Mint Is Dead -- Here's What I Switched To (And Why It's Free)
Looking for a free Mint alternative in 2026? I tested 6 replacements. Only one tracks true spend, splits transactions, and costs nothing.
TL;DR: Mint shut down and merged into Credit Karma, leaving millions of users stranded. I tried six alternatives -- Monarch ($15/mo), Copilot ($13/mo), YNAB ($15/mo), Rocket Money ($6-14/mo), Empower, and Credit Karma itself. Most are expensive, none replaced what Mint actually did well. I landed on Prospify, which is free, connects all your cards via Plaid, and does things Mint never could: true spend calculation, integrated splitting, and unbiased card recommendations.
RIP Mint (2006-2023)
I was a Mint user for eight years. Eight years of auto-categorized transactions, budget pie charts, and that little green bar telling me I was 82% through my dining budget for the month. It wasn't perfect -- the categorization was wrong half the time, the UI hadn't been updated since the Obama administration, and Intuit was clearly phoning it in -- but it was free, it connected everything, and it worked.
Then Intuit killed it. Merged it into Credit Karma. And millions of us were suddenly standing in the personal finance app aisle, trying to figure out what to do next.
If you're reading this, you're probably one of those people. Or maybe you've been bouncing between apps since the shutdown, not quite satisfied with any of them. I spent three months doing exactly that before I found something I could stick with.
Here's the honest version of what I tried.
What I Actually Needed From a Mint Replacement
Before I started testing alternatives, I made a list of what Mint actually did for me:
- Connected all my accounts in one place -- banks, credit cards, investments
- Auto-categorized transactions -- so I could see where money went without manual entry
- Was free -- this mattered more than I wanted to admit
- Showed spending trends over time -- month-over-month comparisons
- Didn't actively try to sell me financial products -- okay, Mint did this toward the end with NerdWallet affiliate links, but at least it wasn't the entire point of the app
Simple enough, right? You'd think every finance app does this. You'd be wrong.
The 6 Alternatives I Tried
1. Credit Karma (Mint's "Successor")
Price: Free How long I lasted: 2 weeks
This is where Intuit sent all the Mint refugees. And it's... not Mint. Credit Karma is a credit monitoring platform that happens to show your transactions. The entire business model is selling you financial products -- credit cards, loans, insurance. Every other screen is an ad for a credit card with a "pre-approved" badge.
The transaction tracking exists, but it's an afterthought. No budgeting tools. No spending categories you can actually act on. No net worth view. It's like they took Mint, removed everything useful, and replaced it with a credit card billboard.
Verdict: Free, but you get what you pay for. If you want credit monitoring, it's fine. If you want what Mint did, keep looking.
2. Monarch Money
Price: $14.99/month ($99.99/year) How long I lasted: 1 month (free trial + one paid month)
Monarch is genuinely good. Beautiful UI, solid categorization, household collaboration features, investment tracking, cash flow forecasting. It's probably the closest thing to "Mint but modern and well-maintained."
The problem? It's $100 a year. Fifteen dollars a month for something I used to get for free. I know, I know -- "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product." But I'm already the product everywhere else. I just want to see my spending without another subscription.
Also: no credit card optimization features. No true spend calculation. No splitting. If you're just looking for budgeting and don't care about card strategy, Monarch is excellent. But for someone managing 5+ credit cards, it's missing half the picture.
Verdict: Best Mint replacement if you don't mind paying $100/year. But it's a budgeting tool, not a credit card dashboard.
3. YNAB (You Need A Budget)
Price: $14.99/month ($109/year) How long I lasted: 3 weeks
YNAB has a cult following, and I understand why. The "give every dollar a job" methodology genuinely changes how you think about money. The community is incredible. The education resources are best-in-class.
But YNAB isn't a Mint replacement. It's a philosophy wrapped in software. You don't just connect your accounts and look at dashboards -- you actively budget every dollar, reconcile transactions, and manage envelopes. It's powerful, but it's a commitment. Like CrossFit for your finances.
If you're trying to get out of debt or fundamentally restructure your spending habits, YNAB is the right tool. If you want a dashboard that shows you where your money went last month without a 30-minute weekly ritual, it's overkill.
And again: $109/year with zero credit card optimization.
Verdict: Incredible budgeting tool, wrong tool for passive spending tracking. Also expensive.
4. Copilot Money
Price: $13/month ($95/year) How long I lasted: 2 weeks (then hit the platform wall)
Copilot might have the best UI of any finance app I've used. Apple Editor's Choice, 4.8 stars, gorgeous design. The NLP categorization is genuinely smart. Investment tracking is solid.
One problem: it's iOS and Mac only. No Android. No web app. If you're not fully in the Apple ecosystem, or if you ever want to check your finances from a work computer, you're out of luck. In 2026, a finance app with no web version is a dealbreaker for me.
Also $95/year. Also no credit card optimization, splitting, or benefits tracking.
Verdict: Beautiful app, but Apple-only and expensive. Great for iPhone users who just want budgeting.
5. Rocket Money (formerly Truebill)
Price: Free tier + Premium $6-14/month (pay-what-you-want) How long I lasted: 1 month
Rocket Money's killer feature is subscription detection and cancellation. It finds your recurring charges and can negotiate bills or cancel subscriptions on your behalf. That's genuinely useful.
But as a Mint replacement? The free tier is extremely limited. The real features are behind the premium paywall ($6-14/month). And even then, it's focused on subscriptions and bill negotiation -- not comprehensive spending tracking. No credit card optimization. No splitting. The bill negotiation service takes a cut of your savings, which feels a little conflicted.
Verdict: Good for finding subscriptions you forgot about. Not a full Mint replacement unless you pay for premium.
6. Empower (formerly Personal Capital)
Price: Free (but pushes advisory services) How long I lasted: 3 weeks
Empower is free and has solid features -- net worth tracking, investment analysis, retirement planning. The investment tools are genuinely best-in-class for a free product.
The catch: the entire free product is a funnel for their wealth management advisory service (0.89% AUM fee). You'll get calls from advisors. The spending tracker exists but hasn't been meaningfully updated in years. And like every other option here, there's zero credit card optimization.
Verdict: Great for investment tracking. Mediocre for spending. You will get sales calls.
The Comparison Table
Here's everything side by side:
| Feature | Mint (RIP) | Credit Karma | Monarch | YNAB | Copilot | Rocket Money | Empower | Prospify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free | $15/mo | $15/mo | $13/mo | $6-14/mo | Free* | Free |
| Multi-account dashboard | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-categorization | Yes | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| True spend (net of credits) | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Credit card benefits tracking | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Integrated splitting | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Unbiased card recs | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Web + mobile | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | iOS only | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No affiliate product pushing | Early yes, later no | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | Yes |
Empower is free but aggressively pushes paid advisory services.
What I Actually Switched To
After three months of app-hopping, I started using Prospify. Full disclosure: I'm the person who built it, because nothing else solved my problem.
Here's what pushed me over the edge. I was managing five credit cards, splitting expenses with my partner through Splitwise, tracking benefits in a spreadsheet, and using Mint for the dashboard view. When Mint died, I didn't just lose one app -- I lost the one thing holding together a fragile stack of three separate tools.
What I wanted was simple: one free dashboard that connects all my cards, shows me what I actually spent (not the inflated pre-credit number), tells me which benefits I'm using and which I'm leaving on the table, and lets me split shared transactions without opening a second app.
That's what Prospify does. Here's what makes it different from every alternative I tried:
True Spend Tracking
Every app I tested shows your gross spending -- the number on your statement. But if you're carrying premium credit cards, that number is wrong. My Amex Platinum returns $1,400/year in credits. My CSR returns $300 in travel credits. My total statement spending last year was $47,200, but my true out-of-pocket spend was $43,546 -- a 7.7% gap that matters for budgeting. No other app calculates this.
Integrated Splitting
I used Splitwise for three years. It's a great app, but it requires manual entry for every shared transaction. With Prospify, transactions auto-import from your connected cards. Tag something as shared, and it splits automatically. No double-entry between your banking app and your splitting app.
Benefits Tracking
Premium cards come with dozens of credits -- Uber, dining, streaming, airline fees, hotel stays, TSA PreCheck. They expire monthly or annually. I was tracking these in a spreadsheet and still missing $200+ per year. Prospify automatically detects which benefits you've used and flags the ones you're about to lose.
Unbiased Recommendations
Here's the part that matters most to me. Mint, in its later years, pushed NerdWallet affiliate links. Credit Karma's entire business is selling you financial products. Even the "best credit cards" listicles you find on Google are ranked by affiliate commission, not by what's best for you.
Prospify earns zero affiliate commissions. When it recommends a card, it's because your spending data says that card would save you money. That's it. No hidden incentives.
The Honest Downsides
I'm not going to pretend Prospify replaces everything Mint did:
- No investment tracking -- if you need portfolio analysis, Empower is still better for that
- No credit score monitoring -- Credit Karma still does this well (and free)
- No bill negotiation -- Rocket Money's subscription cancellation feature is genuinely useful and Prospify doesn't do this
Prospify is built specifically for people who manage multiple credit cards and want to optimize them. If you have one debit card and want basic budgeting, Monarch or YNAB might be a better fit (if you're willing to pay).
But if you're the kind of person who carries 3+ credit cards, cares about maximizing rewards, splits expenses with a partner or roommates, and wants to know whether your annual fees are actually paying for themselves -- this is what I built it for.
The Bottom Line
Mint dying was a wake-up call. We all relied on a free tool owned by a company that didn't care about it. The replacements are either expensive ($95-109/year), limited (Credit Karma), or focused on the wrong problem (YNAB's budgeting philosophy, Rocket Money's subscription cancellation).
What none of them built was the thing credit card optimizers actually need: a dashboard that shows your true cost, tracks your benefits, handles splitting, and doesn't try to sell you cards based on affiliate commissions.
That's Prospify. It's free. No trial period, no freemium paywall, no "premium tier coming soon."
Try Prospify free at prospify.app
Switching from Mint and have questions about which features translate? Reach out on Twitter/X -- I've tested literally every alternative and I'm happy to give you the honest take.