Top 5 Apps for Saving Money in 2023

Creating a savings balance and effectively managing income and expenses can be tricky, but there are options that can automatically do it for you. Online financial management tools and mobile money-saving apps are taking the way we handle money and carry out banking transactions to a fundamentally new level. The main idea of these programs is to provide a convenient, easy, and even fun way to save money. Whether you’re an experienced saver or just starting to take control of your finances, popular apps for saving money can help you review your spending and increase your savings.

Each application uses unique tools, strategies, and methods, but they all make money management much easier. In this article, we’ll take a look at five of the best mobile apps to save money that offer cutting-edge functionality and robust algorithms.

So, what app is good for saving money? Keep reading to find a money-saving tool that’s right for you.

Qapital

This is one of the most popular apps for saving money that is considered the best solution for setting financial goals. Qapital applies the strategy of rounding up the account balance and converting it to savings. According to the developers, this smart money app helps users achieve their short-term and long-term financial plans without changing their lifestyles. Users can create their own money-saving goals, and the app will provide them with reminders as well as motivational quotes to help turn the process of saving into a game.

The app takes a visual approach to encourage you to save money, allowing you to add pictures or photos to your financial goals. And with an advanced plan, you can share your goals with friends, partners, or relatives to save money together.

The main disadvantages of Qapital are the unavailability of the free version, the relatively high monthly service fee, limited investing options, and the low-interest rate — the associated savings account brings almost no interest. In addition, the Qapital website is not very user-friendly.

Qapital presents users with a free trial for the first month, and after that, you can choose from three available membership levels, which cost $3, $6, or $12 per month, respectively. The cheapest plan offers basic functionality, while with other tariffs, you get advanced products with additional features.

Oportun

Oportun (formerly Digit) is by far the best option for users looking for simplicity. The application uses artificial intelligence and automatically analyzes the transactions on your account — based on your expenses and income, it calculates the amount you can transfer. If Oportun concludes that you cannot afford to save money, it does not transfer anything to savings. You can set savings limits, but you can’t fully control the amount the app transfers each day.

With Oportun, you can save without thinking, spend money wisely, plan your budget carefully, invest at your own pace, and manage your finances easily, intelligently, and effortlessly. The program learns your spending habits and tracks your finances, making budgeting easier, tracking progress, and helping you gradually reach your savings goals without affecting your other areas of finance. In addition, Oportun also provides functionality to pay off credit card debts. 

Among the service's shortcomings are the lack of a free option, a low-interest rate on savings, the inability to transfer savings between purposes, and limited user control. Also, Oportun has mixed reviews — many customer complaints with negative experiences are related to the product or service and billing issues.

This money-saving application offers users a bonus system, accumulating 0.1% per year and paying it out every three months. You can use these bonuses to pay part of the subscription price. The program offers a free trial period, and after that, users pay $5 per month.

Acorns

Acorns is one of the best apps to help save money, which is the optimal solution for investment transfers. It enables you to save money easily and invest change automatically, accumulating savings by spending money. The program rounds up your debit or credit card purchases and also allows you to set up recurring payments. 

Among the main advantages of Acorns are full investment automation (withdrawals on the card are rounded to the nearest dollar) and absolute ease of use. In addition, the application provides automatic portfolio rebalancing and several types of accounts, satisfying the needs of most investors.

Despite the many strengths and benefits, the Acorns app has room for improvement. Major disadvantages include high fees, checking account access fees, lack of access to human consultants, relatively limited planning tools, and lack of a tax strategy to minimize user tax bills.

Acorns offers simple rates and clear pricing, charging a flat monthly fee for each tier. The program provides three subscription options — Lite, Personal, and Family, priced at $1, $3, and $5, respectively.

Chime

Chime is one of the best apps that help you save money simply by using banking services. This digital bank provides a highly profitable savings account with automatic savings options. One of the features allows you to save on spending by rounding up purchases and transferring saved cents to a savings account. Another feature enables application users to automatically save money when a salary is credited to the account, transferring up to 10% of the amount.

Chime pays its customers a percentage of their savings, making this program one of the most profitable and best apps to save money on the market. In addition, the service can also pay salaries a couple of days earlier, borrowing a small amount of money before it actually enters the account. One more undeniable advantage of Chime is that the application does not charge commissions for maintenance and services provided — the company receives profit not from customers but from Visa and is paid by the point of sale.

The main weaknesses of Chime are related to the lack of branches for personal service, payment for cash deposits or withdrawals at ATMs, limits on cash withdrawals and purchases, lack of multi-currency account options, as well as geographic restrictions — the application is only available to US residents.

Mint

If you are wondering which app is best to save money, consider Mint. This money-saving mobile program is your personal financial manager and tool for tracking your accounts and checking your financial management. It helps you track expenses, control transactions, monitor budgets, and analyze account balances, subscriptions, expenses, and taxes.

Mint takes an analytical approach by studying spending trends and calculating customer capital. With this app, you can track the progress of your monthly bills, set up personalized budgeting schedules, increase your savings, build strong financial habits, achieve your money goals, and take full control of your funds.

It is a great solution overall, but there are a few downsides to consider. Namely, a lengthy setup, difficulty assigning categories correctly, no support for joint accounts, lots of in-app ads, account connection issues, and no free access to most app features.

Mint is an all-in-one personal finance app that keeps all your accounts in one place. Although the app is free, you can pay $0.99 a month to remove the ads or $4.99 to access premium functionality.

Conclusion

It is often difficult for us to start saving money, but it is just a habit that needs to be developed. Fortunately, there are special digital tools that help you with this. ​​Top apps for saving money allow you to easily increase your budget without any effort and the need to track your cash every month manually.

Choose the solution that suits your lifestyle, get into the habit of saving some money regularly, and you’ll see your balance accumulate and grow. Use money-saving tools to easily enter the rhythm of savings and therefore achieve your long- and short-term financial goals without any problems.

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