Moneydance vs Quicken for Mac, Windows and Linux: Pricing, Bank Downloads and Data Ownership Compared

Neither is better outright. Moneydance wins on ownership, platform coverage and export freedom: you buy it once, it runs on Linux, and it exports QIF from every version. Quicken wins on bank coverage, tax reporting and polish, with more than 14,000 supported institutions. Pick on licensing and platform, not on feature counts.

The honest way to decide is to ask which constraint you would resent in three years. If it is paying an annual fee for software you already know how to use, Moneydance is the better buy. If it is fighting a bank connection that will not stay authorized, or hunting for a Schedule C total in March, Quicken has spent more money on those two problems and it shows.

The Infinite Kind does not display the one-time license price on its purchase page; it appears at checkout. The subscription figures are published: Moneydance+ as an add-on for existing license holders runs roughly $4 monthly or $40 annually, and the program bundled with Moneydance+ runs roughly $9 monthly or $90 annually. The vendor itself words these as approximate.

Be careful with the third-party numbers that circulate for this program. Several review sites quote a specific one-time figure with confidence, and those figures disagree with each other. We only publish what a vendor actually displays, so if you want the exact license price, start the purchase and read it on the checkout page. The other buy-once desktop app does publish its price openly, which is the starting point of Moneyspire vs Moneydance. Our full Moneydance review breaks down every purchase option, including the one that quietly reverts the program to trial mode if you cancel.

Yes. Moneydance runs on macOS 12 Monterey or later, and the Mac build is a first-class version rather than a port with features removed. That is a real distinction from Quicken, where Quicken Classic for Mac and Quicken Classic for Windows are separately built programs with a genuine feature gap between them.

The gap matters if you are shopping specifically for a Mac program. Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray and the Lifetime Planner are Windows only in Quicken Classic. So is the QIF export. Our breakdown of Quicken Classic for Mac vs Windows lists what each side actually gets.

Yes. Moneydance supports modern 64-bit Linux distributions alongside Windows 10 and 11, including ARM, and macOS. Quicken Classic has no Linux version and never has. If Linux is your daily driver, this comparison is already settled, and the realistic alternatives are Moneydance, GnuCash or a spreadsheet.

Yes, through QIF, with a caveat about which Quicken you are leaving. Moneydance imports QFX, OFX, OFC, QFC, QIF and CSV. If you are on Quicken for Windows you can export QIF and bring it across. If you are on Quicken for Mac you cannot, because Quicken for Mac has had no QIF export since Quicken Mac 2007.

From Quicken for Mac your realistic options are a CSV register export or a report export, then mapping the columns on the way in. It is more work and you should expect to fix categories afterward. Our guide to exporting a QIF file from Quicken covers the Windows path step by step.

Yes, by two different routes. The base one-time license includes OFX Direct Connect, which talks to your bank directly where the bank supports it. Moneydance+ adds aggregated downloads through Plaid, which reaches thousands of institutions that never implemented OFX. Moneydance+ currently covers US and Canadian banks only.

This split is the single most common billing surprise with Moneydance. People buy the one-time license expecting every bank to connect, find their bank has no OFX Direct Connect service, and then need the subscription anyway. Check your specific bank before you decide the buy-once price is the whole price. If you want the background on connection types, see Direct Connect vs Web Connect.

It depends entirely on how you bought it. A one-time license keeps working indefinitely and includes a free upgrade to the next major release; only the optional Moneydance+ downloads stop. If you bought the bundled subscription instead and cancel it, the program reverts to trial mode and you need a one-off license key to carry on.

Trial mode is not a crippled viewer. The vendor describes the trial as fully functional, capped at 100 manually entered transactions, and publishes no time limit on it, so your data stays readable while you evaluate. A purchase also carries a 90 day money back guarantee, which is longer than most of this category offers. What the trial cap does mean is that you can properly test a file import but not daily data entry, so import a real year of transactions rather than typing a sample.

On Deluxe and above you keep real access. Quicken's Data Access Guarantee states you can view, edit, export and manually enter transactions and accounts after your subscription ends. Online services stop: no bank downloads, no quotes, no mobile sync. Quicken Starter is the exception and becomes read-only.

This is stronger than the guarantee most subscription finance apps offer, and it is the main reason Quicken still beats the cloud-only budgeting apps for anyone with a long transaction history. We cover the details, including what breaks first, in what happens to Quicken after your subscription expires.

Quicken Classic Deluxe at the displayed rate is $83.88 a year, so five years is $419.40 before any price change. Moneydance is a single license purchase plus an optional roughly $40 a year for Moneydance+ if your bank needs it. Even with the add-on every year, Moneydance is the cheaper five-year hold in almost every scenario.

Two caveats keep this from being a slam dunk. Quicken's displayed prices are promotional and its renewal rate is usually higher than the first-year rate, which makes the gap wider, not narrower. Against that, Moneydance charges for major upgrades after the one free upgrade, so a user who upgrades on every release pays more than the headline suggests.

Yes, including securities, cost basis and portfolio views, and it downloads quotes. What it does not have is Quicken Premier's tax-oriented investment layer: the capital gains estimator, built-in tax schedules and Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray, the last of which is Windows only in any case.

If your investing is buy and hold in a taxable brokerage account and you want your accountant handed a tax report rather than a register, Quicken Premier is doing work Moneydance leaves to you. Our Quicken Deluxe vs Premier comparison covers exactly which of those features justify the tier.

Yes, but not directly, because the formats do not line up. Moneydance exports QIF, and QuickBooks has never accepted QIF, in any edition. QuickBooks Online takes CSV, QBO, QFX and OFX only. The working route is to export QIF from Moneydance, convert it to QBO, then import the QBO as a Web Connect file.

That is what the converter at the top of this page does. Export from Moneydance with File then Export, choose your accounts or All Accounts, set a date range, save the QIF, and upload it. The full walkthrough including account matching lives on our Moneydance to QuickBooks page.

One detail that saves people a second cleanup: our exporter writes deterministic transaction IDs, so re-importing the same converted file does not post duplicates. If a QuickBooks import stalls halfway you can safely run the same file again.

It is one of the two strongest, alongside Banktivity. Moneydance runs natively on macOS 12 or later, exports QIF from the Mac build, and is bought once rather than rented. Banktivity is Mac and iOS only and also exports QIF. Quicken Classic for Mac sits between them and exports neither QIF nor QBO.

Choose Moneydance if you want cross-platform freedom or you may move to Linux or Windows later. Choose Banktivity if you live entirely in the Apple ecosystem and want the more polished Mac interface. Our Banktivity vs Quicken comparison covers that side of the decision, and Quicken alternatives maps the wider field.

Only in a limited sense. Mint was a free, cloud, read-only aggregator; Moneydance is a paid desktop program that stores your file locally. Moneydance can do what Mint did for spending and balances, and it will keep your history forever, but it asks you to run and back up software rather than log into a website.

If what you liked about Mint was that it was hands-off and lived in a browser, Moneydance is the wrong shape and Monarch or Simplifi are closer. If what you missed was owning your data and keeping years of history, Moneydance is a genuine upgrade on Mint rather than a substitute.

Yes. There is a companion app for iPhone and iPad that syncs with the desktop file, and there is also a Moneydance app on the Google Play Store. Treat Android as supported but neglected: the Play Store listing carries a poor rating and the app has not been updated in some time, while Quicken Classic ships actively maintained companion apps on both iOS and Android. If Android is central to how you use your ledger, that gap is worth testing before you commit.

Export before you migrate, not after. From Moneydance use File then Export, pick All Accounts, choose a custom date range covering your full history, and save the QIF somewhere outside the program folder. From Quicken for Windows, export QIF; from Quicken for Mac, export the CSV register.

Do this even if you are staying. A proprietary data file is only readable by the program that wrote it, which is why no tool converts a .QDF or a Moneydance file directly. Our guide to backing up and restoring Quicken data explains why syncing to a vendor cloud is not the same thing as holding a backup.

Buy Moneydance if you want to own the software, you use Linux, you want QIF export from a Mac, or you expect to keep the same program for five years or more. Stay on or buy Quicken Classic if you need broad bank coverage, tax schedules and investment reporting, or if you need an actively maintained Android app rather than a neglected one.