What "free" actually means in a budget app

Four different business models all use the word free, and only one of them lets you keep using the app without paying. Knowing which you are looking at takes about thirty seconds on the store page, and it is the difference between a tool you keep and a week you wasted.

The four models behind one word

A free trial gives you everything for seven or fourteen days, then stops. A freemium app gives you a permanent free version with real limits. A free tier is the same thing described more honestly. Ad-supported means you pay with attention rather than money.

All four appear in store listings as "free to download", because that phrase describes the download and nothing else.

How to tell in thirty seconds

Open the store listing and look for the in-app purchase list. If the cheapest item is a weekly or monthly subscription and the description mentions a trial, it is a trial. If the app describes what you can do without paying, and names a number, it is a real free tier.

The tell is specificity. "Free forever" with no numbers usually means the limits are somewhere you will find them later.

What the limits usually are

In this category the caps cluster in predictable places: how many budgets or accounts you can have, whether you can export, whether more than one person can use it, and how far back the history goes.

The one that catches households out is the second person. An app can be generous to a single user and charge the moment you invite someone, which is exactly the point at which a household budget becomes useful.

Spendy household screen listing three members with Owner, Editor and Viewer roles and an invite code to share — Sharing is where free tiers usually end. In Spendy a household of up to three costs nothing.

Where Spendy’s line is

Unlimited transactions, budgets and categories cost nothing, and a household of up to 3 people costs nothing. The free tier also caps recurring items, investments and debts at 3 each, savings goals at 2, and instalment plans at 1.

Premium adds personal extras: ad-free use, PDF export and longer projections. Premium+ raises the household to 10 people and lifts those caps. Those are the numbers, and the reason this page lists them is that the single most common complaint in this category comes from people who installed something advertised as free and hit a wall on the first day.

Download on the App Store

Free to use. Share with up to 3 people at no cost.

Questions people actually ask

Is an ad-supported budget app really free?

In money, yes. Ads do mean the app has a reason to keep you opening it, so check whether the ads sit between you and the thing you came to do, or beside it.

Why do so many budget apps require a subscription?

Most of them connect to your bank, and that connection is bought from an aggregator per user per month. An app with no bank connection does not carry that cost, which is why its free tier can be larger.