Copilot Budget App Review 2024

While it may be pricier than some other budgeting apps, Copilot’s all-in-one approach goes well beyond basic expense tracking and provides an exceptional user experience, making it worth the cost for anyone serious about mastering their money. It’s ideal for those who:

• Desire a sleek, modern interface and native app experience on iPhone and Mac
• Want to track spending, create budgets and monitor investments in a single place
• Appreciate automated features like AI-powered transaction categorization and real-time net worth tracking
• Need smart alerts to help avoid overdrafts, stick to budgets and catch bill changes or fraud
• Value the ability to customize spending categories and set budget rollovers
• Seek a user-friendly tool to understand their finances and boost savings
• Currently use Mint and need a new budgeting app now that Mint has shut down

Copilot is a “smart” budgeting app that uses AI and machine learning to help you better control your finances. The app was founded by Andrés Ugarte, a former senior software engineer at Google.

While many budgeting apps are notoriously difficult to figure out initially, it’s obvious that Copilot put a lot of time and thought into making the app intuitive to first-time users.

What sets Copilot apart is its advanced features, like AI-powered transaction categorization, real-time net worth tracking and smart alerts that help you avoid overdrafts, stick to your budgets and catch bill changes or fraud.

Copilot uses machine learning to automatically categorize your transactions and provide insights into your spending habits. You can correct or approve these categorizations to improve accuracy over time.

Based on your spending patterns, Copilot creates realistic and adaptive budgets for you. You can customize these budgets, group them into categories and track your progress throughout the month.

Copilot supports over 10,000 financial institutions, including banks, credit cards, investment accounts and services like Venmo, Coinbase and Amazon. It’s an iOS subscription-based app with a one-month free trial.

When you connect your bank accounts, credit cards and investment accounts to Copilot, the app automatically categorizes your transactions, giving you a clear picture of where your money is going. It then allows you to create budgets that adapt to your spending habits.

The app looks at your financial data and suggests realistic budget allocations, which you can then adjust to fit your specific needs and goals.

Copilot also helps you manage your recurring expenses by identifying them and adding them to your budget at the start of each month. This way, you always know what bills are coming up and can plan accordingly. Plus, the app lets you keep an eye on your investments, so you can monitor how they’re performing and make sure you’re on track to reach your financial goals.

While apps like Copilot provide a personalized approach to your budget, you can also use a monthly budget calculator to get a generalized breakdown of what your budget should look like based on your income.

Security

Copilot employs bank-level protection (256-bit encryption) to keep your sensitive information safe, and it never sells your data to third parties. Copilot can’t see or store your bank login details because it uses data aggregators Plaid and Finicity to connect your accounts.

Pricing

Copilot is a subscription-based service, with plans starting at $13 per month or $95 per year when paid annually. While there’s no free version of the app, Copilot does not use ads or hidden fees.

New users can try Copilot risk-free with a one-month free trial.

The Copilot budget app stands out for its unique blend of advanced features and user-friendly design. One of its most notable features is the ability to automatically categorize transactions using machine learning algorithms.

Another distinguishing feature of Copilot is its adaptive budgeting system. The app analyzes your spending patterns and creates realistic budgets that adjust to your behavior over time. This ensures that your budgets remain relevant and achievable as your financial situation changes.

Another thing we like about Copilot is the way it integrates with your investment accounts. The app provides a comprehensive overview of your finances by allowing you to connect and monitor your investments alongside your bank accounts and credit cards. This holistic approach lets you track more of your long-term financial goals. Not many budgeting apps support investment tracking.

The Copilot budget app is only available in the App Store for iPhone, Mac and iPad devices. If your device isn’t supported, consider other budgeting apps.

PLATFORM	RATING
App Store	3.5
Google Play	N/A

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Overall, app reviewers praise the intuitive features of the app but complain of bugs with account syncing.

Copilot vs. YNAB

When it comes to managing your finances, both Copilot and YNAB offer free trials, but with a slight difference: Copilot’s lasts one month, while YNAB’s is 34 days. YNAB is all about zero-based budgeting and giving every dollar a job, but it has a steeper learning curve than Copilot. YNAB is also available to everyone online, not just Apple users.

If you’re keen on tracking your investments, Copilot is the way to go, as it automatically updates your investment data—something YNAB doesn’t do.

Copilot vs. Goodbudget

Goodbudget is a budgeting app that uses the envelope system to allocate your income into different categories or “envelopes.” It has a free version and a premium version that costs $80 per year.

Goodbudget takes a simple approach to budgeting, but it lacks the same level of automation and investment tracking as the Copilot budgeting app. Goodbudget is available on both iOS and Android.

Copilot vs. PocketGuard

PocketGuard is another budgeting app that helps you track your spending and find ways to save money. It offers a unique “In My Pocket” feature that shows you how much money you have available to spend after accounting for your bills and savings goals.

PocketGuard also has a debt payoff feature, so it may be worth checking out if paying off debt is one of your biggest reasons for budgeting. Still, it doesn’t offer the same level of customization and investment tracking as Copilot.

Forbes Advisor analyzed 15 mobile apps to create this list and rated each on factors such as fees, user ratings, integration and sharing capabilities, digital access, security features and more. We assigned ratings to apps based on a scale of one to five stars, with one star as the poorest rating and five stars as the best.

Our experts applied the following categories and weights in research:

• Mobile app rating: 35%
• Cost: 25%
• Encryption/security: 15%
• Website version availability: 10%
• Account integration: 10%
• Ability to share: 5%

To learn more about our rating and review methodology and editorial process, check out our guide on How Forbes Advisor Reviews Banks.