Expense vs MugVault
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Expense
Effortlessly monitor your finances with this intuitive spending tracker. Visualize your expenses with a clean line chart and gain insights into your spending habits. Customize categories and export your data for detailed analysis.
- Intuitive expense tracking
- Beautiful line chart visualization
- Monthly spending overview
- Customizable categories
- Export data to CSV
- Local data storage
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Expense makes tracking money easy and intuitive. • Simple and beautiful line chart • Fast expense tracking, enter amount and select a category, that’s it • Track where your money is going in monthly view • Export to CSV for further processing • Customize categories in settings • All of your data are stored locally and are not available to us
MugVault
Catalog your Starbucks mug collection with ease. Add photos, locations, and details for each mug. Search, sort, and export your collection to share with fellow enthusiasts.
- Organize mug collection
- Track mug details
- Add photos and locations
- Sort and search collection
- Export collection data
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Organize, track, and celebrate your Starbucks® mug collection with Mug Vault! Easily add photos, locations, and details for every mug. Sort, search, and export your collection to share with friends — all in a beautifully simple design. Perfect for collectors who want their mugs remembered, not misplaced.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Expense at Free against MugVault's $2.99. Expense also leads on ratings volume (112 vs 3). MugVault's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 6 months) and rating (5.0 vs 4.8). On review sentiment, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Expense is free to download; MugVault costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
MugVault holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Expense has 112 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 97% of Expense's written reviews are positive against 100% of MugVault's.
Expense ships an update every 6 months, MugVault every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Expense | MugVault |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 4.8 (112 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 97.1% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 112 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Shan Cao | Philip Pilalas |
Customer experience
Expense
MugVault
Bugs and requests
Expense
Reported bugs
2 issues- Currency display issues
- No visible way to delete entries (user reported)
Requested features
28 requests- Search functionality
- Increased list of category icons
- Ability to use Emojis as category icons
- Set a recurring expense
- Add a 'memo' or text field for notes
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- Search function
- New icons for categories
- Option to add a 'sim' if money and it to tell me how much is left (per diem)
- Read from/write to the app with Shortcuts
- Annual summary feature
- Online help or FAQ in settings
- Exporting to select week or month
- Better category icons
- Subcategories
- Currency format tweaks
- Total cost row/cell for exporting
- Home screen widget
- Currency symbol (auto-set)
- Password protection
- Custom image option for categories
- Organize by week or bi-weekly
- Year-end summary
- Filter process for month/year outlook within the app
- Configure file export layout
- Auto-backup via iCloud
- Add button closer to screen edges
- iPad & Mac version
- iCloud sync
MugVault
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Expense
No in-app purchases
MugVault
No in-app purchases
