Comparison

Spent. vs Budget Balancer

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

Head to head
About

Spent.

This private expense tracker uses on-device AI to log spending, scan receipts, and provide instant answers about your finances. Set monthly budgets and track your money without an account or cloud storage.

Highlights
  • On-device AI expense tracking
  • Receipt scanning with AI extraction
  • Natural language logging
  • Monthly budgeting per category
  • Instant spending insights
  • No account or cloud required
  • Multi-currency support
Features
Read full description

A private expense tracker that lives on your iPhone. Log spending by hand, from a receipt or straight from Apple Pay, and ask Lil Bit what you spent. No account. No cloud. No tracking. Meet Lil Bit, the little bookkeeper inside Spent. Ask "how much at Target last month?" and the total is there in a second. Lil Bit is free and answers from what you've recorded, right on your phone. ASK LIL BIT (FREE) • "How much on food this month?" Any category, any period • "How much at Target last month?" One merchant • "Compare this month and last" • "What was my biggest expense last month?" • "How much did I put on my Amex last month?" • "What's my monthly average?" Full months only • "Am I over budget?" Limit, spent and what's left • "What's my balance across accounts?" APPLE'S ON-DEVICE MODEL With AI Unlock, Spent. reads your receipts, turns "lunch 12" into an entry, imports screenshots of your bank or e-wallet history, and suggests categories for new captures. On iPhone 15 Pro or later running iOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence on, this runs on Apple's on-device model, with nothing to download. Other iPhones download Spent.'s model once (3.6 GB). Either way it all happens on your phone, and you check every entry before it saves. APPLE PAY CAPTURE (FREE) Add the shortcut in Settings > Apple Pay Capture. Each time you pay with Apple Pay, the purchase waits in your review list with the merchant and amount filled in. Approve them one at a time or all at once. BANK NOTIFICATIONS (FREE, iOS 27) Your bank already tells you when you've paid. Show Spent. one real notification by tapping the amount and the merchant, and every payment after that lands in your review list. No bank login, no connection to your bank, no server. BUDGETS Set a monthly limit for any category and Insights draws a quiet bar under it, so you can see under, near or over at a glance. Per currency, and included in your backups. WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO • Track expenses, income and transfers across accounts • Multi-currency: each account keeps its own currency, with no conversions • Insights by category and merchant, month over month • Scan receipts with on-device text recognition for free; AI Unlock fills in the details • Rename a bank's merchant once and Spent. remembers it • Recurring transactions, duplicate detection and merchant memory • Home Screen widget to log, scan or ask in one tap; it shows no data by design • Privacy mask hides every balance with one tap • Siri and Shortcuts • Full backup and restore, any time PRIVACY BY DESIGN Spent. has no server and no account. Nothing is collected, so there is nothing to leak. The AI runs on your iPhone and never uses Private Cloud Compute. Your receipts, balances and habits stay with you. Free: manual tracking, Lil Bit chat, Apple Pay capture, bank notifications, receipt scanning, budgets and insights. AI Unlock is a single one-time purchase for AI receipt reading, typed entries, screenshot import and AI suggestions. No subscription, ever. Your expenses, tracked privately.

About

Budget Balancer

Read full description

See what's coming before it hits your account. Your bank balance shows today. It doesn't show the rent leaving on the 1st, the card payment on the 15th, or whether payday arrives before the direct debits do. Budget Balancer maps your money as a timeline, so you can answer the only question that matters: will my balance survive the next 30 days? No bank linking. No logins. No sending your financial data to a server. Open it and start planning. Map your money timeline Add your accounts, paydays, bills, transfers and known one-offs. Budget Balancer draws your balance curve day by day, so you can see exactly where you're heading — not where you've been. Spot the tight days early The forecast highlights low-balance days before you reach them, so you can move money or shift a payment while there's still time. No more mid-month guessing about whether you'll overdraft next Thursday. Know you're safe to spend Instead of guilt-tripping you about last month's coffees, Budget Balancer tells you what's genuinely free to spend once the bills ahead are covered. Handle credit cards properly Track balances, statement amounts and new spend, compare payment strategies, and see how a card payment lands on your cash flow through the payment date — not the purchase date. See the bigger picture Track wealth items like savings, investments, pensions, property and mortgages, and test scenarios for overpayments, loans and savings goals. Built for how you actually get paid Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly — plan around your real pay cycle, not a tidy calendar month. Budget Balancer is local-first. Start without creating an account, import CSV, JSON or PDF files when useful, export your own backups, and keep widget balances hidden unless you choose to show them. The free version gives you a focused planning setup. Budget Balancer Pro unlocks unlimited accounts and elements, longer forecasts, advanced card modelling, balance alerts, imports, exports, wealth projections, saved scenarios and quick credit-card spend capture. Budget Balancer is a planning tool. It does not provide financial advice, investment advice, lending, banking, account aggregation or payment initiation. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Spent.4 screens
Budget Balancer4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Budget Balancer at every 3 days against Spent.'s every 10 days. Spent.'s advantage is iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.5). On price, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Spent. sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Budget Balancer sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Spent. ships an update every 10 days, Budget Balancer every 3 days. Both last shipped on October 25, 2026.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Spent. versus Budget Balancer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpent.Budget Balancer
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 10 daysEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.6 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size34 MB5 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperChee Leong CHONGShared Potential

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Spent.

One-time1
  • AI Unlock$4.99
3 purchases

Budget Balancer

Subscriptions2
  • Budget Balancer Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
  • Budget Balancer Pro Annual14 Days trial$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Budget Balancer Lifetime$49.99

Questions

Is Spent. free?
Spent. is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Budget Balancer free?
Budget Balancer is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Spent. or Budget Balancer have ads?
Neither Spent. nor Budget Balancer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Spent. or Budget Balancer?
Spent. ships an update every 10 days, and Budget Balancer every 3 days. Most recently, Spent. was updated on October 25, 2026 and Budget Balancer on October 25, 2026.

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