Best budgeting apps in the UK in 2026 (Mint alternatives)

If you’ve just realised you spent over £100 on coffee last month and need to step back and rethink your spending habits, you’re not alone. Most people have been there at some point.

Below, we cover Mint’s availability in the UK and explore equivalent alternatives for 2026.

Is Mint available in the UK?

Mint is no longer available anywhere. Intuit (Mint’s parent company) shut down the Mint app entirely in March 2024, after announcing the decision in late 2023. The product was discontinued and existing users were prompted to migrate to Credit Karma, also owned by Intuit, though Credit Karma covers credit monitoring and offers more limited budgeting tools than the original Mint experience. Even before the shutdown, Mint had never officially launched in the UK or Europe: it was always restricted to the US and Canada.

The good news: the UK has some of the strongest budgeting and money management apps in the world, thanks in large part to its Open Banking framework (in force since 2018), which lets apps securely connect to your bank accounts to pull transactions and balances.

The market keeps moving, though. Mint is not the only app to disappear: Money Dashboard closed in 2024, and Moneyhub shut its consumer app in August 2026 to focus on its business services, deleting users’ data once the app was decommissioned. If you were a Moneyhub user, the apps below are the natural places to move to. Below are the strongest Mint alternatives for UK residents in 2026.

Best Mint alternatives in the UK

The UK has one of the strongest personal finance app ecosystems in the world, thanks to the country’s Open Banking framework. There are dozens of budgeting apps to choose from, each with distinct strengths. Some excel at tracking and categorising spending, others at surfacing wasteful subscriptions, others at automated saving, and others at cutting your monthly bills.

The spectrum is wide, but here are our top picks for 2026:

1. Snoop
   Snoop is one of the UK’s leading personal finance apps, now part of Vanquis Banking Group. Powered by Open Banking, it lets you connect your bank and credit card accounts to track spending across providers, surface ways to cut bills (energy, broadband, mobile), and get personalised AI-driven money-saving insights. The core app is free, with an optional Snoop Plus subscription (£5.99 a month) for advanced features.
2. Emma
   A UK-founded, Open Banking-powered app especially good at identifying wasteful subscriptions and unused recurring payments. It also lets you set budget goals, track net worth across accounts, cryptocurrencies, and investments, and surfaces personalised savings recommendations. Free tier available, with Emma Plus, Pro and Ultimate paid tiers (from £4.99 a month) unlocking deeper insights.
3. Wise
   Formerly TransferWise, Wise is the go-to option for saving money on international transfers and multi-currency spending. It lets you hold and convert money in 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate (usually much cheaper than traditional banks), and comes with a multi-currency Wise debit card. Wise had 18.9 million active customers in its 2026 financial year and is listed on Nasdaq (ticker: WSE), with a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: WISE).

1. Snoop

Looking for a comprehensive tool to help you manage your finances amid the rising UK cost of living? Snoop is one of the leading UK money management apps, free at its core tier and designed to help you control spending, cut your bills, and keep your finances on track. Snoop is now part of Vanquis Banking Group, which acquired the company in 2022.

Powered by Open Banking, Snoop consolidates information from your bank accounts and credit cards into a single, clean interface. It tracks your spending habits, flags overpayments on bills and surfaces issues that warrant attention, all automatically. Snoop also offers credit score monitoring and a savings account with daily interest. Usnoop Limited is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (firm registration number 911638).

As a Snoop user, you get access to exclusive offers and personalised deals that can help you save even more. The app’s switching services also help you find better deals on energy, broadband, mobile, and insurance.

Snoop’s personalised spending analysis lets you monitor spending by category (groceries, eating out, transport, etc.) or by merchant, with month-on-month comparisons. You can also set custom budgets for monthly spending and specific categories, either building them from scratch or letting Snoop suggest budgets based on your historical spending patterns.

One of Snoop’s standout features is its proprietary “Snoops”: small, contextual money-saving insights that appear when relevant (e.g., flagging that you can save on your current energy tariff, or that a specific recurring subscription is cheaper elsewhere). By monitoring daily balances and bill increases, the app keeps you continuously informed about your financial situation.

Snoop’s free tier covers core budgeting and spending insights. The optional Snoop Plus subscription (£5.99 a month or £47.99 a year) unlocks more advanced features including unlimited custom budgets, deeper net worth tracking, and additional reporting.

2. Emma

Emma is a UK-founded money management app with more than 2 million users. It helps you avoid overdrafts, identify wasteful subscriptions and take control of your finances, all while consolidating multiple accounts into a single platform. Co-founder Edoardo Moreni describes Emma as a “fitness tracker for your money”.

The idea is to let the app do the heavy lifting across the whole spectrum of personal finance: spending tracking, subscription monitoring, budgeting, net worth visualisation, and savings recommendations. The free tier covers account aggregation, budgeting and subscription tracking. The paid tiers unlock more: Emma Plus (£4.99 a month) adds cashback deals and bill reminders, Emma Pro (£9.99) adds custom categories, offline accounts and net worth tracking, and Emma Ultimate (£14.99) adds business account support. Annual plans cost about 30% less, and every paid plan comes with a 7-day free trial.

Emma offers several features you don’t always find in other budgeting apps:

• Subscription detection: one of Emma’s standout strengths is identifying recurring payments you’ve forgotten about.
• “Scramble mode”: lets you show the app to friends or family without revealing your real financial data.
• Cashback offers: personalised rewards at select retailers (on paid plans).
• Credit score and rent reporting: see your credit score and report rent payments to the major credit bureaus.
• Fee highlighting: flags banking fees so you can act on them.
• Open Banking-powered: securely connects to UK banks. Emma is authorised by the FCA (FRN 1042167).

On the drawbacks side, not every bank or financial provider is supported (so some accounts may require manual entry), and the savings category and goal-setting tools aren’t as developed as in some competing apps.

3. Wise

Wise (formerly TransferWise) isn’t a traditional money management app like the others on this list, hence its position at the bottom. However, it can be a huge help when travelling abroad or converting money between currencies, which makes it a valuable complement to any UK personal finance toolkit.

Wise’s core proposition is saving you money on the hidden FX fees and markups that traditional banks add to international transfers and foreign card spending. It was founded in 2011 by two Estonians, Taavet Hinrikus (Skype’s first employee) and Kristo Käärmann, who felt they were being overcharged when sending money between the UK and Estonia. Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021 and moved its primary listing to Nasdaq (ticker: WSE) in May 2026, keeping a secondary listing in London.

With a Wise account, you can:

• Hold and convert money across 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate, with the fee shown upfront.
• Receive international payments with local account details (such as IBANs and US routing numbers), useful for freelancers and remote workers.
• Spend internationally with the Wise debit card. The first card is free to order.
• Make free ATM withdrawals up to £250 a month, with a 2.69% fee on the amount above that allowance.
• Earn a variable return on your balance through Wise’s Assets feature, which invests your money in a fund. Unlike a bank deposit, your capital is at risk.

Wise had 18.9 million active customers in its 2026 financial year (to March 2026), who moved $243.5 billion across borders.

On safety, Wise is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK as an Electronic Money Institution. As a licensed EMI, Wise must safeguard customer funds in segregated accounts rather than using them in its own business. Note that e-money is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) the way a bank deposit is. Wise also holds licences with the Central Bank of Ireland, Bank of Lithuania, FinCEN (US), MAS (Singapore), and several other regulators globally.

Bottom line: which should I go for?

The UK has seen a wave of strong budgeting and personal finance apps emerge over the past decade, thanks to Open Banking, the UK regulatory framework (rooted in the EU’s revised Payment Services Directive PSD2) that requires banks to securely share customer data with authorised third parties when the customer consents. This is what makes apps like Snoop and Emma possible in their current form.

Choosing between them isn’t always straightforward, since their core offerings overlap meaningfully. The right pick depends on what you most want to optimise:

• If you want a free, comprehensive UK app with bill switching built in: start with Snoop.
• If subscription detection and avoiding unnecessary recurring payments is your priority: Emma is one of the best in the category.
• If you travel internationally or send money across borders: add Wise alongside one of the budgeting apps above.

Our suggestion: start with the free tiers to get a feel for each app’s interface and features, then upgrade to a paid tier (or switch apps) only once you know what you actually use day-to-day. Many people end up using a budgeting app for tracking and Wise for international spending, a strong combination.

If none of these resonate, the trusty spreadsheet still works perfectly well (and never quite gets old).

Hope we helped.