Finly is a free Mint alternative that never connects to a bank. You record what you spend, by typing or speaking it, and it shows where the money went, with a khata for money lent and borrowed and investment tracking alongside it.
Mint was discontinued by Intuit in 2024 and its users were moved towards Credit Karma. If you are looking for a replacement, the first question worth answering is whether you actually want the thing Mint did: automatic import from every account, in exchange for an aggregator holding your full transaction history and a business model built on recommending financial products to you.
Finly makes the opposite trade. Nothing is imported, because there is no bank connection at all. In return, no third party holds your statements, and there are no ads and no product recommendations.
The trade, stated plainly
| Mint's model | Finly | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting data in | Automatic, via an aggregator | You enter it, typed or spoken |
| Who else holds it | Your bank, the aggregator, the app | Your device, and a server the developer runs |
| How it was paid for | Recommending financial products | Nothing. No ads, no upsell, no data sold |
| Cash spending | Invisible to a bank feed | Tracked, because you enter it |
| Money you lend people | No concept of it | A khata ledger with per-person balances |
| Works offline | No | Yes |
| Credit score, bills, alerts | Yes | No |
| Still exists | Discontinued 2024 | Yes |
What manual entry actually costs
About ten seconds an expense, and remembering to do it. That is the honest number and there is no point pretending otherwise.
Finly makes the first part small: speak "spent 250 on groceries yesterday with card" and confirm what it filled in, and set rent, salary and subscriptions as recurring so they appear on their own. The second part, remembering, is real and no app solves it completely.
What you get back is that you notice spending while it happens rather than reading a report afterwards. That is not a small difference, and it is the reason a lot of people who tried both went back to manual.
When Finly is the wrong answer
If you loved Mint specifically for the automation, you will not like this. High card volume, many accounts, and a desire to never touch categorisation: an automatic tracker is genuinely the better tool, and Finly will not quietly grow a bank connection later. Not having one is the design.
Finly also does not do credit scores, bill negotiation, net worth across linked accounts, or alerts about upcoming payments. Those were real Mint features and they are absent here.
Finly suits you if the parts of Mint you actually used were "where did my money go this month" and "am I within budget", and the parts you disliked were handing your logins to an aggregator and being marketed to.
What you do get
- Spending, categorised. Monthly total, daily average, a 14-day trend, category breakdown, per-category budgets that fill as you spend.
- A khata. Money lent and borrowed, per-person running balances, kept out of your spending totals.
- Investments. Stocks, crypto, funds and gold, with live quotes fetched server-side so the providers never see you.
- Recurring entries. Rent and salary entered once.
- Export. CSV, any time. Your data can always leave, which is the lesson Mint's shutdown taught everyone.
Common questions
Is Finly really free, and how?
Yes, with no paid tier, no trial and no ads. It is a small self-hosted app run by its developer rather than a venture-funded company that needs to monetise your data.
Can I import my Mint export?
Not yet. There is no bulk CSV import, which is a fair reason to wait if you have years of history you need carried over. Export out works.
Does it connect to US banks?
It connects to no banks anywhere. That is the point of the page you are reading.
Does it track net worth?
Only what you enter: investments and balances you record by hand. There is no automatic account aggregation.
Is my data sold or used for ads?
No. Finly runs Google Analytics for aggregate page views, but nothing is sold and ad personalisation is off. The privacy policy spells out exactly what is stored and what Analytics does and does not see.
What happens if Finly shuts down?
Your records are on your own device, and CSV export works today. That is a deliberate answer to what happened to Mint users.