YNAB
Shares rank 2 of 10 budgeting apps by recommenders
People credit YNAB's zero-based budgeting method and clean design with better money habits. The most common caveat is that its subscription price rose and felt not worth it.
People credit YNAB's zero-based budgeting method and clean design with better money habits. The most common caveat is that its subscription price rose and felt not worth it.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 10 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Helpful budgeting method and philosophy
“I found YNAB's philosophy helpful: one-off expenses often repeat predictably”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household” “I matured my personal finances by following the YNAB method”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” “I like YNAB (both their app and their method)”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Maladaptive Frugality” Simple design that connects everything
“it still feels like the best combination of simplicity and design of any budgeting tool I've used”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “From MIT: AI financial advice is surprisingly good” “I use YNAB for budgeting so I already had all of my financial data in a single source.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “From MIT: AI financial advice is surprisingly good” “High wife approval factor and everything just connects.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” Useful transaction history and reference
“YNAB is also a very good reference of where to go next in the budgeting sense.”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker” “I love the transaction history in YNAB. I refer to it all the time.”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker” One-time purchase with local data
“I have no interest in paying a subscription for YNAB5 when I have no need for cloud-access or cross-device syncing.”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “From MIT: AI financial advice is surprisingly good” “I don't like renting software”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Subscription price rise felt too high
“they had big price increase and became more expensive than it was worth to me”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household” “I have no interest in paying a subscription for YNAB5 when I have no need for cloud-access or cross-device syncing.”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “From MIT: AI financial advice is surprisingly good” “after ditching YNAB (£109/yr)”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 on Hacker News - Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker”
Too focused on budgeting
“Zero-Based Budgeting (like YNAB) fails at handling Time”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I built a cash flow forecasting tool because YNAB is a rearview mirror” “YNAB etc were geared too much towards budgeting”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell” “the improvements are not in directions I need”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household” - Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Show HN: Treasury – Ask your money anything”
- Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”
Importer and sync bugs
“it would have been much simpler if the CSV import could just have removed certain rows from the get-go”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker” “Auto-sync breaks, rules need constant tweaking, and once you fall behind it's hard to catch up.”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What frustrates you most about personal finance apps?” “mostly great although sometimes unstable and limited in ways”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” - Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files”
- Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household”
Other budgeting apps people recommend
The four most recommended other budgeting apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual Budget | 29 | 0 | 100% | 12 | 3 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| YNABThis page | 17 | 13 | 57% | 4 | 10 yrs3 owners | — |
| Monarch Money | 17 | 4 | 81% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Quicken | 10 | 10 | 50% | 4 | — | — |
| Tiller Finance | 10 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | Approved |
What people said
31 of the 32 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“push the data through a free-tier Worker on Cloudflare and into YNAB within a second”
“it still feels like the best combination of simplicity and design of any budgeting tool I've used”
“I use YNAB4 to this day and the cross-device sync still work”
“I was happy to pay for YNAB4, which was local-only data.”
“I have no interest in paying a subscription for YNAB5 when I have no need for cloud-access or cross-device syncing.”
“I use YNAB for budgeting so I already had all of my financial data in a single source.”
“force one budgeting shape on every user”
“I like YNAB (both their app and their method)”
“Zero-Based Budgeting (like YNAB) fails at handling Time”
“Auto-sync breaks, rules need constant tweaking, and once you fall behind it's hard to catch up.”
“the improvements are not in directions I need”
“I matured my personal finances by following the YNAB method”
“for the time period it reduced my anxiety by a lot”
“they had big price increase and became more expensive than it was worth to me”
“it was like a hockey-stick diagram on our household net worth”
“something got messed up in the importer all the time”
“I found YNAB's philosophy helpful: one-off expenses often repeat predictably”
“Another unexpected side effect is that it made me "excited" to spend money when I had saved up for it.”
“High wife approval factor and everything just connects.”
“mostly great although sometimes unstable and limited in ways”
“YNAB 4 is also quite buggy on my Arch based setup”
“YNAB isn't great for that, but it ends up working out because 95% of my spend is in just one.”
“YNAB etc were geared too much towards budgeting”
“were just too focused on budgeting”
“after ditching YNAB (£109/yr)”
“YNAB is also a very good reference of where to go next in the budgeting sense.”
“it would have been much simpler if the CSV import could just have removed certain rows from the get-go”
“I love the transaction history in YNAB. I refer to it all the time.”
“Don't regret finally kicking ynab out.”
“I happily paid for v4 (one-time purchase)”
“I don't like renting software”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.