Best AI-Powered Finance Apps

By Rob Berger, JD | Last Updated May 18, 2026

I just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One thing is clear–companies are integrating AI into everything. Finance apps, including budgeting apps, investment tracking apps, and even retirement planning tools, have joined the party.

AI Now Wants to See Your Bank Account

Here’s what’s actually changed in the last few months. It’s not just that finance apps are bolting on AI features. It’s that the biggest AI tools now want to connect straight to your accounts.

In May 2026, OpenAI rolled out a personal finance feature inside ChatGPT. You link your bank, credit card and investment accounts through Plaid, and ChatGPT tracks your spending, flags upcoming bills, summarizes your subscriptions and answers questions about your money. For now it’s limited to Pro users in the U.S., with a wider rollout promised later.

So the question isn’t really whether to use AI with your money anymore. It’s which tool, and how much access you’re willing to give it. Hold that thought. First, the apps I think use AI in a genuinely useful way. Then we’ll talk about whether you should let any of them near your bank account.

Monarch Money

My wife and I have used Monarch Money to manage our finances for about a year. Founded by a former Mint app engineer, it uses AI in several interesting ways:

• AI Assist: With Monarch’s new AI Assist, you can ask AI about your finances. For example, you can what your biggest expense was, how much you spent in a specific category, or how your net worth has changed over time. One question I use a lot is “where am I spending more this month than I did last month.”
• Amazon Integration: Rather than have the app categorize every Amazon purchase as “shopping,” as most budget apps do, Monarch Money can connect to a user’s Amazon account, download the description for each purchase, and then use AI to evaluate the description and properly categorize it. It does this through a Chrome extension, and it’s very easy to use.
• Receipt Scanning: Scan a receipt using Monarch’s smartphone app, and AI will read the receipt and categorize your purchases. It also matches the receipt to the correct transaction in Monarch once it’s downloaded. You can also upload digit receipts or files.
• Weekly Recap: AI generates a weekly recap of your finances. The recap includes changes to your net worth, spending by category, and any recurring transactions.

You can check out my detailed review of Monarch Money.

Monarch is $99 a year. Get 50% of the Core Plan’s first year subscription with the code ROB50.

Origin

Origin is a relatively new finance app. It’s designed to handle all aspects of your finances. In addition to budgeting, you can invest on its platform, do your tax returns, and even get help creating a will and trust.

Origin has integrated AI into its tool in several ways:

• AI Advisor: This tool enables you to ask AI questions about your financial data. I asked about which credit card had the highest balance, and it provided the correct answer, along with the credit limit and interest rate of the card. The AI Advisor saves your conversations so that you can access them later. You can also delete any AI conversations you no longer need.
• AI Budget Builder: Origin’s AI analyzes your transaction history to create a budget by category. It sets a monthly budget amount and divides that amount among suggested categories. You change or even ignore its suggestions. I was able to setup a solid budget in about 1 minute.
• Financial Forecasting: Origin’s AI is incorporated into its forecasting tool. You can generate forecasts of your net worth and cashflow, and then ask AI questions about the results. The tool makes it easy to create “what-if” scenarios (e.g., what if I decrease my spending by 5%) and to compare scenarios.
• Investment Insights: Origin’s AI provides market recaps and can answer questions about the investments a user connects to the app.

You can read my review of Origin. For a limited time, you can also get Origin for just $1 for the first year.

Boldin

Boldin is retirement planning software that I’ve used for several years. It enables you to plan literally every aspect of retirement. For example, it can help you determine when to take Social Security, when do do a Roth conversion, and how to fund long-term care.

In terms of AI, it offers an excellent help tool powered by AI. I’ve asked it countless questions on how to use Boldin, and the answers have been excellent.

Boldin is working on another AI tool that I’ve been testing for them. I can’t release details yet, but I expect it to be available in the next month.

ChatGPT

I put this one to the test on my YouTube channel, going head to head between ChatGPT’s new finance feature and the budgeting app I use every day. Here’s the full walkthrough before you read on:

ChatGPT is the newest entry on this list, and the one I’d think hardest about before using. In May 2026, OpenAI added a personal finance feature that connects to your accounts through Plaid. Once it’s linked, you get:

• An account dashboard: A running view of your spending, subscriptions, upcoming payments and portfolio performance, pulled from the accounts you connect.
• Conversational answers: You can ask questions about your money in plain English, the same way you’d ask ChatGPT anything else. “What did I spend on restaurants last month?” “Which subscriptions am I barely using?”
• Financial memories: You can give it context that isn’t in your transactions, like a savings goal, a mortgage, money you owe a parent, or a car you plan to buy next year. It stores these separately from regular ChatGPT memory so future conversations can factor them in.

Two things to keep in mind. First, it’s an early preview, available only to ChatGPT Pro users in the U.S. as I write this. Second, and more important, ChatGPT is a general AI assistant, not a tool built from the ground up to hold financial data. That doesn’t make it unsafe. But it’s a different decision than connecting accounts to a dedicated finance app, and it’s worth understanding before you click connect. More on that next.

Other Apps

Other budgeting apps may use AI behind the scenes. For example, it’s reported that apps like Quicken Simplifi and Rocket Money use AI to help categorize transactions. But these apps don’t yet have AI that users interact with. Quicken is working on what they call Quicken AI, but this is not widely available yet.

Should You Let an AI App See Your Bank Account?

This is the part most “best AI app” lists skip. So let’s actually sit with it.

Almost every app on this page connects to your accounts the same way, through Plaid. Plaid sits between the app and your bank, and in most cases the connection is read-only. The app can see your transactions and balances. It can’t move your money. That’s an important distinction, and it’s why connecting a budgeting app is generally far less risky than it feels the first time you do it.

But read-only doesn’t answer every question. Before you link accounts to any AI tool, here’s what I’d want to know:

• Does the company train its models on your financial data? A purpose-built finance app generally uses your data to run the app. A general AI assistant is a fair question mark, so read the policy on whether your numbers feed model training, and look for a setting to turn it off.
• Can you delete it? Look for a clear way to disconnect accounts and wipe your data, not just close the app and hope.
• Is the connection read-only? For budgeting and tracking, it should be. You’re not giving an app the ability to move money to let it categorize your coffee runs.
• How is your account secured? Turn on two-factor authentication, and use a unique password. The weakest link is usually the login, not the AI.

My own take? I’m comfortable connecting accounts to a dedicated finance app I trust, and I do, every day. I’m more cautious about handing my full financial picture to a general AI chatbot, at least while the feature is brand new. Not because it’s reckless, but because there’s no rush. The tools built specifically to hold this data have a head start on doing it carefully.

So the real question isn’t AI or no AI. It’s how much access, to which tool, for what payoff. Answer that, and the choice gets a lot easier.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the best AI budgeting app right now?

For most people, Monarch Money. It pairs the AI features people actually want, like asking questions about their spending and smart transaction categorization, with a budgeting app that was already strong before the AI showed up. Origin is the one to watch if you want budgeting, investing and tax help in one place.

Is it safe to connect your bank account to an AI app?

Generally, yes, when the app connects through Plaid with a read-only link, which most do. The app can see your transactions but can’t move money. The bigger variables are how the company uses your data and whether you’ve secured your own login with two-factor authentication.

Can ChatGPT manage my budget?

It’s starting to. OpenAI’s personal finance feature lets ChatGPT Pro users in the U.S. link accounts through Plaid and ask questions about their money. It’s an early preview, though, and it’s a general assistant rather than a dedicated budgeting tool, so weigh that before you connect everything.

Will AI replace budgeting apps?

Not soon. AI is making the good apps better at categorizing, forecasting and answering questions. But the core job, securely connecting your accounts and tracking your money over time, is still done best by tools built for it. For now, AI is a feature inside your budgeting app, not a replacement for it.

I’ll update this post as more finance apps incorporate AI in new, interesting and useful ways.