Understanding where your money is going is critical to make better financial decisions.
You might be tracking expenses in your notes app, but did you know there's a more effective way to track your spending?
This is where Mint budgeting app comes in.
In this Mint review, we'll explain why this is the best personal finance app you can use to track everything from spending and savings to investments and bills. We’ll also analyze the basics of the Mint budgeting app, its main features, and pros and cons. Last but not least, you’ll get to see what real customers are saying about using the product so that you can determine whether it’s the right fit for you.
So, let’s get started!
Mint review 2024: is Mint a good budget app?
We did extensive research and looked through hundreds of reviews by real customers so that we give you the best Mint budgeting review on this popular budgeting app. We found that Mint is one of the best personal finance and budgeting apps on the market.
Not only is Mint one of the best personal finance software, but it's also free to use. You'll get access to the full extent of the software's features without paying a dime. And its set of features is not modest; on the contrary, there's a good deal of functionality, from budgeting features and credit monitoring tools to investment tracking and management.
Not to mention the software is super easy to use and very intuitive. The system is simple to navigate, and all the features can quickly be located, which makes it a suitable app for beginners.
Mint pricing plans
First of all, how much does Mint cost?
The Mint paid version is no longer available as of a few months ago. The software is now entirely free to use. Mint makes money by showing you offers from carefully selected partners like BillShark, Wealthfront, Titan IRA, and other financial products.
There's an option on the mobile apps for iOS and Android to subscribe to an ad-free version, which costs $0.99 per month. You can also subscribe to a Premium version for $4.99 per month, but this option is currently only available for iOS.
Mint plans | Monthly price | Annual price |
Free | $0/month | $0/month |
Ad-free experience (available for iOS and Android) | $0.99/month | / |
Mint Premium (available only for iOS) | $4.99/month | / |
Mint free vs paid: what’s the difference?
The web version of Mint is free to use and doesn't have any subscription options. The mobile apps, on the other hand, give you the option to subscribe to an ad-free version that costs $0.99 per month.
The iOS version also has a Premium subscription that gives you access to an extended set of features for $4.99 per month. But you can use the mobile version for free as well, as long as you don’t mind the ads.
Mint overview: what is Mint.com & what is Mint used for?
Mint is a powerful all-in-one personal finance and free budgeting app that lets you connect all of your financial accounts in one central place so that you get a top-level insight into your financial health.
The software is owned by the same company that owns the QuickBooks accounting software and the tax preparation software TurboTax. In a nutshell, the Mint app does many different things, from showing you your spending breakdown, creating and tracking your budgets, showing you your credit score, letting you set goals and many other things.
For instance, you can set a monthly budget that will go toward things like buying a home or going on your dream vacation. The software can also let you track your spending habits, including all of your subscriptions. Another software perk is the investment tracking functionality that lets you view and track your investments. Mint is designed for individual use and lacks the option to create a joint account.
How does Mint work?
Getting started with Mint is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the Mint website and sign up for a Mint account. You can enable multi-factor authentication. From there, setting up your account is very straightforward; Mint will offer suggestions for setup and will guide you through the process.
The first step is to connect your banks, credit cards, and anything else you use, like PayPal. One cool fact is that Mint supports 20,000+ local and international financial institutions, including Bank of America, Chase, Discover, Citibank Credit Card, Apple Card, and more.
You simply need to find your bank or credit card, connect it securely to Mint, and Mint will do the rest. The app will then download your financial data from the last few months. This should take a few minutes.
Then, you'll be taken to the home screen, where you can see an overview of your finances. You'll see a section for your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, properties, and more. You can even hide certain bank accounts you don't want Mint to track. It's possible to add a property like cars and houses, which Mint will calculate and add it toward your net worth.
Mint features list
The main features of Mint are:
Categorization
Goals
Credit score and credit monitoring tools
Bills
Bill negotiation
Budgeting
Investments
Mobile app
1. Categorization
Under the transactions tab, you’ll be able to see all the transactions that you’ve made. This can be especially helpful if you’re using multiple credit cards or bank accounts for your purchases and if you want to get insights into how you may be able to improve your money management. Mint automatically categorizes your transactions. In case the software doesn’t categorize a transaction properly, you can always update it manually.
Additionally, you can set up rules for your purchases for transactions that are the same each month. You can make a rule to categorize it in a certain way to reduce incorrect categorization. You can even add your own custom category and tag your transactions.
2. Goals
Mint has preset goals you can choose from, like saving for a vacation, buying a home, saving for college, preparing for retirement, etc. You can even create your own custom goals. Let's say you want to save for your dream home.
Simply set a goal of how much you want to save, pick a date to achieve your goal, and link it to an account. You can then track your progress online or via email updates. Mint will even advise you on what kind of house you can afford.
3. Credit score and credit monitoring
Mint gives you free access to your credit score and a range of credit monitoring tools. It’s in partnership with TransUnion, which means you can see your TransUnion VantageScore inside the app. Simply verify your identity, and you'll get your free credit report summary within minutes.
This feature can be especially useful for people who want to see their credit scores and accounts in the same place. Mint will even tell you how your credit score is calculated and how to improve it. The free credit monitoring tools work through TransUnion as well. You can sign up to receive real-time alerts every time TransUnion receives new credit information from creditors.
4. Bills
Mint used to have an option for paying bills through the app, but they’ve removed the feature. At the moment, Mint only helps you track your bills so that you know what you’re paying and when.
The software can send your reminders when it’s time to pay your bills so that you don’t miss any payments. You’ll also get warnings when your account balances are low or when it’s time to pay your bills. Mint can even track your monthly subscriptions to see how much per month you’re spending.
5. Bill negotiation
Bill negotiation is a relatively new feature that helps you get your overpaying under control. Mint partners with a bill negotiation service called Billshark. If you want to lower your monthly bills, you can have Billshark negotiate on your behalf.
You don’t have to pay anything upfront. But if they manage to negotiate to lower your bill, they take a cut of your savings. For successful negotiations, you'll be charged 40% of the savings on that provider for the service period, up to 24 months. For example, let’s say you save $240 over a period of 24 months. Billshark will take $96 from that amount.
6. Budgeting
Mint is one of the best budgeting apps. It comes with a good deal of budgeting tools that let you create and manage an unlimited number of budgets. When creating a budget, you select from a list of suggested categories or create your own custom category. You simply tell Mint your spending limits, and the app will keep track of the numbers for you.
The app will automatically suggest budget amounts based on your spending history in each category. You can always adjust the budget. Budgets can be set weekly, monthly, every few months, and once. There's also the option to have any unspent funds for the month rolled over to the next month.
What's more, the system will notify you before overspending. You'll even get recommendations for how to reduce your spending.
7. Investments
Although Mint is not an investing app, it lets you view and track your investments. You can add all of your investment accounts, including mutual funds, brokerage accounts, 401(k), and IRAs. In addition, you’ll be able to compare your investment portfolio to market benchmarks. The software will track your investments and catch hidden fees so that you avoid unnecessary charges.
8. Mobile app
Mint has a mobile app for iOS and Android users that lets you manage your account from your smartphone. The app has more limited functionality than the web version, but you can still do a good deal of things. For instance, you can add accounts, create budgets, see your monthly bills, and more. The mobile app has great ease of use and a clean interface.
Mint pros and cons
Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Mint:
Advantages of Intuit Mint
One of the biggest advantages of Intuit Mint is that it's completely free to use. You can access each one of the software's features without paying a cent. And the choice of features is extensive, from budgeting features to bill negotiation and investments.
If we compare it to other budgeting apps, Mint is the most affordable. For example, YNAB app costs $14.99/month or $8.23 billed annually. PocketGuard has a free plan, but it's quite limited, and Quicken starts at $3.49 per month.
Another perk of the software is that it gives you free credit score access. You'll be able to monitor your spending and credit score from one central place. Even better, the software will regularly give you recommendations for how you can improve your credit score. This feature doesn't hurt your credit score.
The app can send you alerts and reminders so that you don't miss payments or go overboard with spending. You can receive alerts for late fees, low balances, rate changes, bill reminders, and more.
Moving on with the next advantage, Mint also supports different financial accounts. You can connect your bank accounts, credit cards, personal loans, and mortgage accounts so that you know how much you owe without using other apps.
The app can send you alerts and reminders so that you don’t miss payments or go overboard with spending. You can receive alerts for late fees, low balances, rate changes, bill reminders, and more.
The goals feature is a neat functionality that helps you set and track your financial goals. You can set any kind of goal, from saving for a dream home to paying off debt.
Disadvantages of Intuit Mint
Mint is a free app, but it makes money by displaying targeted ads for credit cards and other financial products. Unfortunately, there’s no option to remove the ads from the web version. You can only pay for an ad-free experience on the Mint mobile apps.
The ad-free experience costs $0.99 per month; additionally, you can subscribe to Mint Premium for $4.99 per month. This option is currently only available to iOS users. The Premium plan adds features like spending projects based on your data and trends, monitoring and cancellation, and more.
Other users may find the lack of an option to create joint accounts a major downside. The app was designed with individual users in mind, so if you need a budgeting app you can use with your partner, for instance, you'll be better off with different software.
Mint complaints & praise (Mint reviews from real customers)
Many positive Mint personal finance reviews talk about how the app is a great alternative to cost-based options. People say the software is super easy to use and very intuitive. It integrates all personal finance accounts in one place, allowing users to take regular snapshots of their financial picture.
A few reviews discuss how useful it is that Mint generates your net worth in real-time as it fluctuates. They also like how the app keeps you informed of your credit score and tells you why it may be lower or higher according to certain factors.
According to several reviewers, Mint helps them meet their financial goals, such as saving for a home down payment or paying off a student loan. Best of all, there's a fully functional mobile app that lets you access your account from anywhere.
Other users praise the mobile app UI, saying it's very well designed for easy viewing of all accounts. They like how the app breaks down assets, cash, and liabilities very easily and how it sends you notifications when you overspend or when a bill is due.
Users also say that one of the biggest pros of Mint is that you don't have to do anything. Mint does it all for you, which makes the platform perfect for anyone new to personal finance.
More than a few users mention how much they like that Mint shows you your daily, weekly, and monthly spending in a graph and list form. It makes it really easy to see your spending habits visually. They particularly like how Mint suggests different credit cards for you and shows you how much you can save and the perks for each card.
Several negative Mint.com reviews complain about the categorization capabilities of the app. Users say that the system sometimes misclassifies transactions but eventually learns to classify them correctly. It's not a huge issue, but it makes it necessary to manually scan through everything to ensure you're adding the right financial information.
Some users say the overall Mint interface can be rather clunky and difficult to navigate. Other reviewers find it annoying that some bank account connections must be re-established regularly. However, this is not the software's fault but rather a security feature of the bank.
Another common complaint is that Mint needs to have multi-currency support. Users with overseas accounts must convert those transactions manually and enter them into the system.
Review of Intuit Mint customer service and support
There’s only one way of contacting Mint customer service. You can contact them via chat, which is available from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM PT seven days a week. Unfortunately, Mint doesn't have a phone number. Additionally, there’s a Mint FAQ page that contains help articles, money-saving advice, and budgeting tips and tricks.
Is Mint a good app? Our conclusion
Mint is one of the most popular personal budgeting apps on the market, but the question remains:
Is Mint worth it?
The bottom line is this:
Every software has its pros and cons. But when it comes to Mint, its pros outweigh the cons.
Overall, the app is a helpful piece of software if you're looking to centralize all of your financial accounts in one place. You’ll get a high-level overview of your financial health and use the insight to make better financial decisions.
And let’s not forget the app is entirely free to use. If you can get by with financial product ads, this can be an ideal tool to manage your income and spending, budgets, savings goals, and investments.
Is Mint premium worth it?
As we already mentioned, there is no Mint premium except for iOS users. This paid plan is very affordable ($4.99) and it comes with a few additional features that will help improve your budgeting. However, if you don’t need features such as spending projects based on your data and trends or monitoring and cancellation, then you are better off with a free version.
In addition, if you mind the ads that pop up while using the app on your phone, $0.99 per month will save you from plenty of frustrations.
However, if you think you would be better off with software that doesn’t use in-app advertisem*nts, then you’ll probably be better off with some Mint alternatives.
Our final mint rating
4/5
Mint FAQs
Is Mint legit?
Mint is a 100% legit company. It has been around since 2007, and it's available on both the web and as a mobile app for iOS and Android. Mint is owned by Intuit, the company that also owns the QuickBooks accounting software and the tax preparation software TurboTax software.
Is Mint reliable?
Mint is a reliable software that lets you keep your finances organized. It supports 20,000+ local and international banks, including Bank of America, Chase, Discover, Citibank Credit Card, Apple Card, and more.It is definitely a reliable budgeting app that can be used free of charge.
Is Intuit Mint safe?
Security is a top priority for Intuit Mint, and the company takes several measures to ensure the safety of users' data. Mint uses bank-grade security, meaning it doesn’t have access to your financial accounts. The company also applies multi-factor authentication to protect your account and VeriSign to transfer your data.
Does Mint cost money?
Mint is entirely free to use. If you want to remove ads while using the app on your phone, you’ll have to pay $0.99 per month, but this is optional. The iOS version also has a Premium plan that costs $4.99/month and comes with additional monitoring and trends features.
Does Mint sell your data?
Mint is a free app, but it does gain revenue by collecting user data and selling and distributing the data. However, the data is anonymous as the company doesn't disclose personal user information to the public. So, your data may be distributed but it will still remain safe and secure.
How does Mint.com make money?
Mint makes money by displaying targeted ads for credit cards and other finance products. It partners with credit card and finance companies such as BillShark, Wealthfront, and Titan IRA.Also, many users pay $0.99/month for the ad-free experience or they subscribe to the Premium iOS version for $4.99/month.
