Comparison
Tavera Money vs Monarch Money
Monarch is where most people went when Mint closed, and it earned that. It is paid for by subscriptions, sells nothing about you, and is further along than we are in several places. This page is an honest account of where the two differ — including the cases where you should pick Monarch.
Side by side
| Tavera Money | Monarch Money | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes — Basic, no time limit | No — 7-day free trial |
| Entry paid priceCheapest paid tier with bank syncing | $11.99 / mo · $99.99 / yr | $14.99 / mo · $99.99 / yr |
| Top paid price | $14.99 / mo · $124.99 / yr | $199 / yr, annual only |
| Bank connections at the entry priceMonarch is ahead here — one price, no cap | 5 on Plus, unlimited on Premium | Unlimited |
| Sharing with a householdBoth include it at no extra charge — this is not a differentiator | Included, every plan | Included, every plan |
| Budget without linking a bank | Included | Included |
| Mobile apps | Not included | Included |
| Investment tracking | No | Yes — Morningstar analysis on Plus |
| Forecasting, AI assistant, credit scoreThree things Monarch has and we have not built | Not included | Included |
| Month-end close that settles the overspendRanked overspends, repeat offenders flagged, three ways to cover a shortfall, windfall guidance | Yes | Recaps, but nothing to settle |
| Debt payoff planningBoth do this — ours costs every plan against paying minimums only | Snowball, avalanche, custom | Snowball and avalanche |
| Recurring bill detection from history | Included | Included |
| CSV import and exportExport is on our free plan too, so leaving costs nothing | Included | Included |
| Track record | New | Since 2021 |
| Sells your data | No | No |
Monarch figures checked against monarch.com/pricing on 19 August 2026. Prices in USD. If something here is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.
Which one is right for you
Choose Monarch if…
- You budget on your phone. Monarch has mature iOS and Android apps and Tavera Money has none — it is a web app that works in a phone browser.
- Your net worth is mostly invested. Monarch tracks holdings, allocation and performance; we track balances and nothing more.
- You have more than five banks and want the cheapest route to unlimited connections — Monarch at $99.99 a year undercuts our Premium plan.
- You want cash-flow forecasting, an AI assistant or credit score tracking, none of which we have built.
- You would rather trust a product with five years and a large community behind it than a new one.
Choose Tavera Money if…
- You want to budget without paying at all — Basic is free forever, not a 7-day trial, and does the whole budgeting job on manual accounts.
- The month-end close is the part you care about: what went wrong, whether it keeps going wrong, and how to cover it from the money you actually have.
- You are paying off debt and want snowball, avalanche and your own order each costed against a minimums-only baseline, so you can see what a plan is really worth.
- You want to know where every category came from — each transaction is badged with whether it came from your rule, your history or the bank label.
- You want to try it without a card, a countdown or anything to cancel.
One argument we are not going to make
A lot of budgeting apps won their users by pointing at Mint and saying "they sold you" — an argument we make ourselves, on the page about leaving Mint. Monarch is not that. It charges a subscription, runs no ads and does not sell financial data, which is exactly our model too. So the honest comparison here is narrower than the one you have probably read elsewhere: it comes down to price, to mobile apps and investments on their side, and to what happens at the end of your month on ours.
Questions
Switching, honestly
Is Tavera Money cheaper than Monarch?
Only if you look past the annual headline. Both charge $99.99 a year for the entry tier, but Monarch has no cap on bank connections at that price and our Plus plan stops at five — for unlimited banks you would pay $124.99 a year on Premium, which is more than Monarch. Where we are genuinely cheaper is the bottom and the month: Basic is free forever rather than a 7-day trial, and Plus is $11.99 a month against Monarch at $14.99. If you want unlimited bank connections and nothing else matters, Monarch is the better deal.
Can I import my Monarch data?
Your transactions, yes. Export them from Monarch as CSV and import them here with column mapping, per-row validation and duplicate detection. Budgets, goals and category structure do not transfer automatically — you would recreate your categories, which usually takes a few minutes, and can then generate a starting budget from the history you just imported rather than inventing numbers.
Is Monarch selling my data the way Mint did?
No, and it would be dishonest of us to imply it. Monarch is funded by subscriptions, runs no ads and does not sell financial data — the same model we use. That argument worked against Mint, whose closure in 2024 sent a lot of people looking for a replacement; it does not work against Monarch. Choose between the two on price and on what each app actually does with your month.
What does Monarch do that Tavera Money does not?
Native iOS and Android apps, investment and portfolio tracking, cash-flow forecasting, an AI assistant, credit score tracking, and unlimited bank connections at its entry price. It has also been running since 2021 with a large user base behind it. None of those are on our roadmap being coy — they are simply not built, and we would rather you found that out here than after you moved.
So what is the argument for switching?
That the month should end with instructions, not a chart. Tavera Money closes each month by ranking what you overspent, flagging the categories that keep doing it, offering three ways to settle the shortfall against the money you actually have, and telling you what to change next month. Add a free plan that never expires and CSV export on every tier, and you can run it alongside Monarch for a month at no cost and see which one tells you something you did not already know.
Run it alongside Monarch for a month.
The free plan costs nothing and has no time limit, so you can import the same history into both and see which one tells you something you didn't already know.
No card required · Your data is never sold · Export it any time