productivity app startup or anything), just interested.

    2013 · i.imgur.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Track and control your money with just a picture

    2025 · howispendmy.money · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    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 →

  10. 10

    Learn to take control of your personal finances using Python, a few plain-text files, and the open-source ecosystem. 100% developer-friendly.

    2021 · personalfinancespython.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11MS

    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 →

  12. 12

    AI expense tracker & financial coach.

    May 2026 · smartwalt.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13AM

    Hi HN, Today I'm launching the Net Worth Tracker by Flow Finance, a beautiful and minimalist Excel template that allows individuals to track their assets, liabilities, income, and spending on a monthly basis. The focus of this template is understanding long-term trends in the incoming and outgoing expenses for an individual—always with a focus on maximising insights while minimising user inputs. This project was created because the alternatives, frankly, are completely overwhelming. A friend of mine introduced me to the FIRE Movement and, after doing deep dives through Reddit, I tried to…

    2023 · getflow.finance · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A Google Sheets budget tracker built for irregular income

    Jul 2026 · 5224012555476.gumroad.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15IB

    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 →

  16. 16

    AI powered expense tracker

    Jul 2026 · klutter.ai · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Hi HN! I'm excited to share that Treasury (https://treasury.sh) is now available on the iOS App Store. Treasury is a personal finance app I've been building, and we just opened up our public beta. We'd love your feedback. Currently, Treasury has a set of core building blocks that let you create financial setups as simple or as complex as you want. You can track your net worth, analyze spending, spot recurring transactions, and build budgets that actually match how you think about money. Download it from the App Store and let me know what you think.

    Jun 2026 · treasury.sh · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    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 →

  19. 19

    Smart AI expense tracker. Family sharing, OCR & reminders.

    Mar 2026 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    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 →

  21. 21

    Hello, I'd like to share the first version of an app I've built for myself to categorise my expenses. Key features: - *Google Sheets Integration:* The tool is based on the spreadsheet I've been using to track my expenses over the years. I've turned it into a template that is available on the website. - *Automated Expense Categorization:* Tired of manually categorising and annoyed by the limits of rules, I've hooked the sheet up with an ML model that works based on past categorisations of your expenses. I've had great results with it. The tool is simple and basic and lets you keep using your…

    2023 · expensesorted.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    See how much you really spend

    2024 · showmemoney.app · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Your money finally makes sense ! Meet Your New AI comapnion.

    Jun 2026 · wiseflowapp.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Manage your budget with AI, no bank credentials needed!

    2025 · 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 →