Expense Log XL vs TapExpense
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Expense Log XL
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Track what you spend โ in seconds, on your phone, without a subscription. Expense Log XL is a manual expense tracker for people who want their money in their own hands: type the amount, tap a category, done. No bank logins, no accounts, no cloud, no ads. AN EXPENSE IN 3 SECONDS โข A big numpad and big category buttons โ one tap saves the expense โข 10 ready-made categories, or build your own with your own icons โข A note or a different date only when you actually need one SEE WHERE THE MONEY GOES โข This month's total at a glance โข Every category with its share, as bars and percentages โข Swipe left or right to walk through your months โข Search your notes CSV EXPORT THAT ACTUALLY WORKS Date, Amount, Currency, Category, Note โ a clean UTF-8 file with BOM that opens correctly in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets. Commas and quotation marks inside your notes stay intact instead of breaking the columns. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Everything stays on your iPhone. No account, no server, no cloud sync, no analytics, no advertising. Your expenses are nobody else's business. HONEST PRICING Adding expenses is always free and never limited. Your first 14 days open everything. After that, the free version keeps this month in full, plus backup. One purchase unlocks every past month, CSV export of any period and one-tap recurring expenses. Forever, with no subscription.
TapExpense
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TapExpense is the expense tracker built for people who just want to log a purchase and get on with their day โ no account, no sign-up, no ads, no network required. Every expense stays on your device, in a real local database, from the very first tap. LOG AN EXPENSE IN 5 SECONDS Tap the + button and the amount field is already focused with the keypad up. Type an amount, pick a category and payment method from single-tap chips, save โ done. Titles are optional; untitled expenses show their category. As you type, TapExpense suggests titles learned from your own history, and accepting one prefills the amount, category and payment method in a single tap โ every field stays editable if it guessed wrong. That runs entirely on-device: no AI service, no cloud model, no network call. It is a deterministic ranking of your own history by recency, frequency and time of day โ fast, predictable and private. YOUR DATA NEVER LEAVES YOUR DEVICE โข Fully functional offline โ always, everywhere, no exceptions โข No account, no sign-up, no email required โข No ad SDKs, no trackers, no analytics of any kind โข Optional Face ID / Touch ID lock with PIN fallback โข Optional blur for amounts in the app switcher โข Export to CSV or JSON any time, free โ your data is never held hostage SEE WHERE YOUR MONEY GOES The dashboard centers on one number: what you spent today, this week, this month, this year or all time, with a chart shaped to match. Tap a bar to filter the list to that period. Reports add a category breakdown, a payment-method breakdown, a six-period trend and month-over-month deltas that name your biggest mover. Every figure is computed on-device. FASTER THAN OPENING THE APP โข Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, including an interactive "log it again" widget that saves your most frequent expense in one tap, without launching the app โข Siri and Apple Shortcuts: "Log an expense in TapExpense", get your period total, open Quick Add, search expenses, or undo the last entry โข A guided Apple Wallet automation, so an Apple Pay tap can hand the merchant and amount straight to TapExpense MULTIPLE PROFILES Keep personal, business or shared spending in fully separate profiles, each with its own categories, payment methods, currency and learned suggestions. Switch in one tap. BACKUP AND RESTORE, ON YOUR TERMS Create an encrypted backup (AES-256-GCM) protected by your own passphrase, and preview exactly what a restore will change before anything is applied. Restores merge safely by ID, so you never lose data by mistake. Schedule automatic backups and optionally keep them in your own iCloud Drive โ TapExpense never sees your files. OPTIONAL NOTION SYNC Mirror your expenses into your own Notion database as you log them. Entirely opt-in, with zero effect on the app if you never turn it on. FREE VS. PRO Unlimited expenses, up to 20 categories, one profile, current-month reports, CSV/JSON export and full backup/restore are free โ permanently, with no trial period and no nagging. TapExpense Pro adds unlimited profiles, full history and every reporting period, advanced filters, every widget and automation, and Notion sync. Backup and export stay free either way โ that line never moves. No accounts. No ads. No trackers. Just a fast, private way to know exactly where your money goes. Terms of Use: https://tap-expense.com/terms/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: TapExpense at none against Expense Log XL's 1. TapExpense also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Expense Log XL sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. TapExpense asks for nothing beyond the download.
Expense Log XL ships an update every 2 weeks, TapExpense every 9 days. Both last shipped on October 25, 2026.
| Parameter | Expense Log XL | TapExpense |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 9 days โ better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No โ better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod โ better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 โ better |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 46 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | +4 |
| Developer | ihor Romanenko | Ashutosh Gupta |
In-app purchases
Expense Log XL
- Unlock Forever$8.99
TapExpense
No in-app purchases









