Comparison

Surplus vs Basic Expense Tracker

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

Head to head
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

About

Basic Expense Tracker

Easily track your daily spending and cash flow with this finance app. It syncs across your iOS devices and offers features like expense rating and currency switching. Export your data to spreadsheets for further analysis.

Highlights
  • Daily expense tracking
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • Expense rating indicator
  • Currency switcher
  • CSV export/import
  • Daily reminders
Features
Read full description

The straightforward expense tracker that syncs across all your iOS devices. This expense tracker was inspired by the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez and Mr. Money Mustache. - Daily reminder - Currency-switcher - Good-Neutral-Bad indicator to rate your expenses. - Did I want to buy this? - iCloud-sync - CSV Spreadsheet (export/import)

Screenshots

Surplus4 screens
Basic Expense Tracker4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Basic Expense Tracker at 100% against Surplus's 83%. Basic Expense Tracker also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.8) and update cadence (fortnightly vs monthly). Surplus's advantage is ratings volume (27 vs 7). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. Surplus sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month and Basic Expense Tracker sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Basic Expense Tracker holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 27 and 7 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 83% of Surplus's written reviews are positive against 100% of Basic Expense Tracker's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Surplus ships an update monthly, Basic Expense Tracker fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on June 4, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Surplus versus Basic Expense Tracker: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSurplusBasic Expense Tracker
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (27 ratings)5.0 (7 ratings) — better
Positive reviews83.3% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings27 — better7
Update frequencyMonthlyFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.0 — better16
Further details — not scored
Size67 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDev Harvest LLCIvo Maag

Customer experience

Surplus

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

Basic Expense Tracker

All ratings7 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

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
1 purchases

Basic Expense Tracker

One-time1
  • Tip$1.99

Questions

Is Surplus free?
Surplus is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Basic Expense Tracker free?
Basic Expense Tracker is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Surplus or Basic Expense Tracker?
Basic Expense Tracker is rated higher. Surplus averages 4.8 out of 5 from 27 ratings, while Basic Expense Tracker averages 5.0 from 7 ratings.
Do Surplus or Basic Expense Tracker have ads?
Neither Surplus nor Basic Expense Tracker shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Surplus or Basic Expense Tracker?
Surplus ships an update monthly, and Basic Expense Tracker fortnightly. Most recently, Surplus was updated on June 4, 2026 and Basic Expense Tracker on September 19, 2026.

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