Rocket Money vs. YNAB [2024]: I Tried Both, and There’s a Clear Winner

Rocket Money vs YNAB

When to choose Rocket Money?

Rocket Money, previously known as Truebill, is a personal finance app that allows you to see most of your financial life in one place. It is easy to set up and use and doesn’t require extensive budgeting experience.

You should use Rocket Money if:

• You’re new to tracking your spending or budgeting
• You need help canceling subscriptions
• You’re looking for a big-picture view of your finances
• You want to track your credit score

Rocket Money’s notable features

Free account

Rocket Money offers a free account with valuable tools that even some of the best budgeting apps, like YNAB, lack. The free account allows you to link your external financial accounts, receive balance alerts, track your spending, and view (but not cancel) your recurring subscriptions, among other features.

If you want to try a Premium membership, it includes the free features plus an AI subscription cancellation assistant, credit score monitoring and reports, automatic savings, unlimited budget categories, and net worth tracking for a monthly fee.

Canceling subscriptions

Rocket Money is best known for helping you cancel unwanted subscriptions. When you connect your bank and credit card accounts, Rocket Money scans for recurring transactions, bills, and fees. Upcoming charges appear on the Rocket Money dashboard or the phone app for you to review.

If you are a Premium subscriber and decide to cancel a subscription, you can hit the three little dots in the upper right corner, and Rocket Money will show you how to cancel it.

In some cases, Rocket Money can cancel subscriptions for you. If it can’t, the site will walk you through canceling on the vendor’s website or through your payment method (such as Apple Pay, Google Play, PayPal, etc.).

Spending insights

One of my favorite features of Rocket Money is the insights on the Spending tab. It helps you manage your expenses by category and shows how much is left to spend in each budget. Rocket Money will also show you a breakdown of your spending by percentage on this tab and alert you if you’re spending more or less than last month in those areas.

While YNAB offers spending insights and ways to review your data, Rocket Money is more accessible and provides a broad view of your data, especially from month to month.

Notifications

Rocket Money has multiple notifications you can set up. It will alert you to low account balances, bill increases, bank fees, spending changes, or credit score changes. You can customize your notices by moving the date or balance thresholds or turning them on or off.

Life can get busy, and I don’t always remember that multiple bills will hit in the same week and from which account. Rocket Money helps you avoid overdrafts and late fees by showing you any expenses coming up in the next week or month as a list or on a calendar.

Automatic saving

Unlike YNAB, Rocket Money has an automatic savings feature called Financial Goals, which transfers funds into an FDIC-insured savings account. When you set up a goal, set the amount you want to save, and Rocket Money will create a savings account at a partner bank so that you can automatically set aside funds for that goal.

You can choose Smart Savings, which transfers money every few days based on your checking account balance, or Custom Settings, which transfers a predetermined amount on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly schedule.

However, the Financial Goals account does not earn interest, and you can only transfer those funds back to your original checking account.

Credit scores

Rocket Money offers credit score tracking on its free account. You can also see your credit report and history if you're a Premium subscriber. A personal finance app offering credit scores is rare, especially as part of a free account. Most apps, including YNAB, don’t provide credit scores or histories, requiring users to check their information directly with the credit bureaus or through third-party sites.

Rocket Money tracks your FICO 2 credit score and provides real-time alerts if it sees changes to your credit report and score. Additionally, the site offers insights into how factors like your payment history, credit utilization, and how long you’ve had a credit card can affect your credit score.

Rocket Money’s drawbacks

While Rocket Money has a lot of helpful features, it does have some drawbacks, including:

Limited investment and asset tracking

Rocket Money excels in many areas but doesn’t do well with investment tracking. While you can link your investment accounts in Rocket Money and see how they change and affect your net worth, you can’t manage your investments or see planning or strategy advice. However, YNAB doesn’t offer investment tracking or automatic investment linking either.

In addition, while you can track your assets and debts under the net-worth tab, you may need to create a custom category and manually update some investment types, like cars, jewelry, and crypto.

Bill negotiation is extra

In addition to canceling subscriptions, Rocket Money is famous for its bill negotiation service. If Rocket Money negotiates for you, you might save, but you’ll pay a fee of 35% to 60% of your first year’s savings. That charge applies to both free and Premium subscribers, which seems unfair given the cost of a Premium account.

Short trial

A Rocket Money Premium account offers a seven-day free trial to test the features, which isn’t long, especially compared to YNAB. If you decide Rocket Money isn’t right for you, you must cancel the subscription before the site charges you, or you’ll be out the first month’s payment.

You must also provide a payment method and set your monthly amount before accessing your free trial. Since Rocket Money allows users to decide what to pay on a sliding scale, committing to a monthly amount seemed odd before I could try the features.

Read more about the benefits of the app in our Rocket Money review.

Lower Your Monthly Bills

Rocket Money Benefits

• Helps to find and cancel subscriptions
• Slash your monthly phone, cable, and internet bills
• Save an average of up to $720 a year

Lower your bills

When to choose YNAB?

You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is a personal finance app that focuses on detailed budgeting and assigns a job to every dollar earned. According to the app’s website, it follows four rules: give every dollar a job, embrace your true expenses, roll with the punches, and age your money.

You should use YNAB if:

• You want an in-depth view of your budget and finances
• You closely monitor your spending
• You’re interested in zero-based budgeting

YNAB’s notable features

An extended free trial

Compared to Rocket Money’s 7-day free trial, YNAB’s generous 34-day free trial allows users to experience a complete budgeting cycle and see how the app functions.

Unlike Rocket Money, you don’t need to provide a credit card or bank account to sign up for YNAB. However, YNAB does not offer a free version of its account like Rocket Money, so if you don’t sign up after the trial, you will lose any work you put into the app.

Loan planning and reports

YNAB offers a loan planner to help you find extra funds for debt payoff. When you create a loan in YNAB, the planner will show you a simulation of scenarios and allow you to experiment with different payoff methods. From there, you can adjust your budget categories to find extra cash to pay off your loan (or other debt) faster.

Additionally, unlike Rocket Money, YNAB allows you to run various reports, including spending trends, net worth changes, and income vs. expenses. You can customize the reports and isolate the accounts or time frames to help you analyze your money.

Although Rocket Money offers some pie charts to help you visualize your budget, YNAB provides a deeper analysis that I found more useful.

Zero-based budgeting

YNAB is primarily a budgeting app, and that is where it truly excels. It's good at budgeting basics like importing and categorizing bank account and credit card transactions, setting goals, and paying off debt.

Part of YNAB’s philosophy involves giving every dollar a job, also called zero-based budgeting. This method requires you to take every dollar in your account and allocate it to your bills, debt, and savings.

YNAB is highly structured and deep-dives into your spending. It encourages you to plan for unexpected expenses and forces you to be disciplined and accountable to your budget. On the other hand, Rocket Money’s budgeting method is much more flexible and focuses on a broader view of your income, expenses, and goals.

Continuing education

One of my favorite features of YNAB is the extensive library of blog posts, videos, and workshop recordings. YNAB offers resources on personal finance topics like getting out of debt, managing money as a couple, and dealing with irregular income. It also provides guides on setting up and using the app.

Having resources to help you best set up and use YNAB and answer general personal finance questions is handy, especially since zero-based budgeting takes practice, especially when setting up and first using YNAB.

Partner sharing

YNAB Together allows you to share a single YNAB subscription with up to five other people, each with a secure login. Comparatively, Rocket Money only enables Premium members to share an account with one other person.

The Group Manager can allow users to create and edit budgets or share a budget with someone without allowing them to make changes. Using YNAB Together is an excellent way to create accountability and transparency in a relationship and can be a convenient way for families to manage their finances.

YNAB’s drawbacks

Although YNAB is excellent for hard-core budgeters, there are some issues that you need to know about.

Complicated and time-consuming

YNAB can be overwhelming, and adjusting to zero-based budgeting can take time. If you’re used to less structure in your budget, you might find YNAB restricting.

I used YNAB for about a year and found it has a steep learning curve that I couldn’t get past, even with my experience using multiple budgeting apps. I didn’t want to track my spending in such detail, and I felt like I never really used all of the in-depth features. It became too much to keep up with, so I stopped using it.

Expensive

YNAB costs $109 or $179.88 a year, depending on whether you subscribe to an annual or monthly plan. By comparison, Rocket Money costs a maximum of $144 yearly — if you choose the highest monthly tier — but most people likely pay well below that. If you subscribe monthly to YNAB, you are spending a lot, especially considering it doesn’t include other personal finance features outside budgeting.

Although it might be slightly less expensive than Rocket Money’s annual plan, other options like Monarch Money or Quicken Simplifi offer some of the same features for less than either Rocket Money or YNAB.

Lacking personal finance features

YNAB excels at budgeting but lacks some of the extra features that Rocket Money Premium provides. It doesn’t track your credit score, monitor credit, or offer bill payment services. While it does have notifications, it doesn’t alert you to upcoming bill due dates or help you forecast future income and expenses.

YNAB also often requires manual entry of various transactions, including investment accounts. You can add your retirement or other investment accounts to YNAB, but you have to update them manually, and YNAB does not provide any analysis or performance tracking.

Read more about YNABs benefits and drawbacks in our YNAB review.

Use This App to Gain Total Control of Your Money

YNAB (You Need A Budget) Benefits

• Manage your money easily, simply, and conveniently
• Tools to help you pay off debt, save more, and budget better
• Use a simple 4-step method to organize your finances
• New users save $600 on average in their first two months
• Try it free for 34 days

Try the YNAB app for free

FAQs

Bottom line

Rocket Money is likely the best budgeting app for most people. It has free basic budgeting features but can also help with subscriptions, credit scores, and bill negotiation (if you’re willing to pay for that).

However, if you like structure and are willing to devote time to your budget, YNAB will likely give you the precise details you want. I’m also impressed that YNAB offers an extended trial period so you can get used to setting up and using the app before deciding to pay.

Don’t be afraid to try multiple apps to see which works best for you. No matter what app you choose, ensure it has easy account syncing, customization, notifications, and robust security features to help you make the most of your money management.

Learn More

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  Consolidates finances in one place and automatically tracks real estate value
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  Uncovers forgotten subscriptions to cancel and negotiates bills
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  Supports tracking trial subscriptions
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  Automates moving money into a savings account
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  Provides credit monitoring and insights
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  Low cost for premium features at $6 for the monthly plan or $4 a month for the annual plan

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Learn More

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  A free 34-day trial lets you try out the app
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  Create multiple budgets, including shared budgets with family members
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  Automatic syncing through multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and Alexa
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  Focus on getting ahead on bills rather than always playing catch-up

Author Details

Kate Daugherty

Kate Daugherty is a professional writer with a passion for providing others the head start they deserve on their financial journeys. Largely self-taught, Kate relied on books, blogs, and trial-and-error to learn how to budget and save for the future, all while working to pay back about $15,000 in student loans.