Three Free AI Budgeting Apps Put to the Test Against My 30-Year-Old Ledger

Last month, while tidying up my desk drawer, I pulled out a household ledger from 1998. On the yellowed pages, numbers were packed in tight ballpoint pen — vegetable prices, rickshaw fares, even the cost of the sari I bought for my wife's birthday. Going through it line by line, I found myself remembering what prices were like in Pune back then, and I suddenly wondered whether these AI budgeting apps people use nowadays are as honest as this worn-out notebook.

So I tried it myself. For one month, I recorded every rupee I actually spent in my notebook while simultaneously entering it into three free AI budgeting apps. The apps I compared were Wallet by BudgetBakers, Cleo, and Goodbudget. I used only the free version of each.

Where the notebook wins, where the apps win

To be honest, the notebook is slow. Sitting down in the evening with a cup of tea and writing out every expense from the day usually takes about 15 minutes. With an app, you just snap a photo of the receipt or punch in the amount, and you're done in 2–3 minutes. In terms of speed, the apps win hands down.

But the very act of writing numbers by hand makes you feel the weight of money. Spending 800 rupees and writing that figure out by hand feels different from tapping 800 into an app. It was the same back when I worked as an accountant, processing thousands of vouchers by hand. When numbers pass through your body, they stick in your memory.

Wallet — Thorough but overwhelming

Wallet by BudgetBakers had the most features of the three. Bank account linking, automatic categorisation, graphs, and more. The problem was that linking to Indian banks didn't work properly in my case. I switched to manual entry, but the AI categorisation feature that automatically assigns categories was quite good. It correctly tagged vegetables bought at a shop near Deccan Gymkhana as "Groceries" and the dosa I ate at Vaishali as "Dining Out."

However, ads popped up frequently in the free version, and the settings menu was buried so deep that I got lost. If someone who has handled ledgers for 30 years gets lost in the interface, it must be even harder for an ordinary user.

Cleo — Fun but only half-useful in India

Cleo takes the form of an AI chatbot, so it asks about and reports your spending in a conversational way. Type "How much did I spend on food this week?" and it answers straight away. This turned out to be more convenient than I expected. It does in seconds what used to take me ages — flipping through ledger pages to tally up spending by vendor.

But Cleo currently doesn't support linking to Indian bank accounts. I ended up entering everything manually, which cuts the chatbot's advantage in half. The rupee symbol (₹) wasn't available in the default settings either, so I had to change it separately. It would probably work brilliantly for users in the US or UK, but sitting here in Pune, there was a lot left to be desired.

Goodbudget — The closest thing to a notebook

Goodbudget is an app that brings the envelope budgeting method into the digital world. You divide your budget into envelopes — one for food, one for transportation, and so on. This felt remarkably similar to my notebook method. After all, I've been drawing lines between categories in my notebook and allocating amounts the same way for decades.

Its AI features are the weakest of the three. No automatic categorisation, no smart analytical reports. Yet strangely, after a month of use, Goodbudget was the one that gave me the most accurate picture of my spending. Its simple structure meant I never forgot to make an entry, and the remaining balance in each envelope was visible at a glance.

The free version limits the number of envelopes, so I had to group items into broader categories, but that was a trade-off I could live with.

Comparing the numbers after one month

At the end of the month, I compared the totals in my notebook against each app. The notebook came to ₹34,782. Wallet showed ₹34,650, a difference of ₹132 — probably entries I missed. Goodbudget came to ₹34,782, matching the notebook exactly. Cleo showed ₹33,900, a larger gap, mostly because I forgot to enter expenses for several days mid-month.

When it comes to accuracy, it's not really about the tool but about habit. For someone like me who is used to opening the notebook every evening, a simple app like Goodbudget slipped naturally into that routine, while the flashier the app, the more often I ended up skipping entries.

These days I use both Goodbudget and my notebook. In the morning I make a quick entry in the app, and in the evening I still open my notebook. Watching the 2026 ledger pile up next to the one from 1998, I don't think I'll be letting go of the practice of touching numbers by hand anytime soon.