YNAB Cost and YNAB Pricing, YNAB Subscription Cost per Month and per Year

YNAB is $109 a year on the annual plan or $14.99 a month on the monthly plan, plus tax where applicable. Both plans unlock the same software on the web, iPhone, iPad and Android, with bank connections, goals, reports and subscription sharing included. The only difference is how you pay, and annual billing is about 39 percent cheaper.

YNAB has raised its price several times over the years, most recently from $99 to $109 a year, and it does not promise the current rate will hold. Budget for $109 now and assume the renewal could be higher. YNAB's pricing page says the annual plan costs about 30 cents a day, which is accurate: $109 divided by 365 is $0.30.

YNAB is $14.99 per month if you choose monthly billing, and $9.08 per month if you pay $109 for the whole year up front. The $9.08 figure is the annual price divided by twelve. You cannot pay $9.08 each month; it is only available as a single yearly charge.

Monthly billing only makes sense if you plan to leave soon. After eight months, $14.99 a month has cost $119.92, more than a full year on the annual plan. If you are still using YNAB at month seven, switching to annual saves money from that point on.

A year of YNAB costs $109 on the annual plan or $179.88 if you pay $14.99 monthly for twelve months. The gap is $70.88, which is the "$70 Savings" YNAB shows on its pricing page. Over five years at today's prices, annual billing totals $545 and monthly billing totals $899.40.

No. YNAB has no free plan. You get a 34-day free trial with every feature unlocked, and after that you either subscribe or lose access to your budget. If you sign up directly on ynab.com, the trial asks for no payment details, so it simply ends on day 34 and nothing is charged.

YNAB sends a reminder one week before the trial expires. If you start the trial through Apple's App Store or Google Play instead, the store may ask for a card up front and will bill you when the trial ends unless you cancel there, so start on the website if you want the no-card version.

Yes, for one year. YNAB gives college students a free 365-day trial through its College Program. You submit proof of current enrollment, such as a student ID, transcript or tuition statement that shows your name, your school and a date. After the year, the normal $109 annual or $14.99 monthly price applies.

YNAB has no separate family plan because sharing is included in every subscription. You can share one YNAB subscription with partners, family members and other close groups of up to six people. Split across six people, the annual plan comes to about $18.17 per person per year, which makes YNAB one of the cheapest options here for a household.

Sharing gives each person their own login and their own budgets under the one subscription. That matters when you compare YNAB with apps that charge per seat or limit a subscription to one household account.

YNAB is at the upper end of annual pricing for budgeting apps. At $109 a year it costs more than Copilot at $95, Tiller at $99 and Monarch Core at $99.99, and less than PocketSmith Foundation at $119.88. On monthly billing, YNAB and Monarch are both $14.99. What sets YNAB apart on cost is the six-person sharing, which none of the others match at the same price.

The five-year column assumes today's prices hold, which no vendor promises. Simplifi's $47.88 first year and the Quicken Classic first-year price are Quicken promotions for new memberships ordered directly by October 28, 2026; Simplifi then renews at $6.99 a month billed annually, and Quicken Classic renews at "then-current rates", so we do not project it.

For head-to-head detail on method, platforms and data, see YNAB vs Quicken, our YNAB vs Simplifi comparison and Monarch Money vs YNAB. The other price pages in this series cover Monarch Money cost, Copilot Money cost and Tiller pricing.

YNAB is worth $109 a year if you will actually use its method: giving every dollar a job before you spend it, and adjusting the plan when life changes. People who budget that way tend to stick with it for years. It is poor value if you only want to see where money went, because cheaper apps do passive tracking well.

The strongest case for YNAB is a couple or family that wants to plan money together, carries credit card debt it wants to clear, and will open the app several times a week. The weakest case is someone who mainly tracks investments, needs business reports, or wants a desktop file they own. YNAB has no investment performance tracking and no Schedule C reporting, and your budget lives on YNAB's servers rather than on your own computer.

Yes, partly. YNAB's file-based import accepts QIF, QFX, OFX and CSV files, one account at a time, and CSV is the format YNAB prefers. The limits matter for a Quicken switcher: file import cannot add categories or split transactions, so years of carefully categorized Quicken history arrive as plain transactions you would need to recategorize by hand.

Most people leaving Quicken for YNAB therefore start the budget fresh from a recent date and keep the old history somewhere else. Export QIF from Quicken first (our guide to exporting QIF from Quicken covers Windows and Mac), then decide where the archive lives. If the history is for tax records or a side business, it belongs in QuickBooks: QIFQBO turns the QIF into a balanced QBO file that imports into QuickBooks Online through Web Connect. If you just want a searchable record, our QIF to CSV converter gives you one spreadsheet per account with dates, payees, amounts and categories kept as columns.

You can test three files of up to 100 transactions each with a free QIFQBO account. CSV and Excel output and larger batches are on paid plans, which suit a one-time move of a large Quicken file with many accounts.

Only on annual plans bought directly from YNAB. If you pay for a year after the trial and decide not to use YNAB, you can delete your account to receive a prorated refund for the remaining time. Monthly subscriptions are not refundable, and YNAB does not give refunds based on feature use or Direct Import outages.

Subscriptions bought through Apple's App Store or Google Play follow the store's refund rules, not YNAB's. Gift subscriptions cannot be refunded once redeemed. The cheapest insurance against needing a refund is using the full 34-day trial before you pay anything.

Log in to the YNAB web app, open Account Settings and click Cancel your subscription. Billing is not available inside the mobile app, so on a phone open app.ynab.com/settings in the browser. If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, cancel in that store's subscription settings instead. You can also email help@ynab.com from your account address.

After you cancel, you keep access until the end of the billing period you already paid for. Your account and budget data are not deleted at cancellation; YNAB removes them later under its data retention policy, or immediately if you delete the account yourself.

You lose access to your budget when the paid period ends, because YNAB is a hosted service with no local file. The data stays on YNAB's side for a while, and if you log back in you will be asked to re-subscribe. Export your budget and register to CSV before you cancel if you want a copy you control.

That is the opposite of Quicken Classic, where Deluxe and higher keep a local file you can still view, edit and export after the subscription lapses. We explain exactly what keeps working in what happens when a Quicken subscription expires.

Quicken Classic Deluxe costs less in the first year, $83.88 against YNAB's $109, and Simplifi costs much less at $47.88. After the first year, Quicken Classic renews at its current rate, so the long-run gap depends on what Quicken charges you at renewal. YNAB's cost is flat and published, which some switchers value more than a first-year discount.

The bigger difference is what you get for the money. Quicken Classic tracks investments, runs on your own computer and exports your data after a lapse. YNAB is a budgeting method with software built around it, shared across up to six people. Read our YNAB vs Quicken comparison if you are weighing the two directly, and our Quicken alternatives guide if YNAB is one of several options.

Pay annually after using the full 34-day trial. The annual plan is $109 instead of $179.88 for twelve monthly payments. If you share the subscription with a partner or family, the cost per person drops further, and college students can use the free 365-day trial first. YNAB does not sell a lifetime license.

If $109 is more than you want to spend and you do not need YNAB's method, Simplifi at $83.88 a year regular is the lowest-priced full budgeting app in the table, and a spreadsheet-first tool like Tiller costs $99. Neither shares across six people the way YNAB does.

Buy YNAB if you want a hands-on, plan-every-dollar budget, share money decisions with a partner or family, and are happy to start your history from today. Skip it if you want investment tracking, business reporting or a desktop file you own. Either way, deal with your old Quicken data before the subscription lapses: export QIF once, convert it to a spreadsheet or a QBO file, and your past years stay usable whichever app you pay for next.