Finly is a free Rocket Money alternative that never connects to a bank, and it will not cancel subscriptions for you. You record what you spend, by voice or typing, and it shows where the money went, with a khata for money lent and borrowed and investment tracking including live PSX quotes.
Rocket Money is a bank-connected app whose headline features are subscription detection and bill negotiation. It scans your transactions for recurring charges, shows you what you are paying for, and will cancel things on your behalf. There is a free tier and a paid one, and the paid one is where the negotiation and cancellation help lives. Finly does none of that, because none of it is possible without the access it refuses to ask for.
Where Rocket Money is genuinely better
Finding a forgotten subscription is worth real money, and Finly cannot do it. If you have three streaming services you stopped watching and a gym membership from two years ago, an app that scans your statements will find them and Finly will not, because Finly cannot see your statements. That is not a small gap and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Cancelling on your behalf is also genuinely valuable, because the friction of cancelling is the business model of half the services doing the charging.
If your specific problem is "I am paying for things I do not use and I do not know what they are", Rocket Money solves that problem and a manual tracker does not.
The access that makes it work
It is worth being precise about the trade rather than vague about it, because this is the whole decision.
To find a recurring charge, an app has to read every transaction on the account. To cancel a service for you, it needs enough standing to act on your behalf. That is a large amount of access and a large amount of trust, extended to a company whose business model you did not design.
Some people consider that a fair exchange for the money it saves. That is a reasonable conclusion, and it is not the one Finly is built for. Finly's position is that an expense tracker does not need to see your bank at all, which we have written out on the no bank login page.
Side by side
| Rocket Money | Finly | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free + paid tier | Free |
| Bank access | Required | Never |
| Finds subscriptions | Yes, its focus | No |
| Cancels for you | Yes, paid tier | No |
| Bill negotiation | Yes | No |
| Entries | Imported | Speak or type |
| Cash spending | Invisible | Normal |
| Money lent | Not a concept | Khata, per person |
| Works outside the US | Limited | Yes |
When Finly is the better fit
- You already know what you subscribe to. The detection feature solves a problem you may not have. If you can list your recurring charges from memory, you are paying for a service you do not need.
- You are not in a supported market. Bank coverage and the negotiation service are US-centred. Outside that, much of what you are paying for does not function.
- You will not grant account access to a third party. A firm position, and Finly is built around it.
- Most of your spending is cash. Nothing that scans statements can see cash. Finly treats it as ordinary.
- You want the recurring view without the access. Finly has recurring entries you set up yourself, which covers the "what do I pay every month" question without anyone reading your account.
Doing the subscription audit yourself, once
If the subscription problem is real for you but the access is not something you want to grant, the manual version is a single afternoon and it is worth doing properly.
Open your last three months of bank and card statements. Mark every charge that repeated. That list is what Rocket Money would have produced. Cancel what you do not use, then enter the survivors into Finly as recurring entries so the total is visible from then on without anyone needing to read your statements again.
The honest caveat: you have to actually do it, and the app version happens whether you get around to it or not. If you know you will not, pay for the app.
The honest part about free
Finly is free because it is small and self-hosted, not because it makes money another way. There is no support desk and no service commitment; it is one developer's project.
The thing that limits your risk is that your data is written to your own device first and CSV export works today. If it stopped tomorrow you would still have everything.
Common questions
Can Finly find my forgotten subscriptions?
No. Finding them requires reading your bank transactions, which Finly never does. You can add recurring entries yourself, and then the monthly total is visible.
Can Finly cancel a subscription for me?
No. Nothing in Finly acts on your behalf anywhere. It is a record of what you spent, not an agent.
Is Finly free like Rocket Money's free tier?
Free with no tiers at all. Rocket Money's most valuable features sit behind its paid tier; Finly has no paid tier to sit behind.
Does Finly work outside the United States?
Yes, everywhere, because there is nothing to connect. It defaults to PKR and includes Urdu voice entry and live Pakistan Stock Exchange quotes, but works in any currency.
Can I track recurring payments in Finly?
Yes, as recurring entries you set up. The difference is that you tell it, rather than it discovering them by reading your account.
What does Finly do that Rocket Money does not?
A khata ledger for lending and borrowing, voice entry in nine languages, investment tracking with live PSX quotes, full offline use, and no request for bank access.