Now in early access

Budget based on reality, not resolutions.

Most budgeting apps start by asking how much you want to spend. Francis starts differently. Track for 30 days first. Then build a budget that actually fits your life.

See how it works →
Today, Apr 6
Monthly
Annual
Bills
MONTHLY BUDGET
$412 spent $1,068 left
Groceries $271 left
$54 spent
$9/day left
Eating Out $71 left
$304 spent
$4/day left
Fun $130 left
$70 spent
$7/day left
30
days of honest tracking before your first budget
$0
bank connections required. ever.
5s
average time to log a transaction
20%
of profits donated to causes you choose
How it works

The budgeting app that starts with honesty.

📋
Track first, budget second
Spend 30 days logging honestly. Francis watches your patterns. Then at day 30, it suggests a budget built from your real numbers — not your aspirations.
⚡
Friction is the feature
Manual logging creates a pause between spending and recording. That pause is where awareness lives. No auto-sync. No passive watching. Just you and your numbers.
📊
$/day left — not just totals
Every category shows how much you have left per remaining day in the month. Not "you have $300 left" but "$9/day until the 30th." That's the number that changes behavior.
🔒
Privacy that means something
No ads. No data selling. No Plaid. No exceptions. Your financial data stays yours. We tell you exactly what we do and don't do with it — in plain English.
🙏
Giving as a first-class feature
Named after St. Francis of Assisi. Charitable giving has its own category, its own tracking, its own reflection. And 20% of Francis profits go to causes you direct.
📱
Mobile-only, by design
Not a port of a desktop app. Not a spreadsheet with a mobile skin. Every interaction was designed for thumbs, built for the device that's always in your pocket.

"The best budget isn't the one you planned — it's the one built from how you actually live."

The Francis philosophy

The research

Why manual tracking actually works

Most finance apps treat logging as a necessary evil — something to automate away. Francis treats it as the point. There's a well-documented mechanism in behavioral psychology called self-monitoring: actively recording your own behavior changes the behavior itself.

When you have to log a purchase, something small happens: you think about it. That brief pause between impulse and record is where different decisions become possible. Automated sync eliminates that pause entirely. Francis puts it back.

29
financial self-control studies in a 2021 meta-analysis found statistically significant effects on real spending behavior
↓
discretionary spending after manual expense tracking, per 2023 Journal of Consumer Interests research
1×
brief moment of conscious attention is the key mediating variable — not the data itself
Read the full research breakdown →
vs. the other guys

Why Francis is different

YNAB Francis
Philosophy Budget first, track second Track first, budget second
built from reality
Onboarding 20+ screens, paywall upfront
high friction		 Optional tour, then log
low friction
Bank connection Required
mandatory		 Not a feature
not applicable
Privacy Ad-supported, data shared
ad-supported		 No ads. No data sharing.
ad-free
Pricing $109/year $59.99/year
~45% cheaper
Team ~200 employees 1 founder + Claude Code
Pricing

Simple, honest pricing.

$59.99
per year
or $4.99/month · 30-day free trial

No credit card required during trial. Cancel anytime.

You'll surprise yourself.

30 days. No budget targets. Just your real numbers.

Available on Android · iOS coming soon