Finly is a free Monarch Money alternative that never connects to a bank. You record what you spend, by voice or by typing, and it shows you where the money went. It also keeps a khata for money you have lent and borrowed, and tracks investments including live PSX quotes.
Monarch Money is a paid subscription app built around automatic bank sync. It connects to thousands of institutions, pulls your transactions in, and turns them into budgets, net worth tracking and reports. It also handles couples and households properly, which is genuinely unusual and is the reason a lot of people chose it. Finly is single-user, so that is the part it does not replace.
Where Monarch is genuinely better
If your accounts sync cleanly, automatic beats manual. The strongest argument for Monarch is that transactions appear without you doing anything. Manual entry has a failure mode Monarch does not: you stop doing it. Nothing in Finly prevents that, and if you already know you will not keep up a daily habit, a sync-based app is the honest recommendation.
Monarch is also better at households. Partner access is included rather than sold as an upgrade, and shared finances are a first-class feature. Finly is single-user, full stop.
And Monarch is a funded company with a support team, a roadmap and an obligation to its paying customers. Finly is one person's project. That difference matters more than feature lists when something goes wrong.
Side by side
| Monarch Money | Finly | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Paid subscription | Free |
| Bank sync | Yes, extensive | Never |
| Entries | Imported | Speak or type |
| Households | Yes, included | No |
| Net worth & reports | Extensive | Basic |
| Cash spending | Manual anyway | Normal |
| Money lent | Not a concept | Khata, per person |
| South Asia banks | Thin | N/A |
| Works offline | Partly | Fully |
When Finly is the better fit
- Your bank is not supported. Sync coverage is excellent in the US and thin elsewhere. An app whose main feature does not work for your accounts is a subscription for reports you have to type in anyway.
- A lot of your spending is cash. Sync cannot see cash. If half your month happens in notes, the automatic app is manual for half your money and you are paying for the half it does.
- You do not want an aggregator holding your bank credentials. This is a legitimate position and it is the one Finly is built around.
- You will not pay a subscription for personal finance, and would rather keep a free tool than lapse a paid one.
- You lend money to friends and family and want it tracked as a balance owed rather than buried in a spending category.
If you came here from Mint
Mint's shutdown sent a lot of people looking, and Monarch absorbed most of them because it was the closest like-for-like replacement: same model, same automatic sync, better execution.
If what you miss about Mint is the automation, Monarch is the right move and this page is not trying to talk you out of it. If what you actually miss is just knowing where your money went, and the aggregator part was something you tolerated rather than wanted, then the free, no-login version is worth trying first. We have written that comparison out separately on the Mint alternative page.
How to test it without a messy switch
Do not cancel anything yet. Run Finly for one month alongside whatever you have now, entering expenses as they happen rather than reconstructing them on the 30th.
At the end of the month, ask one question: did entering it yourself tell you something the automatic version did not? A lot of people find that the act of recording a purchase is what changes behaviour, and that a feed they never read changed nothing. If that is not your experience, you have lost a month and learned something specific rather than guessing.
The honest part about free
Finly has no paid tier and no plans for one, which means nobody is paid to keep it running. There is no support desk and no service commitment. It is maintained by one developer.
What limits the risk is that your data is not trapped in it. Records are written to your own device first, and CSV export works today. If it stopped tomorrow you would still have everything, which is not something every free finance app can say.
Common questions
Is Finly really free, or is there a paid tier coming?
Free, with no paid tier today and none planned. There is no trial to expire either.
Can Finly connect to my bank like Monarch does?
No, and it never will. That is the design, not a missing feature. Every expense is entered by you, by voice or by typing.
Does Finly track net worth and investments?
Investments yes: stocks, crypto, funds and gold, with live Pakistan Stock Exchange quotes. Full net worth reporting across linked accounts, no, because there are no linked accounts.
Can my partner and I share a budget?
No. Finly is single-user. If shared household finances matter, Monarch does that well and Finly does not do it at all.
Can I import my Monarch data?
No bulk import yet. CSV export out of Finly works.
What does Finly do that Monarch does not?
A khata ledger for money lent and borrowed, voice entry in nine languages including Urdu and Hindi, live PSX quotes, full offline use, and no subscription.