Cheddar's Head of Data Science highlights the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the UK's leading spend trackers
A spend tracker is like a helpful assistant that keeps track of your money so you can understand where your money goes each month. In the UK, popular spend tracking apps include Emma, Plum, Snoop, Revolut, Klarna, Snoop, Rise Up and Monzo.
In this post, I’ll share how these apps helped me track my spending in July 2024, discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of each of them and why you should consider giving Cheddar’s new spend tracking feature a spin.
I have two credit cards (Monzo Flex and Capital One), four bank accounts (Lloyds, Monzo, Chase, Revolut), and savings in three banks (Monzo, Chase, Lloyds).
Most of my spend in July was in the UK, with a few days in Slovakia and Austria. My biggest expenses were bills (including credit card payments), travel, and eating out. Finally, I often transfer money between my bank accounts and savings accounts.
The Good - Plum organises your spending into categories like Transfers, General, Wealth, Shopping, Bills and Utilities, Groceries, and Eating Out. The categories, aside from ‘General’ are well-organised and make sense for my spending.
The Bad - Plum requires a subscription to Plum Ultra, costing at least £5 per month. Self-to-self transactions are included in Transfers and counted as spending, which inflates this category. Transfers to savings accounts are wrongly classified as 'General.' This means I need to manually reassign many transactions to the correct categories. The app does not support linking my Monzo credit card, only my current account. There’s also a category called Wealth, which is confusing; it said I spent £400 on Wealth, but what does that mean? Plum says my total spending is £9,672, what? That is inflating my spending by more than 2 times! Finally, Plum doesn’t provide saving tips like ‘you are spending more on eating out than on groceries.'
The Ugly - The app uses a ring plot to summarise spending, but it’s difficult to read because it is not interactive. You often have to refer back to the category list to understand what each colour represents.
The Good - Monzo includes categories like General, Bills, Transport, Eating Out, Expenses, Groceries, Holidays, and Shopping. The categories, aside from ‘General’ are well-organised and make sense for my spending. It correctly excludes transfers to savings accounts from spending, recognising them as savings.
The Bad - It’s free to analyse your Monzo account, but linking other accounts requires a monthly subscription of at least £5. A large portion of my spending is categorised as ‘General’ which is not very informative. Monzo says my spending in 'General' is £4,598, what? That alone is more than my total spending! This means I need to manually reassign many transactions to the correct categories. Bank transfers to myself are also counted as spending. The app doesn’t provide savings tips, such as pointing out if you’re spending more on eating out than on groceries.
The Ugly - The visual representations are confusing. They focus on changes in balance or weekly spending rather than clearly showing the proportion of spending in each category. The budget feature, referred to as ‘target,’ also uses a plot that’s difficult to understand.
The Good - Emma categorises spending into groups like Transport, Shopping, Groceries, Holidays, Personal Care, Bills, Debt, Entertainment, and General. Most categories, apart from ‘General’ and 'Debt' accurately reflect my spending. The interface is warm and nicely designed, with a colourful pie chart that clearly shows spending proportions.
The Bad - Emma isn’t free; it requires a minimum £5 monthly subscription for Emma Plus. Many transactions are lumped into the ‘General’ category. So, I often had to correct the transactions on the general category. Transfers to other people or myself are sometimes incorrectly labelled as Shopping or Debt, which is confusing. The app mistakenly counts savings as spending. Emma says my total spending is £6,210, what? That is around two times my total spending! Changing a transaction’s category involves too many steps. It also lacks savings tips, like telling if you’re spending more on eating out than on groceries.
The Ugly - The vibrant colour scheme, featuring pink, purple, magenta, and fuchsia, might not appeal to those who prefer more subdued colours often found in financial apps.
The Good - Snoop categorises spending into groups like Transport, Shopping, Groceries, Finances, Home and Family, Entertainment, and General. Most categories, apart from ‘General’ and 'Finances', accurately reflect my spending.
The Bad - Transfers to myself and savings transfers are sometimes labelled as 'General' or 'Finances', which can be confusing. The app mistakenly counts savings as spending. The 'Finances' category is unclear; it's confusing to see that I spend £1,000 a month in finances. What does that mean? Snoop also lacks savings tips, such as telling you if you're spending more on eating out than on groceries. Instead, it offers deals like "we give you £175 if you switch to First Direct," which could be useful for some. Finally, there is no way to compare spending by category in terms of percentage or in a ring chart. Instead, they show how much is over budget in a ring, rather than displaying the top spending categories as many other apps do.
The Ugly - The separation of categories with a budget and those without a budget seems off and hard to follow.
The Good - Klarna includes categories like Bills, Transport, Food and Drinks, Travel, Leisure, and Other. Most categories, apart from ‘Other’ accurately reflect my spending. The categories are well designed and very descriptive. When you click on a category, you can see subcategories like restaurants, groceries, delivery, and coffee under Food and Drinks. It’s easy to change the category of a transaction, and you can quickly update all transactions with the same name.
The Bad - The ‘Other’ category accounts for more than half of my transactions, which isn’t very informative. Transactions to myself are also shown as ‘Other’, which is misleading. While savings are correctly excluded from my spending, Klarna says my total spending is £7,736, what? That is around 2 times my total spending! The app lacks practical savings tips, like highlighting if you’re spending more on eating out than on groceries.
The Ugly - The app’s functionality is somewhat hidden. You have to navigate to Payments, slide a scrolling bar, and select Insights to access your spend tracker.. The visual representation of spending is a plot with colour blocks stacked on top of each other, which is difficult to interpret. You frequently need to refer to the list of categories to understand what each colour represents. Additionally, because it’s not normalised to 100%, comparing spending across months is challenging, as it shows the actual amounts rather than the percentage of total spending.
The Good - Revolut’s app includes categories like Transfers, General, Transport, Restaurants and Shopping. Most categories, apart from 'General’ accurately reflect my spending. It provides a plot that lets you view your spending by week or month, and a ring chart that highlights the top two spending categories.
The Bad - A lot of transactions fall under a ‘General’ category, which isn’t very informative; for instance, many restaurant expenses are labelled as ‘General’. This means I have to manually reclassify a lot of my transactions for more accurate tracking. The app also mistakenly categorises self-to-self transfers and transfers to savings accounts as spending. Snoop says my total spending is £7,983, what? That is around two times my total spending! The ring chart isn’t very useful because it only shows my top two spending categories. Additionally, it doesn’t offer savings tips, such as pointing out if you’re spending more on eating out than groceries.
The Ugly - The spend tracker is only available for Revolut accounts by default. It lists each of my bank and savings accounts separately, and 'All personal accounts' is hidden at the bottom of a long dropdown list, making it hard to find.
The Good - I love how Rise Up categorises my spending into useful groups like 'Shopping', 'Groceries', and 'Travel'. It's great that it excludes transfers to savings accounts and self-transfers from my spending. The personalised saving tips are also a nice touch, helping me identify areas where I can cut back, for example, it told me I spent more on eating out than grocery shopping last month.
The Bad - Rise Up is expensive; it requires a minimum £10 monthly subscription. Instead of showing how my spending compares to expected forecasts, I'd like to see how my spending is distributed across categories. A pie chart or just having percentages would make it easier to understand where my money is going.
The Ugly - The interface needs work and the visualisations need improvement. It's hard to read and compare my spending across categories because I have to scroll through a long list. The categories are also randomly ordered, making it difficult to quickly see where I'm spending the most.
Cheddar is free, with no cost, subscription, or ads. Cheddar has a spend tracker that sorts your spending into categories like Bills, Travel, Food and Drink, Groceries, Transportation, and Other. Most expenses are accurately categorised, with very few falling into the 'Other' category. The design is top-notch, with intuitive categories and subcategories. For example, within Bills, you can find Loans, Rent, Services, Subscriptions, Utilities, and Fees. Cheddar is visually appealing, offering attractive colours, plots, and icons in both light and dark themes.
The apps that categorised my spending the best, with minimal transactions labelled as ‘Other’, were Cheddar and Rise Up. Cheddar is free to use while Rise Up comes with a hefty price tag of £9.99 per month. Monzo, Plum and Emma categorised most of my spending as 'Other' or 'General' and have a minimum monthly subscription fee of £5. Revolut, Snoop and Klarna, categorised most of my spending as 'Other' or 'General', considered transfers to myself as spending, and even considered savings as spending.
Cheddar’s new spend tracker feature is available now in beta while the team expands on its feature set. Give it a try!
