Monarch Money vs Copilot vs Quicken Simplifi: The Paid Mint Alternatives, Compared

Mint died on March 23, 2024. Intuit pulled the plug after 17 years and roughly 25 million registered users by WalletHub's count, and pointed everyone at Credit Karma, which tracks accounts and credit scores but does not do a real budget. Bloomberg had broken the shutdown plan back in November 2023, so the migration was long and loud: some people hunted for another free app, and a surprising number accepted that the replacement would cost money.

We covered the free camp in our Rocket Money vs Empower vs EveryDollar comparison. This piece is for the paid camp. Monarch Money, Copilot Money, and Quicken Simplifi are the three subscriptions that captured most of the Mint exodus, and they compete on the exact promise Mint made in 2007: every account, one screen, no spreadsheet. (If you are choosing a strict budgeting method rather than a tracker, that is a different decision, and our YNAB vs Monarch vs EveryDollar piece covers it. We will not re-argue it here.)

Monarch: the heir with the receipts

Monarch has the cleanest claim to Mint's empty throne, and it is not marketing. Co-founder and CEO Val Agostino was Mint's first product manager, a detail TechCrunch has been noting since Monarch's early funding rounds. The product reads like a considered sequel: connect everything, watch net worth and cash flow, budget as strictly or as loosely as you want, and share the whole picture with a partner without sharing a login. It runs on the web, iPhone, and Android, and the company recently trimmed its branding from Monarch Money to just Monarch, moving its site from monarchmoney.com to monarch.com in the process.

Pricing, per Monarch's pricing page and The Penny Hoarder's 2026 review: the Core plan is $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and a Plus tier for power users lists at $199 a year, available on annual billing only. The trial is 7 days, the stingiest of the three, which is worth knowing because a money app really needs a full month of your transactions to prove anything.

The honest knock on Monarch is that it is the most expensive way to pay monthly in this comparison, and its depth can be more dashboard than some people ever use. But as a like for like Mint replacement for a couple with mixed devices, nothing else here matches it.

Copilot: the beautiful one with a bouncer at the door

Copilot is the design darling of the group, polished enough that Apple has featured its developers in an official spotlight, a link Copilot keeps in its own footer. Spending charts feel game-like, categorization is fast and smart, and the daily check-in habit it builds is the entire point: a budget app only works if you actually open it.

Pricing, straight from copilot.money: $13 a month, or $95 a year, which the site pitches as $7.92 a month and a 39 percent saving. The App Store trial runs a full month.

Now the door policy. There is no Android app, and Copilot has always treated that as a decision rather than a delay. For years there was no way to use it on a desk at all without a Mac. That finally changed: as of December 2025 Copilot runs in the browser at app.copilot.money, and the company's help center, in an article updated in May 2026, says the web app has most of the iOS features with a few still being worked on. The same article states the service is currently available in the US only. So the practical rule stands: if there is a single Android phone in your household, or you live outside the US, Copilot is out, however pretty it is.

Quicken Simplifi: the value pick from the oldest name in the room

Simplifi comes from Quicken, the company that has been balancing American checkbooks since the 1980s, and the name has been through a shuffle worth flagging so you know it is the same product: it launched as Simplifi by Quicken and is now sold as Quicken Simplifi. It runs on the web plus iPhone and Android apps, and its signature idea is the spending plan: after bills and savings are accounted for, it shows one number you can still spend this month, which is honestly the number most people wanted from Mint all along.

Pricing, per Quicken's product page as of July 18, 2026: the list price is $5.99 a month billed annually, which works out to $71.88 a year. The same page is currently showing a first year promo of $2.99 a month billed annually, $35.88 for year one, with fine print limiting it to new members who order by August 15, 2026, after which it renews at the going rate. Treat any Simplifi price you read, including this one, as a snapshot: Quicken rotates these promos constantly, and FinCompareLab tracked the same offer at $3.99 earlier in 2026.

Two structural quirks. There is no monthly billing at all: you commit to a year up front. And instead of a free trial you get a 30 day money back guarantee, which works, but asking for a refund takes more resolve than letting a trial lapse. What you give up against Monarch is depth: coarser investment tracking, thinner sharing, fewer report angles. What you get is the same core job, accounts synced and spending planned, for the lowest full price in the category.

The price math, run honestly

List prices only tell you half the story. The gap between monthly and annual billing is where these companies actually express their opinions.

Three things fall out of that table. First, monthly billing is priced as a penalty: staying month to month on Monarch costs $79.89 more per year than its annual plan, and on Copilot the gap is $61.00. If you decide to keep either app past the trial, the annual plan is the real price and the monthly rate is a convenience fee for the undecided. Second, on annual billing Monarch and Copilot land $4.99 apart, which rounds to nothing over a year, so choosing between them on price is choosing on noise. Platforms and sharing should make that call. Third, Simplifi at list undercuts Monarch's annual plan by $28.11 every single year, and by much more in a promo year, which is the whole argument for it in one number.

How to choose in three questions

What devices live in your house? One Android phone anywhere in the budget means Copilot is out, full stop. All Apple everything, and Copilot's polish becomes a real daily-use argument, not vanity.

Who budgets with you? Couples and families get the most from Monarch: separate logins, one shared picture, and flexible rules about who sees what. Solo budgeters can ignore that entire feature class and let price or feel decide.

Which price would you actually pay? Be honest about whether you commit annually. Annual payers comparing Monarch and Copilot are comparing $99.99 against $95.00. Monthly payers are comparing $179.88 against $156.00, a different race. And if the number itself is the deciding factor, Simplifi wins before the race starts.

The fine print all three share

Bank syncing on all three rides on third party aggregators, Plaid and its peers, and every community forum for every one of these apps carries the same recurring complaint: a bank connection broke, a balance froze, transactions duplicated. That failure mode varies by bank far more than by app, so do not switch apps to escape it.

None of the three has a free tier. Trials and guarantees, yes, but the business model here is the subscription, which is precisely why none of them shows you ads or sells your attention. If the price has to be zero, you want the free trio comparison linked above, where free has its own costs.

And prices move. Every number in this piece was checked against the vendors' own pages on July 18, 2026. If you are reading this months later, spend the ninety seconds confirming before you subscribe.

Before you pay anyone $95 a year to organize your money, spend one free minute learning its shape: the budget planner splits your take-home pay into needs, wants, and savings instantly. Those three numbers tell you whether you need a tracker, a method, or just a nudge, and they are the yardstick to hold any of these apps against.

Keep reading