8 Best Expense Tracker Apps

By U.S. News & World Report
May 27, 2026 | 8:00 PM

The latest smartphone apps have made monitoring spending habits, tracking expenses and managing money a breeze.

A monthly expense tracker app automates the process of recording transactions, totaling expenses by category and tracking progress toward goals. While there are many resourceful apps available, the best tools are the ones you actually use.

“We’ve found our most successful customers have a habit of sitting down and looking at their finances for (at least) five minutes a week,” says Kristen Dillard, chief product officer for Quicken, a publisher of personal finance software. An app makes it easy to do just that.

In the past, the free app Mint was arguably the most popular option for tracking expenses and budgeting. Intuit discontinued it in 2024, so here are the current top picks for the best expense tracker apps for personal and business use.

[What Is Reverse Budgeting?]

1. EveryDollar

Cost: $17.99 per month or $79.99 per year for an annual subscription to EveryDollar premium.

Top feature: Drag-and-drop feature that makes it easy to organize your budget.

Best for: Zero-based budgeting adherents.

EveryDollar is one of the many products and services offered by personal finance guru Dave Ramsey. It espouses a zero-based budgeting system in which users “give every dollar a job.” The app automatically pulls transactions from your financial accounts and lets you split them across multiple budget categories.

EveryDollar’s Paycheck Planning feature helps users with irregular incomes budget by letting them enter paydays and plan expenses around those dates.

The free version lets you create a customizable budget and set up savings funds. To access the app’s most powerful features — like bank connectivity, group financial coaching, and detailed budget reports — you’ll need the paid premium version.

2. Simplifi

Cost: $5.99 per month; 50% off at time of publication ($2.99 per month).

Top feature: Tags that allow you to track expenses across multiple categories.

Best for: Those who want a feature-rich and ad-free budgeting app.

Offered by Quicken, Simplifi bundles a collection of user-friendly tools that make it easy to track expenses, plan spending and save for goals.

“It does everything from download your transactions to help you create a budget to run reports,” Dillard says.

For those who find a traditional budget too rigid, Simplifi has other features to help them manage money. “We tried to make it so the app would be more fluid,” Dillard adds.

Simplifi will create a spending plan based on a user’s transactions, but it also has a watch list feature for those who only want to track specific expenses, such as Target purchases or dining out.

The app automatically categorizes expenses, and users can adjust categories or create rules to organize incoming transactions. Using tags makes it easy to total spending across categories and track, for example, how much went to a vacation or a child’s extracurricular activities.

3. SupportPay

Cost: Free for two receipt uploads and three expenses per month. Premium features, including unlimited expenses and receipts, cost $8.33 a month for a single user or $12.99 a month for a family plan when billed annually. Month-to-month plans cost $14.99 and $19.99 per month, respectively.

Top feature: Automated, certified record of expenses for tax, court or other purposes.

Best for: Parents who do not live together but share expenses for children.

Caregivers, such as adult children sharing expenses for an elderly parent, can also use SupportPay. Users upload or photograph receipts to share with others, make payments directly through the app or record payment history manually.

The app lets users dispute expenses and provide a written explanation for disagreements. Users can export data to create certified records for tax or court purposes.

SupportPay reduces emotional conflicts and increases transparency, making expense sharing clearer and more straightforward. To get the most out of the app, all parties must install and actively use it.

4. Center

Cost: Free.

Top feature: Real-time expense reporting and management.

Best for: Medium-sized businesses.

Center is a free app for businesses that use CenterCard, a corporate credit card. Its founders developed the app after realizing that the traditional system of batch-based expense processing no longer worked for many businesses.

With Center, employees’ transactions on a CenterCard appear immediately in the app. Workers can access transactions from their phones and add any necessary details. The app also integrates with financial software such as QuickBooks and Oracle NetSuite.

Center was designed with medium-sized businesses — those employing 50 to 500 workers — in mind, but can also serve larger companies with 500 to 2,000 employees.

[READ: 10 Simple and Free Budgeting Tools.]

5. Shoeboxed

Cost: Prices range from $9 to $79 per month when paid monthly or around $8 to $66 per month when paid annually.

Top feature: You can fill prepaid envelopes with receipts, mail them in and have Shoeboxed convert them into digital copies.

Best for: Businesses with a significant number of paper receipts.

While many expense tracker apps focus on capturing data from bank accounts, Shoeboxed helps users easily manage physical receipts and other paper documents.

Users can scan receipts themselves or request a Magic Envelope to mail documents to Shoeboxed for scanning. The app generates expense reports and integrates with apps like QuickBooks and Evernote.

Shoeboxed automatically categorizes receipts by vendor, date, total spent and payment type. It also stores IRS?accepted images and related data.

Plans start at $9 per month for 20 physical scans per year and 30 digital scans per month.

[READ: Track and Manage Subscriptions With These Apps.]

6. Expensify

Cost: Free for up to 25 SmartScans per month. Prices for business plans start at $5 per user per month.

Top feature: Option to auto-submit reports for reimbursement.

Best for: Workers who need to track mileage and job expenses for reimbursement or tax purposes.

Expensify makes it easy to scan receipts and capture expense data, and its pricing is more affordable than many alternatives.

For $5 per month, individuals and small business users can scan an unlimited number of receipts. Expensify stores data indefinitely and also tracks mileage.

Group plans offer additional features, including expense approvals and integration with accounting software. Expensify earns strong reviews online, appealing to users who want affordable pricing and GPS-based mileage tracking. The main drawback is that the interface may not be intuitive for all users.

7. Xero

Cost: Regular prices range from $25 to $90 per month. An 85% off promotion is running until March 31.

Top feature: Ability to capture receipts from photos, scans or emails, then reconcile them automatically with your bank.

Best for: Small businesses seeking an easy-to-use, cloud-based solution for financial management.

For small businesses that want more than expense tracking, Xero offers a comprehensive money-management solution. Businesses can handle invoicing, bill payment and reporting all in one place.

Xero syncs with multiple bank accounts, captures expense dates from receipts and emails, and reconciles accounts daily.

The app and website integrate seamlessly with a variety of tools for payroll, payments, time management and more.

Xero offers three monthly plans: $20 for freelancers, self-employed workers, and new businesses; $47 for growing teams; and $80 for full-featured access.

8. Your Banking App

Cost: Free.

Top feature: Banking and expense management in one place.

Best for: Bank customers.

You may have the best expense tracking app on your phone already.

“One of the easiest ways to keep track of your spending is your mobile banking app,” Sonali Divilek, chief marketing and customer officer, card and connected commerce at JPMorganChase, says.

Divilek points to the Snapshot feature within the Chase Mobile app as an example. “(It) provides automated daily insights into your spending and the categories where you’re spending the most, whether that’s groceries, entertainment or shopping.”

Banking apps may also help you track which merchants have your card information on file — a feature particularly useful for monitoring recurring expenses, according to Divilek.

Check with your financial institution to see if it offers an app and what expense-tracking tools it includes.

More from U.S. News

How a Budgeting Calendar Can Help You Reach Your Financial Goals

How the 30-Day Savings Rule Can Help You Stop Overspending

How to Know if the 50/30/20 Budget Will Work for You

8 Best Expense Tracker Apps originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 05/28/26: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

Asia’s next great gourmet destination? Inside Indonesia’s fine-dining revolution

By CNN
August 11, 2026 | 5:44 AM

More than 120 years ago, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, National Geographic magazine’s first female writer, photographer and board member, chronicled her travels through colonial Indonesia in her book “Java: The Garden of the East.”She was particularly fascinated by a feast known as the rijsttafel (rice table), a multi-dish banquet that was served in the grand Hotel de Nederlanden in Batavia, as Jakarta was known then.Scidmore vividly recalled a “conglomerate mountain” of food, including bits of fish, duck, chicken, beef, omelettes and onions piled alongside steaks, salads, curries, chutneys, spices and tropical fruits.The sumptuous spread had something to satisfy everyone amongst the 100 or so guests that filled the grand dining hall — even the “squeamish folk, unseasoned tourists and well-starched Britons with a small sense of humor.”Like Scidmore, most early Western documentation of Indonesia’s flavors focused on the opulent colonial feast. Little else was known about the diverse and rich flavors found across the enormous archipelago, in spite of it being home to the fabled Spice Islands, which sparked a 16th- and 17th-century “spice rush” for cloves, nutmeg and mace by Portuguese, Dutch and British traders.In more recent decades, the world has become better acquainted with some of the beloved humble foods found in Indonesian homes and warungs (street-side eateries), with satay, nasi goreng and beef rendang among the most familiar dishes beloved by travelers.But now, there’s a rising number of contemporary chefs who are elevating the national cuisine on the global stage by reimagining its famous spices into fine-dining experiences, while sharing the sophisticated stories of Indonesian flavor through a different lens.Made up of thousands of islands dotted across two oceans, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic country. It would be an understatement to say the country’s cuisine is wildly varied.As a result, “the existing understanding of Indonesian food culture is very shallow,” says William Wongso, an Indonesian culinary expert and author.Boasting an enviable array of regional ingredients and flavors, the country’s chefs have been working to educate international gourmets — and even locals — about the beauty of Indonesian cuisine.And Jakarta, its capital city, has become a breeding ground for the movement. Wongso compares it to the dining scenes in New York or Shanghai, which draw talent from all over their respective countries. “Everybody wants to come here to make a thing,” he says. “So people from different regions bring flavors and food cultures.”Some open humble warungs and serve their home cooking. A few look beyond recipes and focus on elements that make Indonesian cuisine unique for a wider audience, reinventing the whole experience.A modern, fine-dining blueprintEnter August, which opened in 2021 inside a gleaming skyscraper in Jakarta’s central business district.The duo behind the concept, Jakartan Hans Christian and Budi Cahyadi from the Indonesian island of Lombok, were definitely not the first people to promote Indonesian flavors — Christian emphasizes figures like Wongso, for example, who have been championing gastro-diplomacy abroad for decades.But August has spearheaded a new format and standard for the country’s fine-dining restaurants: a modern, Indonesia-inspired tasting menu operating at a world-class level of culinary execution and service.The industry has already noticed. August became one of the few Indonesian restaurants to achieve international recognition, placing 42nd on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026 and earning accolades at The Best Chef Awards.“When I came back to Jakarta, you either had classic French fine dining or very casual bistros, mostly run by expat chefs,” says Christian, who sharpened his skills in Malaysia and the United States before returning to Jakarta in 2016.“There were no locally grown chefs doing their own thing with their own roots or interpretations. For me, August is about the pride of telling our own story … and a responsibility to not only embrace our roots, but also relearn them.”Cahyadi, with more than a decade of hospitality experience in a luxury hotel, agrees. He currently helms the front of house in August’s dining room.“In Jakarta, you either had to pick a place where the food was good but the service was lousy, or a casual place where service was bad but food was decent. When I met Hans, I knew it was time for a place where food is excellent and hospitality is delivered at the exact same time,” he says.In 2019, the two started August as a private kitchen concept before turning it into the current restaurant in 2021.Inside August’s intimate dining room — warmly lit with dark wood accents and a bright, open stainless-steel kitchen at the end of the dining room — the restaurant’s two tasting menus blend familiar Indonesian flavor profiles into completely unexpected forms.Their daikon dish is inspired by the format of Japanese agedashi tofu — silken tofu coated in starch, deep-fried until golden brown and traditionally dressed in dashi sauce.August’s version is served with a cuko sauce — a sweet and sour reduction made with tamarind and palm sugar featuring a tangy umami taste.It reminds locals of eating pempek, the Indonesian fishcake. A drizzle of andaliman pepper oil, Indonesia’s version of Sichuan peppercorns, gives the dish a unique, numbing spicy kick.Another highlight features Japanese Kimendai fish cooked by pouring hot oil over the scales until it crisps up while keeping the flesh tender. It sits in a kuah garang asem (yellow sour curry sauce) from the Central Java region.The sourness comes from a native green fruit called belimbing wuluh (or bilimbi), which looks like an oblong tomato but tastes extremely acidic, while ginger flowers provide a touch of freshness.The curry base is made from a yellow bumbu — made of aromatics such as turmeric and lemongrass. Often compared with France’s mother sauces (a group of five master sauces, such as Béchamel and Hollandaise, that are said to be the foundation of classical French cooking), Indonesian bumbu are spiced sauces that take hours to caramelize and form the base of many different dishes.Christian says that August has slowly evolved over the years, with more Indonesian flavors being incorporated into his menu as the team gains confidence and the demand grows.“In the beginning, our menu leaned more towards classic European because that was my formal training. When more international guests came, they expected more Indonesian flavor,” says Christian.Now, with half of their guests coming from overseas, the team tries to find the balance carefully without being intimidating.“Finding that balance was crucial — doing modern Indonesian cooking in a way that’s exciting for locals without just putting expensive ingredients in a traditional dish. We want to start from a product or a cooking method and create something new out of that idea,” says Christian.The founders admit that Jakarta has few fine dining concepts compared to fellow Southeast Asian cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila and Bangkok.“We knew we were a few years behind, but we are in progress to catch up. Over the years, the interest from people who want to learn and taste the flavor of Indonesia is growing,” says Christian. “For the past five to six years, we’ve been on a mission to prove people wrong.”It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just about the menus, but the operation.They were the first restaurant to impose a reservation fee for diners in Jakarta. It also took a few years to educate their diners to be punctual for the tasting menu so the table could start the menu together – an often tricky feat in Jakarta traffic.But August’s success helped set new operational benchmarks for the city, proving that local diners were ready to enjoy high-end tasting menus.In the years since, Jakarta’s fine-dining community has expanded rapidly.ESA, opened in 2023, proudly offers a menu called New Jakarta Cuisine. Kindling, which opened the following year, blends Indonesian-Chinese dishes with French technique. Selera, newly opened this year in the Keraton at the Plaza hotel, emphasizes the nation’s culinary heritage with local ingredients.Outside the capital, things are changing, too, particularly in the country’s tourist hotspots. Bali, for example, has evolved to offer more than just fine resort dining and Western restaurants catering to visitors.Locavore NXT, helmed by Dutch-Indonesian duo Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah, serves a tasting menu that highlights local ingredients. The independent concept also has a farm, laboratory and store.Meanwhile, young, local and independent concepts are slowly increasing elsewhere in the country.Overlooking the historical Prambanan Temple and Mount Merapi, Suwatu in Yogyakarta, the royal cultural heart of Java, is an upscale hillside restaurant with a menu packed with local dishes cooked by local villagers.In Bandung, both MMBS (Mari Merangkai Bunga Seroja) and Plataran Bandung serve local Sundanese cuisine, with hyper-seasonal tasting menus featuring a creative twist.Not just about the price tagAt the same time, classic Indonesian restaurants are reexamining the stories they would like to tell.For a long time, the 1945 Restaurant inside the Fairmont Jakarta has been regarded as the city’s only high-end Indonesian restaurant in a five-star hotel.Taking over as the chef de cuisine this year, Yopi Tumeru has been determined to inject fresh ideas into the 11-year-old establishment — and he was inspired by the traditional rijsttafel concept.His vision of the legendary feast isn’t only a sumptuous buffet but an educational exploration of Indonesian cuisine.“For many years, Indonesian food was presented either as home cooking, street food or part of a hotel buffet… Our Rijsttafel was designed as a culinary journey through the archipelago. We preserve the generous and communal character of the traditional experience while refining the portions, presentation and sequence,” Tumeru says.The menu includes dishes such as wagyu beef rendang, duck leg confit with sambal madura, tuna collar rica-rica (rahang tuna), tempe nachos and es teler cheesecake — all created to shine new light onto old dishes.For chefs like Tumeru, presenting Indonesian cuisine in a haute gastronomic format isn’t just about slapping on higher price tags and using expensive ingredients.They are proudly showcasing the often undervalued Indonesian cuisine — from the ingredients, the knowledge and the labor to the cultural heritage.“Rendang, for example, is not simply beef cooked in coconut milk. It requires patience, careful control of the heat, and an understanding of how the spices develop over time,” says Tumeru, who feels chefs have a responsibility to help guests appreciate that complexity.Despite giving Indonesian cuisine an upscale makeover, all of the chefs insist their roots and hearts remain with the humble, family-run warung. They encourage diners to ask for street-food tips, which might otherwise feel intimidating without a local guide.The movement isn’t about replacing affordable neighborhood joints. It’s about broadening how the world sees Indonesian food, using fine dining as a welcoming gateway into their country’s vast culinary heritage.“There is still a mindset that Indonesian food cannot be expensive — that is not true,” says Wongso.“These high-end restaurants, if they’re doing it right, they’re quite helpful in changing people’s mindsets. Indonesian food cannot be cheap. It takes immense labor and skill. A single sauce or spice paste takes hours of balancing and preparation. You can Google many things, but you can’t Google taste.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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