Budget Projects vs Surplus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Budget Projects
This app helps you manage your finances by creating income and expense budgets. Track your spending against these budgets to gain control and save money. Visualize your financial habits with detailed reports and charts.
- Create unlimited budgets
- Recurring budget options
- Progress bar for budget tracking
- Detailed financial reports and charts
- Customizable categories
- Transaction search and export
- Passcode and Touch ID protection
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Stop asking the question that where my money went, and why there is no money left in my wallet. Budget Projects keeps your money well managed and spent. By Budget Projects, you can create income and expense budgets, which indicate how much money you plan to spend or get, then when you have transactions under that budget, add them into it. When there is less money to spend under a budget, you will automatically control spending. This app helps controlling yourself spending money randomly and keeping your money well organized. After using it for a while, you will be surprised how much money you will save. Key Features: ⁃ Create unlimited budgets with recurring or not. ⁃ Recurring budgets by single or multiple cycles of daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. ⁃ Progress bar to show used amount VS budget amount. ⁃ Over roll amount to next cycles or not. ⁃ Custom order of added budgets. ⁃ Add recurring transactions. ⁃ Editable default categories and you can add your own. ⁃ Pie chart reports to show income, expense and savings. ⁃ Cycle pie chart reports to show percentage and amount of each budget. ⁃ Chart report to show cash flow tendency. ⁃ Search transactions by their name, type amount or note. ⁃ Hide Expired Budgets or not. ⁃ Air print support. ⁃ iCloud backup and restore. ⁃ Dropbox backup and restore. ⁃ Passcode protection. ⁃ Supports Touch ID as passcode. ⁃ Custom week and month start day. ⁃ Create unlimited reminders. ⁃ Export data in form of CSV, HTML or PDF. ⁃ Adds 3D Touch function. ⁃ Supports Apple Watch. ⁃ Supports universal version (available on both iPhone and iPad). If you have any question or suggestion, please email to linklinksapp@tom.com.
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.
- Monthly income and expense tracking
- Categorization of spending
- Customizable reports with CSV export
- Transaction grouping
- Home and lock screen widgets
- Automation via Shortcuts app
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Surplus at 4.8 against Budget Projects's 4.3. Surplus also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (monthly vs every 6 months). On price, ratings volume, 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
Both are free to download. Budget Projects sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 6 months 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.
Surplus holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 80 and 27 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 62% of Budget Projects's written reviews are positive against 83% of Surplus's.
Budget Projects ships an update every 6 months, Surplus monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Budget Projects | Surplus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (80 ratings) | 4.8 (27 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 62.4% of reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 80 — better | 27 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Monthly — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 16 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 38 MB | 67 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | LINKLINKS LTD | Dev Harvest LLC |
Customer experience
Budget Projects
Surplus
Bugs and requests
Budget Projects
Reported bugs
10 issues- App crashes when creating budgets
- Recurring costs not deducted from associated budgets
- Date field defaults to January instead of current date
- Ads appearing in center of screen and not closeable
- Data erased after app updates
Show 5 moreShow fewer
- App freezes or becomes unresponsive
- Transactions showing as 'earned' instead of 'spent'
- Incompatibility with iOS 15 and later
- Unexpected charges for in-app purchases
- Budgets disappearing without explanation
Requested features
11 requests- In-app tutorial or contextual help menu
- Automatic transaction entry from bank accounts
- Biweekly recurring payment option
- Default time setting for all transactions
- Monthly calendar view of expenses
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- Ability to change budget cycle date
- Zero-dollar budget groups for tracking unexpected expenses
- Better UI/UX design and layout improvements
- Easier decimal entry without calculator
- Multi-month or year-long budget tracking
- Improved customer support responsiveness
Surplus
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Budget Projects
- Premium - 6 months$1.996 Months
- Remove Ads Forever$9.99
- Unlimited Transactions$11.99
Surplus
- Surplus Pro Monthly$3.991 Month
- Surplus Pro Yearly$14.491 Year
- Surplus Pro Yearly$29.991 Year
- Surplus Pro Lifetime$29.99









