MoneyMatter is an open-source personal finance tracker. Try the cloud free for 40 days with no card, or self-host it for free. Its YNAB importer brings your accounts, categories, payees, flags and transfers with you.
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Import
The YNAB import guide covers every option.
Dates are read the same way for the whole file. When no row settles whether they are day-first or month-first, MoneyMatter reads them as MM/DD/YYYY and warns you, so check a few transactions afterwards.
Feature by feature
YNAB details checked on 12 October 2026 against the sources at the end of this page. MoneyMatter plans are on the pricing section.
| YNAB | MoneyMatter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | YNAB$14.99 a month, or $109 a year, plus tax | MoneyMatterFrom $30 a year on the cloud, before tax. Free when self-hosted |
| Free trial | YNAB34 days, no credit card when you sign up on ynab.com. College students get 365 days | MoneyMatter40 days, no card needed. Self-hosting is free with no time limit |
| Budgeting method | YNABZero-based. Ready to Assign is the money not yet added to a category, and each category can have a target | MoneyMatterA line per category with an amount for each period, rollover of leftovers or overspending, and goals. No Ready to Assign, so nothing checks the plan against the money you have |
| Currencies | YNABOne currency in a plan. YNAB recommends a separate plan for each extra currency | MoneyMatterAbout 158 fiat currencies side by side, each transaction converted at the rate of its own date |
| Investments | YNABA tracking account whose balance you update by reconciling | MoneyMatterStocks, ETFs and crypto as holdings, with cost basis, returns and dividends. Prices update daily, crypto hourly |
| Loans | YNABLoan accounts, with a Loan Planner that shows the time and interest an extra payment saves | MoneyMatterLoan accounts with a projected payoff date, the interest still to pay, and a balance projection chart |
| Refunds | YNABCategorized back to the original spending category | MoneyMatterLinked to the purchase they refund, and counted back in budgets |
| Bank sync | YNABSelect US, Canadian, UK and EU banks. In Europe, at least one bank in each of 18 countries | MoneyMatterOn the Plus plan, through LunchFlow, SimpleFIN, Monobank, Walutomat or Akahu. LunchFlow and SimpleFIN are separate paid services |
| AI assistants | YNABA REST API. The MCP servers listed on its API page are third-party | MoneyMatterA built-in MCP server with three access levels. No public REST API |
| Sharing | YNABUp to six people on one subscription, with edit access to the plans shared with them | MoneyMatter2 seats on Essential, 5 on Plus. Read-only or write access, set per account or tracker |
| Apps | YNABWeb, iOS and Android, with offline access | MoneyMatterA web app with a phone layout that you can add to your home screen, plus an iPhone app in beta on TestFlight. No Android app, and it needs a connection |
| Getting your data out | YNABCSV export of the plan and the transaction history, from the web app. Targets and category notes are left out | MoneyMatterCSV or Excel export, on every plan |
Why switch
See what is planned on the public roadmap, read the code on GitHub, or see how self-hosting works.
Hosting
Both run the same app. The cloud is for when you would rather not run a server. The self-hosting guide shows what running it yourself takes.
FAQ
Not quite. A MoneyMatter budget has a line per category with an amount for each period, rollover of leftovers or overspending, and goals for bills and savings. It has no Ready to Assign, so nothing stops you from assigning more than you have. Going over a line is shown in red and nothing is blocked. If giving every dollar a job is why you use YNAB, YNAB is the better fit.
The register file, the one with your transactions, from the Export Plan download in the YNAB web app. It must be a .csv file of up to 10 MB and 100,000 rows. For currencies that use a decimal comma, YNAB exports .tsv files instead, and the importer does not take those. Your plan file with assigned amounts and targets is not read.
A YNAB "Group: Category" becomes a category with a subcategory, and categories you already have with the same names are reused. Each flag colour becomes a tag, such as "YNAB Red". "Inflow: Ready to Assign" is not turned into a category.
Yes. Every import creates new accounts and can be removed from Import History, as long as those accounts have not been connected to a bank since. Importing the same file twice creates a second set of accounts, because there is no duplicate check.
Self-hosted, yes: you run it with Docker Compose on your own server, with every feature on. On the cloud there is a 40-day trial with no card, then a paid plan from $30 a year. There is no free cloud plan.
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YNAB is a trademark of its owner; MoneyMatter is not affiliated with it.
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