I use YNAB. I thought about building my own now that AI coding make this feasible. But the moat that I can't cross is the integration with my bank accounts. Plaid and the like are too expensive and don't cater to one-off users like me.
Has anyone been able to find a personal financial data provider that has a reasonable price?
Plaid has a pay-as-you-go option that's only about $2/month for this use case. (I believe the current rack rate PAYG pricing is 30 cents per month per connected bank login).
The privacy angle is interesting. I'm curious how people view the pricing strategy of taking a one-time payment for lifetime access. My first thought was that it encourages the developer to focus more on recruiting new users rather than keeping existing ones happy - makes me wonder what will become of the product if new user growth stalls.
I've wrestled with this idea. Do you think the general population will all be vibe coding finance apps? I have to think that most will still just pay the big players.
(I say this as someone who vibe coded a finance app, and it works!)...now I'm not sure what to do with it, it works for me - do I open it to the world or just keep making it great for me.
I use YNAB. I thought about building my own now that AI coding make this feasible. But the moat that I can't cross is the integration with my bank accounts. Plaid and the like are too expensive and don't cater to one-off users like me.
Has anyone been able to find a personal financial data provider that has a reasonable price?
I am researching providers to be able to add account sync to trackm.net
I haven't done it at first because
(1) they all have monthly / yearly costs and I wanted a flat fee;
(2) I can't update the account without the user having logged in because of how the encryption works.
actual budget something similar from what i can see via SimpleFIN Bridge (https://actualbudget.org/docs/advanced/bank-sync/#supported-...)
Actual Budget is incredible. Happy (now free since it's gone FOSS, formerly paying) customer since migrating from YNAB4 ~ 3/4/5 (?) years ago.
Plaid has a pay-as-you-go option that's only about $2/month for this use case. (I believe the current rack rate PAYG pricing is 30 cents per month per connected bank login).
https://teller.io/ has been on my radar to play with
I thought Plaid have (had?) a developer account that could connect something like 100 accounts that was free.
GoCardless might be an option, at least for OpenBank (UE/SEPA), no idea for the USA though...
> I've been dogfooding it for the past 10 days
Must be ready to go then
The privacy angle is interesting. I'm curious how people view the pricing strategy of taking a one-time payment for lifetime access. My first thought was that it encourages the developer to focus more on recruiting new users rather than keeping existing ones happy - makes me wonder what will become of the product if new user growth stalls.
That's actually a fair point, regarding the implications of a one time fee.
Personally, I don't like subscription-based apps so didn't want to create yet another one.
And I built this around my personal needs so I plan to support it indefinitely.
Regarding long term improvements, there is a number of paying users that once I achieve, any new users are basically profit.
The service was built to be cheap to run and maintain so I could charge a one time fee.
any comparison with https://actualbudget.org/ ?
Hadn't heard of it before, though looks similar in intent.
My inspiration for trackm was actually moneywell.app which i bought a license for in 2009.
The "look X years" into the future feature was pulled from it.
I no longer have a mac or ios device, so built trackm to fill the void.
I’m really sorry but anyone can vibe a personal finance app in 2026.
Monetizing this is going to be challenging.
I've wrestled with this idea. Do you think the general population will all be vibe coding finance apps? I have to think that most will still just pay the big players.
(I say this as someone who vibe coded a finance app, and it works!)...now I'm not sure what to do with it, it works for me - do I open it to the world or just keep making it great for me.