Comparison

Expense Tracker vs Surplus

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Expense Tracker

Easily track your daily, weekly, and monthly spending with this intuitive budgeting app. Organize expenses into categories, set budgets, and visualize your spending habits with clear charts and summaries. Securely sync your data to iCloud.

Highlights
  • Beautiful User Interface
  • Budgeting and Expense Tracking
  • Expense History and Summary
  • Customizable Expense Categories
  • Data Backup & Sync to iCloud
  • Recurring Expense Notifications
  • Built-in Calculator
Features
Read full description

Expense Diary is a simple & beautiful budgeting app for keeping track of your expenses or spendings. You create your expense groups, assign a budget to it and start keeping track of your expenses. Managing your daily, weekly or even monthly finance whether its related to home or office should not be a complicated task. Expense Diary simplifies this process with few taps. If you are looking for a simple budget planner, then this is the app that you are looking for. With this app you can keep plan your monthly budget, track expenditure, and manage savings across multiple categories. Features: - Beautiful User Interface: No more clunky, difficult navigation. Easy to use app with beautiful UI and Dark Theme too. - Budgeting: Assign a budget for your expenses and keep track of it. - Expense History: Keep track of all your expenses. See how much you spent and if you are within the budget. - Expense Category: Assign multiple categories to your expenses and track it across multiple categories. - Dark Mode: Switch between light & dark theme as per your preference. - Recent Expenses: See graph of your last 7 days expenses. - Expense Summary: Visualize your expenses in a graph per each category. See what you spend most on. - Data Backup & Sync: All your expenses data are synced privately to your own icloud account. Its safe & secure - Recurring Expenses: Track all your recurring expenses too. Get notification of your recurring expense. - Built in calculator to add, subtract, divide, multiply your expenditure. - Custom Icons: Stand out from the crowd with custom app icons. - Spendings Chart: You can view a graph of your daily expenses or view your spendings per each category. You can enjoy all the features of this app by subscribing to one of our monthly or yearly subscription pack or purchasing one time LifeTime purchase. Take control of your finance today. Expense Diary will automatically charge your iTunes Account at the end of your subscription unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of your current period. Subscriptions renew at the original price. You can turn off auto-renew at any time and still receive full functionality until the end of your current period, but no refund can be provided for unused portions of the subscription. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable. All your previous purchases can be easily restored using the **Restore Purchase** option in the app. This will provide you access to all the premium features. Expense Diary Terms of Service & Privacy Policy https://nrlnishan.github.io/privacy/expense-diary/

About

Surplus

This app helps you manage your monthly finances by tracking income, expenses, and upcoming payments. It provides insights into your spending habits, categorizes transactions, and offers customizable reports. Sync your accounts automatically or manually for a clear overview of your leftover spend.

Highlights
  • Monthly income and expense tracking
  • Categorization of spending
  • Customizable reports with CSV export
  • Transaction grouping
  • Home and lock screen widgets
  • Automation via Shortcuts app
Features
Read full description

Surplus is a monthly expense tracker that takes into account your monthly income, expenses and upcoming payments to provide you with a clear overview of your leftover spend. -- Spend Wisely -- Know how much you have left to spend, including your subscriptions and installments. -- Profile Your Spend -- Categorize your expenses into meaningful groups that drive insights into your spend profile. This can include popular budgeting methods such as the “50/30/20 budget rule” or the “80/20 budget rule”. -- Adaptable Workflows -- Manual or automatic, easily sync and categorize transactions from all your accounts. -- Transaction Collections -- Group related transactions across buckets and time. They can be themed around trips, shared expenses or anything you'd like! -- Widgets -- Customize your home and lock screens with widgets that showcase your leftover spend, upcoming transactions and buckets. -- Interactive Reports -- Customizable reports for your historic and upcoming spend with support for CSV Export. -- Shortcuts -- Automate your expense tracking with actions configurable via the Shortcuts app. Examples include triggering an expense entry when leaving your favorite coffee shop or scheduling spend summaries on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Actions can be run via Siri, Apple Watch and the Shortcuts app. -- Privately Synced with iCloud -- All financial data is stored on your device(s) and synced privately via your iCloud Account. We do not store any personal information or transaction data on our servers. Surplus is free to use with pro features that can be activated via in-app purchases. Surplus Pro can be purchased as a one time payment or as a recurring subscription. Current pricing and purchase offers are available in the app. By downloading and using Surplus you agree to our terms and conditions: Terms of Use https://surplus.app/terms Privacy Policy https://surplus.app/privacy Surplus is an indie app developed and maintained by Omar Inam. If you have any questions or feedback please feel free to contact me through Twitter @_oinam

Screenshots

Expense Tracker4 screens
Surplus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Surplus at 4.8 against Expense Tracker's 4.3. Surplus also leads on ratings volume (28 vs 4) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17). Expense Tracker's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 83%). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Expense Tracker sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Surplus sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Surplus holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Surplus has 28 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 100% of Expense Tracker's written reviews are positive against 83% of Surplus's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Expense Tracker ships an update every 3 weeks, Surplus monthly. Both last shipped on October 22, 2026.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Expense Tracker versus Surplus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterExpense TrackerSurplus
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (4 ratings)4.8 (28 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews — better83.3% of reviews
Number of ratings428 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeks — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS1715.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size40 MB67 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperNishan NiraulaDev Harvest LLC

Customer experience

Expense Tracker

All ratings4 ratings
Positive75.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative25.0%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Surplus

All ratings27 ratings
Positive96.3%
Neutral3.7%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews6 reviews
Positive83.3%
Neutral16.7%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

4 purchases

Expense Tracker

Subscriptions3
  • Expense Diary Premium: Monthly$1.991 Month
  • Expense Diary - Weekly3 Days trial$1.997 Days
  • Expense Diary Premium: Yearly$17.991 Year
One-time1
  • Expense Diary Premium Lifetime$24.99
4 purchases

Surplus

Subscriptions3
  • Surplus Pro Monthly$3.991 Month
  • Surplus Pro Yearly$14.491 Year
  • Surplus Pro Yearly$29.991 Year
One-time1
  • Surplus Pro Lifetime$29.99

Questions

Is Expense Tracker free?
Expense Tracker is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Surplus free?
Surplus is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Expense Tracker or Surplus?
Surplus is rated higher. Expense Tracker averages 4.3 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while Surplus averages 4.8 from 28 ratings.
Do Expense Tracker or Surplus have ads?
Neither Expense Tracker nor Surplus shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Expense Tracker or Surplus?
Expense Tracker ships an update every 3 weeks, and Surplus monthly. Most recently, Expense Tracker was updated on October 22, 2026 and Surplus on October 22, 2026.

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