If you're looking to replace Quicken, you're in the right place.
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For years, Quicken was the name in personal finance software.
But let's accept reality – Quicken breaks a lot. It doesn't sync your accounts randomly, you have password problems, screens that should appear are blank, and it's just not a great experience anymore. Sometimes it feels like they're just getting you to buy the newer version, right?
Quicken was once the most popular and powerful personal finance management software out there.
But Quicken isn't what it used to be. It's hard to innovate a platform built in 1983. Back then, cell phones were bricks (if you could afford one) and apps were what you ordered at a restaurant. Quicken has faced a lot of technical issues and its support is meh at best. (if you own Quicken for Mac, you know this headache first hand)
In 2010, Intuit acquired Mint for $170 million. In 2016, Intuit sold Quicken to private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. That tells you something.
Look:
If you're tired of Quicken, its support and sync issues, and want a suitable free alternative or replacement – we have some options.
Here are some of the best Quicken alternatives available:
Our Best Picks
15 Best Quicken Alternatives:
- Personal Capital – free financial dashboard and wealth planner
- Tiller – spreadsheet automation to bring it in house
- You Need a Budget – best in class budgeting tool & mindset
- CountAbout – can import data from Quicken
- Pocketsmith – a budget planner and projector
- Mint – ad-supported budgeting tool
- Status Money – compare your situation with your peers
- Banktivity – native Mac application
- MoneyDance – not cloud-based
- EveryDollar – follows Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps
- GoodBudget – follows envelope budgeting method
- GnuCash – open-source and free
- DollarBird – date & calendar based budgeting
- MoneyWiz – freemium app with cryptocurrency support
- PocketGuard – freemium budgeting focused app
- Wally – completely free budgeting app
1. Personal Capital
If you're a long time user of Quicken, you're beyond the “help me build my budget” phase.
If you're more interested how your investment account is performing and less interested in just knowing how much you're spending on groceries, Personal Capital is a great Quicken alternative (but it'll also pull your credit card transactions so you will know how much you spent on groceries if you want!).
Personal Capital is a full-featured, free, personal finance management tool that focuses on helping you with investing.
It has a powerful mobile app (also means it's a cloud-based service) that replicates the web experience. They're free because some users pay them for their wealth management services (optional). They are not stuffed with advertisements like some other free tools. You can read my full review of Personal Capital.
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: It's better than Quicken because it's updated, has a rich set of tools for investment and retirement, and it has a budget and expense tracking component. It's a website and not a software application, there's no software to download and patch or update (ugh) – that's all done automatically.
I am a fan of their retirement planner, a tool that helps you project your future financial needs and whether you'll get there. It's worth checking out.
One other vote of confidence for this Quicken replacement is their CEO – Bill Harris. He was formerly the CEO of Intuit and PayPal. You know he has the leadership skills to dominate in this space and the ability to lead teams to build financial systems that are top notch (the rest of the leadership team is very impressive in their own right!).
What could be better? The budget and expense tracking are good but it's not as old as Quicken, so it's not as developed as Quicken. I don't find it to be a negative because it works for me, but people with really complicated budgets may find it limiting.
(since you access it with a browser, it is compatible with Mac OS!)
2. Tiller
One of the most popular personal finance tools out there is a little software application known as Microsoft Excel.
People love spreadsheets.
You can customize it, tweak it, and get it tailored to exactly what you need. The only downside to spreadsheets is how you need to pull the data yourself… and who really wants to do that? Quicken was great back in the day when there weren't nearly as many sync issues because it pulled the data for you.
There's a solution:
Welcome Tiller – a $4.92 a month service (after a free 30 day trial) – that pulls your data for you and puts it into a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel document.
You can start with one of their free templates or build your own, but after the initial work you'll have a fully automated spreadsheet tailored to what you need. You can use this to track your net worth, set a budget, or anything else you can imagine. (see our review of Tiller)
Why it is better than Quicken: Quicken is now cloud-based so if you want to avoid putting your data into the cloud, going with a spreadsheet is your best option. Tiller makes it possible for you to get automation AND keep your data locally.
3. You Need a Budget (YNAB)
You Need a Budget is one of the best budgeting software tools available.
Think of it like Mint with a personality and a philosophy.
YNAB's philosophy revolves around four rules:
- Give Every Dollar a Job
- Embrace Your True Expenses
- Roll With The Punches
- Age Your Money
Those four pillars form the foundation for a budgeting app that has helped many people transform their financial lives.
If you're looking to transition to a financial tool that will help you (as in help you make the change, not just record expenses), you should take a look at YNAB.
Why it is better than Quicken: Quicken only tracks your budget, YNAB does that AND helps you build a budget that meets the demands of your life and your savings needs. If you want to change the way you budget, while still tracking it, YNAB is your solution.
YNAB is not an entire personal finance management suite – it focuses on budgeting and only budgeting. You won't get investment tools, retirement planning, or wealth management. It's strictly about building, maintaining, and transitioning into the budget you want.
4. CountAbout
The founders built CountAbout to be a Quicken alternative. Founded in mid-2012, it is one of the only personal finance apps that will import data from Quicken (and Mint!). If you're looking to transition away from Quicken but worry about losing all your data, you can feed it your Quicken file and it'll populate itself. That'll make the transition far less painful!
Like Quicken, CountAbout isn't free but it costs $9.99 for the Basic subscription and $39.99 for Premium subscription. The Premium subscription includes automatic transaction download. A subscription model means you have complete data privacy and you won't get annoying ads like with Mint.
Why is it a good alternative to Quicken? CountAbout has a lot of similar features to Quicken’s: split transactions, recurring transactions, attachments, budgeting and more.
CountAbout is web-based, with multi-factor account security, so you don't have to download a program onto your computer, and there's no need to deal with unwieldy syncing issues – all you need is a web browser. And with CountAbout’s iOS and Android apps, your financial information is always at your fingertips.
Check out the key features (reminds me a lot of Quicken):
- Imports data from Quicken and Mint
- Thousands of financial institutions
- Multi-factor login protection
- Android and iOS apps
- Category customization (add, delete, rename)
- Tags (add, delete, rename)
- Reporting for Account balances
- Reporting for Category activity
- Reporting for Tag activity
- Report exporting
- Attachments
- Individual Account QIF importing
- Budgeting
- Running register balances
- Account reconciliation
- Graphs for Income & Spending
- Recurring transactions
- Investment balances by Institution
- Memorized transactions
- Split transactions
- Description renaming
- Invoicing
5. Pocketsmith
Pocketsmith is a freemium budgeting tool that uses calendars and the concept of “event-based budgeting.” Being calendar based means that rather than viewing your transactions as merely a long list of transactions, the calendar helps you understand when those transactions are happening and if they are doing so on a regular basis. This helps inform you about your spending and one of the more visual ways, when compared to others on this list.
It's freemium with the Basic option giving you 12 budgets, 2 accounts, and the ability to project 6 months into the future. If you upgrade to the Premium level, which is $9.95 per month or $7.50 when you pay annually, then you get automatic transaction importing (you can still do it manually if you wish) as well as categorization of spending. You also get unlimited accounts and projection out to ten years. The Super, which is $19.95 per month or $14.16 when paid annually, gives you unlimited accounts and 30 years projection.
We do have a promotion code for Pocketsmith, gives you 50% off the first two months of Premium – make sure to enter the code 50OFFPREMIUM-5G7T to get 50% off the first two months.
6. Mint
You might have heard of these guys since they're now owned by the same company that once made Quicken.
Intuit acquired them in 2010 and that's the reason why they shuttered Quicken Online shortly thereafter.
Later, Intuit sold Quicken to H.I.G. Capital and that's when you knew the end was near!
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: Mint is free and very powerful on the budgeting and expense tracking side. They do not have much to help you with investment and retirement savings, which I think you'll find is a huge limitation as you get older. The goal of Mint was always to be a budgeting app and with that in mind, they do a very good job.
If you are sick of Quicken and focus entirely on expense tracking, Mint is a good Quicken alternative. It, like Personal Capital, is cloud-based so there's no software to download, patch, or update. If you have investments and want to manage those, Mint will not be able to adequately fulfill your needs.
7. Status Money
Status Money is a free cloud-based budgeting tool that lets you compare your finances with people around the United States.
It offers all of the tracking functionality of these other tools, will always be free, but adds the comparison component so you can see how you are performing against your peers and against the National Average.
Your peer groups are set by your age range, income range, location (location type), credit score range, and housing status (own, rent). This ensures you are getting a true apples to apples comparison and you aren't compared with someone in another age group, different cost of living, or life phase.
You can also build custom groups too if you feel you're in a special situation not captured by basic demographic information.
8. Banktivity
Built specifically for MacOS, Banktivity is a personal finance money manager that will import data from Quicken so you don't lose anything in the transition process. It'll do everything you want in a personal finance app, including budgeting, track spending, schedule and pay bills, monitor your investments (including real estate), and pull data from financial institutions.
It also has some powerful reporting options that, if you're a report junkie, you will probably really enjoy building, tweaking, and rebuilding. All this is also possible across iOS devices too with seamless mobile synchronization.
It is not free, it costs a one-time fee of $69.99 but there is a 30-day trial (no credit card required).
9. MoneyDance
MoneyDance is not as well known as some of the other alternatives I've listed but I wanted to mention them because they're one of the few money apps that doesn't rely on the cloud. If you are concerned about your data being stored online, this solution is an alternative that keeps your data local to your computer.
You can still link your accounts online, so they pull your transactions in automatically, but they only store them on your computer. You can enter transactions manually if you didn't want to link your accounts.
MoneyDance looks and feels like a checkbook, with the check register for transactions, but has charts and tables for reporting. It does budgeting but can also track your investments as well, albeit not as feature rich as others.
MoneyDance is free to download and try but it costs $49.99. The free version has all the features as the paid version. The free version's limitation is that you can only enter 100 manual transactions.
10. EveryDollar
Have you heard of Dave Ramsey?
Many folks swear by his approach and EveryDollar is built with that in mind. His approach takes into account human psychology, rather than relying solely on math, and explains why it is so effective. It also explains why ideas like the debt snowball work so well, we need to work with our biases and tendences if we hope to succeed. EveryDollar is a budgeting tool affiliated with Dave Ramsey's group, the Lampo Group.
Much like YNAB, it's a budgeting tool that uses the principles of zero-based budgeting.
In zero-based budgeting, you assign every dollar to a category (or job, in YNAB parlance). It's a level of rigor that can be refreshing or restricting, depending on your personality. The app itself is beautiful, available on your smartphone, and there is both a free and paid version. The paid version costs $129 a year.
(paid version offers phone support and automated transaction importing… which is a big time saver; otherwise, you must manually enter the data)
11. GoodBudget
GoodBudget is a free budgeting app based on the envelope budgeting method. Envelope budgeting is when you set aside a prescribed amount for each category of spending, then spend it down each month.
It's one of the most popular money management techniques in personal finance. The envelope refers to the manual method of managing these types of budgets where you put the money into an envelope. When you run out of money, you either borrow cash from another envelope or you make do.
GoodBudget adds technology to the mix and will synch up bank accounts to help track your income and your spending. You set the amount for each category and then watch as your spending nears the limit each month. It's available for both iOS and Android phones.
12. GnuCash
GnuCash is a free open-source accounting software that, if you're willing to put into the work, can replicate a lot of the Quicken experience for those who are willing to scale the learning curve. It features double-entry accounting (every transaction must debit one account and credit another), which is effective but will require an adjustment if you're not used to it.
It offers a lot of the functionality of Quicken like splitting transactions, categorizing transactions, managing multiple accounts, schedule transactions, and reporting that includes all kinds of charts and reports (balance sheet, P&L, portfolio valuation, etc).
The big benefit is that it does budgeting as well as investments. It's not strictly a budgeting tool.
Lastly, it offers QIF importing, so you can import your Quicken files, plus OFX (Open Financial Exchange) protocol. So you can pull in your data if your bank offers you the ability to export transactions.
13. Dollarbird
Dollarbird is another personal finance app with an eye towards collaboration and a monthly calendar. You synchronize your accounts (banking, brokerage, and credit cards) with Dollarbird and they build a schedule of future income and expenditures to help with planning. Dollarbird also offers a 5-year financial plan that lets you establish longer-term financial goals and track your performance against them.
The innovation they bring to the table is the idea of calendar-based money management. You can collaborate with other people (partner, family, or a team) to manage a team budget, though the collaborative piece requires the Pro version ($39.99 / year).
14. MoneyWiz
Of all the alternatives on this list, I know the least about MoneyWiz despite them being around since 2010. They support practically every operating system you can imagine – everything from Windows to Android to iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad – and it'll synch them in real time.
It's a powerful budgeting tool that integrates with 16,000+ banks in 51+ countries – which includes cryptocurrencies if you're in that investment class. If importing from your financial institution concerns you, you can manually enter data as well and it works just as well. For budgeting, you can work with their categories (which are multi-level) or add your own (and subcategories). You can split transactions, bulk edit, tag, and create powerful reports. It won't pay your bills for you but does have notification features.
It's a freemium product with the free version that has all the functionality minus synching across multiple devices and automated transaction downloads. For that, you need to buy the Standard ($49.99) or Premium ($49.99/yr or $4.99/mo).
15. PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a fairly simple budgeting app that links your credit cards, checking and savings accounts, investments, and loans all in one place. It has a complete picture (or at least what you tell it) of your finances but its strengths is in the budgeting – how it updates and categorizes your spending as it happens and looks for opportunities to save. Using your spending, it also builds a personalized budget based on your data as well as the goals you set for yourself.
They have a free version and a Plus version. The free version has all that you need for tracking your expenses and keep an eye on them. Plus gives you the opportunity to add your own categories, track cash transactions like income and bills. Plus costs $3.99 per month or $34.99 per year.
16. Wally
Wally is the last app on the list because they only handle budgeting. Most people who start using Quicken often do so to help understand their own spending. It isn't until your savings start growing that the investment portion becomes a bigger and bigger piece of the financial picture.
If that describes you and budgeting is what you care the most about, Wally may be for you. It's a beautifully designed app that helps you track your spending and understand your budget. Users have reported a few hiccups with the interface but if you get over the learning curve, and are OK with not having automatic transaction downloads, it's worth a try.
It is free though, which is why they can't offer automatic transaction downloads. One could argue that manually entering them puts you closer in touch with your spending.
One of these will make a fine replacement for Quicken.
Common Questions about Quicken Alternatives
What happened to Quicken Online?
Intuit created Quicken Online to try to compete with Mint. Near the end of 2009, they gave up and acquired Mint.
Afterward, they opted to shut down Quicken Online and sold the entire Quicken unit to H.I.G. Capital in 2016. Quicken Online no longer exists.
Quicken does have an online experience, something they've only recently created, but it's not free and it's playing catch up.
What is the best non-cloud-based Quicken alternatives?
Some of the best tools out there are cloud-based. Personal Capital, Mint, and many on this list store your information online. If they are somehow compromised, they potentially could leak your data. They have a lot of security protocols in place to prevent this type of thing but nothing is 100% safe. The ones that do not store your data in the cloud are less powerful but … they don't store your data in the cloud.
Moneydance Personal Finance, which is included in the list above, is one alternative that is a local program and stores your data locally. It still has the functionality of pulling data from hundreds of financial institutions so it will still save you some time.
Tiller is a tool that integrates with a Google Sheet (which is cloud-based) and Microsoft Excel (which local). They do store some of your information since they have to get the credentials to pull your data but it's not like other services that contain the credentials and the data.
What is a good accounting software alternative to Quickbooks?
I haven't used Quickbooks and I'm not familiar with the world of accounting, but GnuCash is often cited as a powerful and free alternative to Quickbooks and Quicken.
It has a lot of features present in accounting software, like double-entry accounting and small business accounting, but many folks have success using it as a personal accounting software package. It's a software program you download and install locally, which means it's not cloud-based, and it's completely free.
Which of these Quicken alternatives work on Mac?
Any cloud-based alternative will work on the PC and a Mac. It's cloud-based so they work in your browser, which makes them operating system agnostic.
If you want a piece of software designed specifically to run on Macs, Banktivity is your best option. It's one of the few personal finance applications built specifically for the MacOS and it has the richest feature-set. Most importantly, especially if you use an iPhone or iPad, it seamlessly integrates among the three.
Banktivity is your best option. It's one of the few personal finance applications built specifically for the MacOS and it has the richest feature-set. Most importantly, especially if you use an iPhone or iPad, it seamlessly integrates among the three.Other Posts You May Enjoy
Original review: Aug. 8, 2019I have been using Quicken since 1993, and Quicken Bill Pay for more than 20 years. My bank account was recently hacked, and for the last 2 months, I have been trying to get the new account, opened immediately after the hack, confirmed as the funding account so I can continue to use the otherwise convenient Bill Pay service directly through Quicken. I have spent at least 8 hours on hold during this time, spoken with at least 3 supervisors, got a message from the escalation team, had my case escalated 3 times (or more), spoke with at least 15 different representatives, and despite my complaints, had at least 10 'tickets' opened that would insure that action would be taken.
If I could give 0 stars I would. I am done with QBP, and very possibly with Quicken. If I find another program that I can seamlessly transfer my info to, I would do it in a heartbeat. Stay away, they don't care, they are horrible. I wish I could figure out how to put this on Yelp (can't find the category) and Google (can't find the link when I search them).
View moreIn recent years Quicken has taken a nose dive, for the worst. Just a few weeks after purchasing a 2 year subscription, I now find it necessary to pay bills by writing my own checks as Quicken is not reliable. All of my problems center around Quicken Bill Reminder, which no longer works. Have called Support at least 5 times and found they are of little or no help. I would never buy Quicken again!
I have been using Quicken products for 25 years and have never had the problems. I am having now, not just the software, but even finding/getting support. I go to the site and initiate a chat and after the agent comes he then drops the contact without responding to my queries or comments. I try again and the same thing happens. I try to go to the community and the question I'm asking has never been asked before. I have to log in to post a question, and it won't let me log in! Either says there is no account with that address or, when I try to create a new account, that the address is already in use!!
15 minutes ago I called Support and lit up the poor support person. After the phone call I googled Quicken BillPay reviews. This came up. I pretty much said what was you read in previous reviews. Customer since 1998. All I have to say is unacceptable and I'm a software engineer so understand all too well what is acceptable and what is not. I am not kidding when I say I have been telling everyone not to buy this product. So disgusted - and I have a lot of patience when it comes to software given I'm in the industry. In all sincerity I have nothing good to say about this company. The list of complaints is too long to list here. Literally every interaction with this product since new company took over has been painful...
I have used Quicken for more than 10 years, and over the past two years the experience has just gotten worse and worse. I have so much data in it, that I really want it to work, but unless things change and soon, I am done. Accounts that I have deactivated are now reactivating themselves and messing up all of the balances. Nothing downloads directly into it any more, making every account that I have to download from a series of steps rather than seamless. There seems to be no one in the company who is listening to the customer experience. Do not waste your money!
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Original review: July 10, 2019I got a message saying I should update for new security stuff blah blah blah. So I did, wrong! The new update has a wrong balance and will not sync properly with my bank. I do an update, and do it again, the bank balance is not carried over to Quicken. Now I can't trust anything it says. I will be buying a new program very soon!
I have used Quicken since 1998 without problems. Subscribed to 2019 and worked OK after formatting for my 4K monitor. In JUNE 2019 they have updated the software twice (I have no idea why). Since then font size varies with every window opened up. Either too large or too small. When using their LARGE font app to correct for small font size windows and returning to regular use all columns need to be reformatted again. What use to be an intuitive easy to use program is now a nightmare. I can't recommend at all until they fix this problem. Customer service is NON-EXISTENT!!
Quicken Premier For Mac 2018 Reviews
Review Of Quicken Premier For Mac
I have read through two years of Quicken reviews on this website. Mostly one or two stars. I would give zero stars if I could. Quicken has gone way downhill since being sold by Intuit to a private equity firm. I know how this works. Cut costs to the bone to improve profitability at the expense of users so they can put lipstick on this pig and sell it to someone else or do a stock IPO.
Quicken probably tries to do too much. The result is a convoluted menu system that is difficult to navigate as it is not intuitive. It can be difficult to figure out how to do some things and generate certain reports as the process can be rather circuitous. I have used many sophisticated software packages over a long career in finance. I consider myself to be a very competent and experienced user of financial software and online services. This is not about me being a technology neophyte.
I have been getting error messages when trying to download my Fidelity account. I called the Quicken help desk and the tech rep had no clue. I spent more than 40 minutes, mostly on hold, and then the call just dropped. Quicken made no effort to follow up with me to address the problem and there was no notification on the website that there is a problem with Fidelity. When I called Fidelity help I was immediately told that there is a problem with Quicken and given a target date for when they hope to have it resolved. If they are depending upon help from Quicken, I doubt that they will be able to hit that target as I have already been trying to address this problem for over a week.
Several accounts are not downloading correct balances and are missing transactions. Quicken shows the correct online balance but that information is not being reflected in account registers. I do not even want to attempt to troubleshoot this problem with Quicken help as I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with incompetence. I am looking for a replacement for Quicken. I have seen recommendations for other services, some of which are free. My son told me that his bank, one of the major US players, has a very good suite of personal finance software. I will check it out next week.
View moreQuicken Premier For Mac 2018 Review
Quicken has a nagging error where you are asked to change to a new release. When you check the box to show it no more, it continues to do it again. If you take your computer offline, and back up the data files to your local disk, Quicken asks you to log on to their data center. That is none of their business. When you run their program as System Administrator, Quicken asks permission to modify your computer. Bad idea!! I have used Quicken since it was first available. Many of us are actively looking for an alternative. Quicken, you are not doing well with customer satisfaction.
I recently was told my subscription need to be renewed with online Quicken to keep my software updated. Since I do not buy the software each year I want to not renew. And now I have to login online account instead of using my quicken that is on my computer. It is such a pain so much wasted time. I have been a quicken customer for over 15 years and loved it but now with the new company ownership they have destroyed my trust in Quicken. I just want to do my own budgeting with the current version I get but they keep asking me to renew to keep it upgraded. Not what I do. I look at upgrading every 2 to 3 years. I hate getting new software that fails and causing me headaches until they fix the issue. Sad days will need to look at another finance budget software.