Almost every AI budget app reads your bank through Plaid or a similar service, so the differences come after that: which AI company receives your transactions, whether the app may train on them, and who else it shares them with.
Mind My Money reads your bank in a browser you sign in to yourself, keeps your data on your computer, and uses your own Claude or ChatGPT subscription for the AI step.
This is for anyone choosing an AI budgeting app who wants to know what happens to their bank data once the AI reads it. Every fact is from each company's own site and privacy policy as they read on 8 October 2026.
Nearly every one of these apps reaches your bank the same way, through Plaid or a similar service such as MX, Finicity, or Flinks in Canada, so what separates them is what happens after that: which AI company gets your transactions, whether the app keeps the right to train its own models on them, and who else it shares your data with.
| App | Reads your bank through | AI company it names | Trains on your data? | Shares it with others? | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monarch Money | Plaid, Finicity, MX | OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and its own models | The AI companies may not. Monarch says it may later train its own models on anonymised data, with an opt-out | Says it never sells financial data; its website cookies may count as "selling" or "sharing" under US state law | $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year |
| Copilot Money | Plaid and Mastercard; direct links for Apple Card and a few others | Not stated | Its vendors do not. Its terms let Copilot itself use your inputs for "model improvement" | Says financial data is never used for advertising | $95 a year or $13 a month |
| Rocket Money | Plaid, Akoya; Rowan can also read your Gmail if you allow it | Rowan: Anthropic. Elsewhere not stated | Not stated | Shared within the Rocket companies for their marketing; says "we 'sell'" under California's definition | Free; Premium $7–14 a month; Rowan comes with Premium+ at $15 |
| Origin | Plaid, MX, Finicity | Not stated | Its blog: not used to train outside models | Cookies for targeted advertising; third-party offers by email | $12.99 a month or $99 a year |
| Cleo | Plaid | OpenAI | Chats "may be monitored and recorded for training or other purposes" | Rakuten Advertising, and a BitBurst offer wall in the app | Free; paid plans from $5.99 a month |
| Rolly | You type, say or photograph each expense; paid bank sync, provider not stated | Not stated | Not stated | App Store label: purchases and identifiers "used to track you" | Free; in-app purchases |
| Waypoint Budget | Typing, CSV or PDF import free; Plaid, or Flinks in Canada, on paid plans | Google Gemini, through OpenRouter | No: a zero-retention setup | No sale or sharing for advertising | Free; Plus $7.99 a month |
| OpenBudget | Plaid, US banks only | Your own Claude or ChatGPT, connected to it | Whatever your own AI account is set to | Says it does not share financial data with advertisers | $5 a month, billed yearly |
| Quicken Simplifi | Plaid, Intuit, Finicity | Outside models "such as ChatGPT" | Its blog: conversations are not used to train the models | Its privacy statement lists advertising partners | $3.99 a month billed yearly, first year |
| ChatGPT Finances | Plaid; Experian for your credit report | OpenAI | Your ChatGPT setting, which is on until you turn it off | Not stated | Free, in the US |
"Not stated" means the company's own pages do not say, which is worth knowing in itself and is not the same as no. Nobody here signed up for these apps; the table is what each company says about itself.
When an app says your data is not used for training, it is worth reading who that sentence is about. Monarch's agreements stop OpenAI, Anthropic and Google from training on your data, and its help centre adds that Monarch may in future use aggregated and anonymised data to improve its own models, with an option to opt out. Copilot's terms let Copilot use your inputs and the AI's outputs for "model improvement". Cleo's privacy policy says your conversation "may be monitored and recorded for training or other purposes".
Rocket Money's privacy policy covers the whole Rocket family, Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Loans and Rocket Homes among them, and says it shares your information with them "for their own services and marketing purposes". Under California's definition, it says, "we 'sell' personal information". Cleo's app carries an offer wall from a company called BitBurst, which according to Cleo's policy receives your advertising and device IDs and "may share such data with third parties, clients and business partners, for commercial purposes".
Closing an account is not always deleting the data. Monarch's policy says closing it in settings "does not erase every copy of your information from our systems", and you write to its support to have it deleted. Rolly, whose App Store and Google Play pages are the top two results for this search, has a privacy policy dated 22 December 2024 that mentions neither AI nor bank connections, while its App Store listing offers both.
Waypoint Budget says the most and shares the least. It names the AI models it uses (Google's Gemini, through a service called OpenRouter), sends them your data under a setup where nothing is kept or trained on, stores your coach chats only in your own browser, and does not sell or share your data for advertising.
Yes, in two ways. Since 2 October 2026, ChatGPT's own Finances feature is on the free plan in the US. It connects your bank accounts through Plaid and your credit report through Experian, and you can then ask it about your spending. It cannot move money, pay bills or close accounts.
Your finance conversations follow the same training setting as the rest of ChatGPT, and on personal plans that setting is on until you switch off "Improve the model for everyone" under Settings, then Data controls. When you disconnect, OpenAI deletes the synced account data within 30 days, but not what is already in your conversations or in ChatGPT's "financial memories", which you delete separately.
The other way works anywhere: give ChatGPT or Claude a statement and ask. Claude has no finance feature, so you upload the statement the same way, and on its personal plans training is a setting you choose. Anthropic keeps chats for 30 days with it off, and up to five years in de-identified form with it on. A statement uploaded to ChatGPT is kept in your Library after you delete the chat, until you delete it there as well.
If you are in the US and want your bank synced, a budget you share with a partner and a polished app, Monarch and Copilot are the two most people compare, and the table shows how they differ on data. If who sees your data matters most to you, Waypoint's policy says the most and shares the least, and it has a free plan. If you want to understand one year of spending once, a statement and a chatbot with training switched off will do it at no cost.
Monarch, Copilot, Rocket Money, Origin, Simplifi, OpenBudget and ChatGPT's Finances all connect to US banks, some to Canadian ones too, and that is where they work. Cleo has relaunched in the UK, mostly as chat. Rolly works anywhere because you type your spending in, and so does the statement method above.
Mind My Money is not a budget app in the sense of the table. It is a desktop app for Mac and Windows that goes through a year of your bank and card payments on your own computer, names every payment, finds the subscriptions and other recurring charges, and when you ask, cancels them or moves you to a cheaper plan on the company's own site. It reads your bank in a browser you sign in to yourself, so there is no Plaid or other aggregator, and your data is kept in a folder on your computer.
The AI that does the reading is your own Claude or ChatGPT subscription, so what a task needs goes to Anthropic or OpenAI under your own account and the settings described above, and nothing about your money reaches us. It also means you need a Claude or ChatGPT subscription and a computer, where the apps above need only a phone.
Runs on your own computer. Pay what you decide, including nothing.