10 Best Budgeting Apps UK 2024 | Mint, Emma and More

The Emma app works like many of the other budgeting apps on this list – it automatically categorises your transactions, making it easy for you to see where your spending is going and how much money you have left to enjoy.

Emma does, however, have a few additional bonus features. As well as being a budgeting app, it also helps you save money. The app evaluates all of your accounts, advising which ones cost you the most in fees, and which subscriptions you might be able to cancel. Overall, it offers a bit of everything and is really simple to use – it's a gold star from us! 

Yolt is a perfect choice if you're not looking for all the bells and whistles, but just need a simple way to record your spending. The app tracks all transactions from every one of your accounts and allows you to move money between them as you like. 

The app also displays spending reports with your transactions split into categories, identifying the areas that most of your spending gets pumped in to. This enables you to set realistic spending goals based on your previous activity.  

Chip is one of the best budgeting apps out there if your priority is to save. Once it has synced up to your bank accounts, it assesses your money by looking at your goals and spending habits to figure out the ideal amount you can save. It then automatically sends these small amounts to your savings every few days.

This means that because it's just a small amount every few days, you hardly even notice when you're saving! If there's a time when you can't afford to save even that tiny amount, the AI behind the app will know and will skip the transfer, so you never need to worry about being out of pocket. 

Mint is an easy-to-access app which organises your expenses. It connects to all of your accounts, analysing your spending across the board. It's a great one if you want to cut down your bills as it provides ways to save money, pointing out credit card offers and savings deals along the way. 

If you've got a bill coming up or you've reached your spending limit for a particular category, Mint sends you helpful nudges to keep you updated. It also sends notifications when you've nearly reached your savings goals. A bonus for the Mint app is that it also monitors your credit score for free, which can be really useful. 

The Moneybox app is another one which allows you to save a little bit at a time so that you barely notice the cash leaving your account. They round up the spare change with every purchase and invest it into stocks and shares on your behalf. You can also add additional amounts into those savings and investments if you'd like. 

This savings pot can be used as an ISA, either in your name or someone else's (for example, if you're saving for a university fund for your child), or you can use it to invest in a company like Amazon or Disney.

One of the most popular budgeting apps on the market, Money Dashboard gives you an overview of your finances in dashboard form, so that the information is easy to absorb at a glance. It is a bit fiddly to set up, and unfortunately, you can't move money between your accounts through the app, but once you are set up, it's easy to work.

The app categorises your transactions for the past six months, displaying the data in clear charts and graphs. This allows you to see exactly where your money is going and set limits for each category. The app will also ping you a notification when you reach these limits.

As well as providing the basics of a standard budgeting app, such as collating all of your accounts together and setting savings goals, Moneyhub also gives you the option of seeking professional budgeting advice which they provide over the phone.

Moneyhub also allows you to integrate investment funds and sends you alerts if it discovers better deals on the market for your monthly direct debits such as your car insurance. Unfortunately, this is a paid-for product, and if you aren't using the advisors, it might not be worth the extra money.

Like most budgeting tools, Cleo categorises your spending, analysing exactly where your money goes. Whilst it does connect with your bank accounts, this only works with current accounts, not savings or credit cards or pensions. 

Cleo targets a younger audience with its mission to make money management fun and interesting, and it certainly ticks those boxes. The app is easy to use, talking to you like a regular person or friend using a chat function, and it even has multiple options to play games and quizzes to win money.

Squirrel essentially works as a grown-up way to get pocket money! The app assesses your monthly income, the amounts you need for your bills and savings goals and works out a comfortable, but affordable, weekly spending budget. This gets released to you at the beginning of each week to do what you want with. 

You can set up various transfers, so that money goes into your current account the day before a bill is due, or you can split up your salary into weekly payments, so you don't overspend. The fact is, though, that the app actually holds your money in a separate account until it's ready to be released which can make people nervous. 

While not many budgeting apps use screen-scraping anymore, Plum does, so that might not appeal to you for that reason alone. It does, however, offer an investment service for a small, monthly subscription charge.

To hit your savings goals, Plum rounds up your odd change, and if you can afford to, it will automatically bank those little amounts after each transaction, so that you hardly even notice when you're saving. The savings then go into an e-money account, although, unfortunately, it's one that won't earn interest.