YNAB vs. Mint

YNAB vs. Mint: At a Glance

YNAB vs. Mint: Approach

At the most basic level, these two personal finance tools do the same thing, which is to help you understand where you spend, and how much, so that you can better decide how to allocate your resources in the future. But while Mint takes a very familiar approach, YNAB introduces a much more forward-thinking strategy that is quite a bit different not just in its implementation, but also in the user’s whole way of thinking.

With both apps, you link all of your bank and credit card accounts to the platform in order to capture every transaction. From there, you can categorize each transaction by its spending or income category. With this information, Mint can then show you reports of how much you spent in each category over various time periods. This then enables you to, optionally, set budget amounts for this month by each of your spending categories. Alternatively, you can simply observe how your spending this month compares to last month, or this month a year ago.

In contrast, creating a budget is not optional with YNAB—instead, it’s the cornerstone of the entire platform and the YNAB way of thinking. YNAB refers to its strategy as “giving every dollar a job,” meaning you make a decision before the month begins on what you will do with every dollar you take in. Rather than simply see what you have spent, YNAB requires you to allocate your income to expenses you prioritize. Then it’s just a matter of following that plan, rather than spending mindlessly.

YNAB vs. Mint: Features

Both Mint and YNAB provide register views of individual accounts as well as an overall transaction log of all your accounts, the ability to establish savings goals, and a reporting area that allows you to slice and dice your financial data into different analytical views.

In addition to tracking account balances and transactions, Mint can also monitor your bills for you. Accounts you have linked, like credit cards, will automatically appear in the bills section, indicating the minimum payment due, the last statement balance, and the current balance. But you can also add other bills, like your cell phone bill or your monthly water bill. Even if the payee for your bill isn’t in the Mint universe, you can add it as a manual account.

One drawback of Mint is that it does not provide full customization of categories. It does allow adding your own subcategories to the existing master categories (think Auto & Transport, Food & Dining, etc.), but you cannot edit or delete any master categories or delete subcategories established by Mint. All you can do is add additional subcategories. 

In contrast, YNAB’s interface allows you to completely customize your entire set of categories and subcategories, making it more appealing for those with particular preferences or less typical expense types.

YNAB vs. Mint: Account Setup

To track your expenses in either app, you begin by linking your various financial accounts. After identifying the financial institution where you have an account, you’re prompted to enter your online username and password, and then both Mint and YNAB establish an ongoing connection to that account, which regularly updates with new transactions.

After you’ve entered all of your bank and credit card accounts, Mint allows you to further add loan or investment accounts. This allows you to track their current balances as part of your overall net worth picture in Mint. But note that these account types do not allow managing or interacting with individual transactions in any way. In other words, it is a “read only” link for these accounts.

In YNAB, account setup is just the beginning. The heart of YNAB’s approach is to use the information gleaned from analyzing your past spending to create a plan for how you’ll spend next month’s income. So account setup is followed by the critical step of allocating your funds in the budget area of the app.

YNAB vs. Mint: Ease of Use

Using Mint is very straightforward. You link your accounts, the transactions populate, and you categorize them in order to analyze your spending and establish budget amounts. As you use the app, you can begin to build a collection of “rules” that help speed things up by automatically renaming and categorizing transactions it can recognize based on your past history. 

Reviewing your budget, establishing or monitoring progress toward savings goals, or heading over to review your reports can all be easily accessed by heading to the appropriate tab on the web interface or the app.

Mint’s desktop interface leaves something to be desired, however. Though navigation is simple, the transaction register is relatively small, especially compared with the more user-friendly register design YNAB employs. The Mint dashboard via web browser is also a little lackluster.

Though YNAB’s account setup is simple, getting up to speed with the monthly budgeting process can take a little time to learn. Rather than referring to bank balances to decide how much you have left to spend that month, YNAB encourages you to decide in advance where you will assign each dollar of your income. This change in approach can take a little getting used to, but that’s precisely the point. YNAB aims to change how you think about your money and how proactively you create spending plans. To bring you along, it provides many helpful videos and articles.

YNAB also allows you to create spending plans for as many months into the future as you’d like, whereas Mint only allows you to set a single budget.

YNAB vs. Mint: Mobile App

Both Mint and YNAB have strong mobile apps, and are available on a similar range of devices. You can use either on iOS or Android, and on a desktop via web browser. YNAB further allows you to access YNAB via Apple watches.

Most of the same features available on the web interface are available via the two apps’ mobile interfaces as well. And both are well-designed to provide an overview as well as drill-down detail into accounts and transactions.

Both YNAB and Mint have some interaction ability with Alexa smart speakers. Mint’s Google Assistant integration only works for those who have Mint installed on an Android phone. 

YNAB vs. Mint: Security

Both Mint and YNAB use bank-level encryption or better, offer the ability to use two-factor authentication for increased protection, and do not store your credentials in any way that is readable by staff. In addition, both of the mobile apps offer biometric login support (e.g., touch ID, face ID, passcode, pattern-drawing, etc.), as well as the requirement to reauthorize the connection whenever switching out of the app and coming back to it.

YNAB vs. Mint: Cost

One of the most conspicuous differences between YNAB and Mint is that Mint is free with ad support, while YNAB charges a monthly or annual subscription fee after a free trial period.

Mint’s free status is appealing to many, though it comes at the price of having ads and offers peppered into your view of accounts and transactions. Some of these can be closed out to improve the view, but others are locked in place.

YNAB offers a 34-day free trial, opting for 34 days instead of the more typical 30 so that users can get through a full month and still have a few days left over for month-end analysis. If the trial sells you on committing to a paid subscription, those run $14.99 per month, or $99 for a year.

How We Evaluated YNAB vs. Mint

We took a detailed look at all of Mint's and YNAB’s features and strengths by digging deep into their product documentation, doing a hands-on exploration of their web and app interfaces, reviewing what customers and review sites like and don’t like about the apps, and assessing how each service makes money.