Copilot
Strengths
- Allows you to connect crypto wallets
- Track multiple investment accounts
- Calculates security allocations across multiple accounts
- Simple pricing model
Weaknesses
- Mac & iOS only
- Lacks budgeting functionality of some competitor apps
There are a lot of budgeting apps out there. Some of them have been around for years and able to iterate their design and functionality to really hone in on something specific.
Whenever I see a new app, I’m curious to know why – why another one? What separates this one from the existing apps? Is it just “another app?” I am especially curious when it’s not free (or ad-supported).
Today, we’re going to look at Copilot.
Here’s the elevator pitch: Copilot is beautifully-designed financial management and budgeting tool designed to help Mac & iOS users to master their financial lives. It will take a look at your transaction history, helps build a schedule around your recurring transactions, and can help you make adjustments (like adjusting your spending allocations) based on real data.
If you’ve been looking to get better control of your financing (especially across multiple accounts), Copilot may be the right choice for you. After bringing all your accounts together on the app, you’ll have the ability to regularly track your spending, create budgets, and have more control over your financial destiny.
Table of Contents
🔃Updated November 2023 with new pricing, features and a desktop application for Mac (macOS 12 or above). The lack of a desktop app was a key criticism when this review was first published.
What is Copilot App?
Copilot is a financial account aggregator and budgeting program in one. You can connect more than 10,000 financial institutions to the app, including American Express, Apple Card, and Venmo.
Not only will Copilot give you a bird’s eye view of your entire financial picture in one place, but it will also enable you to set budgets and track your spending against those budgets.
You link all types of financial accounts, including banks, credit cards, investment accounts, and retirement plans. You can even link crypto exchanges and digital wallets.
The Copilot App mobile app is available for iOS devices and iPod Touch 4.0 and higher. It’s also available for Mac devices with macOS 11.0 or later. Copilot App has garnered 4.8 out of five stars among 4,300 iOS users. Unfortunately, Copilot App is not currently available for Android devices.
What Does Copilot App Do?
The Copilot Dashboard provides a graph to visualize your overall progress each month compared with your budget.
It also provides breakdowns of where you are with each sub-budget within your overall budget. For example, it will compare your actual spending in each category, such as eating out, clothing, transportation, and groceries. It will also track your monthly income and upcoming bills that need to be paid.
In addition to linking bank accounts (more on this below), Copilot integrates with both Amazon and Venmo. For example, once you connect Amazon to Copilot, you’ll be able to sign in the Amazon to import the activity into Copilot. Then, match Amazon orders with transactions to track exactly what’s happening with your Amazon account.
Adding Accounts to Copilot
You can add financial accounts to Copilot manually. Start in the Accounts view, then tap “Add” next to the desired account type: bank account, investment account, crypto account, credit card, or other account types.
You’ll then enter the institution’s name, the last four digits of the account number, and the current account balance. (Credit cards, enter the maximum spending limit of the card. You can even choose a color to associate with each account.
Once an account is entered into Copilot, there’ll be an update for each institution of either your account balance or holdings once each day.
The update will occur the morning after the market closes for investment securities. But Copilot also offers live balanced estimates, which you simply need to turn on “Live Estimates” to get near real-time market data.
Budgeting
The apps strength is in the budgeting and being able to help you plan your spending – especially when it comes to recurring expenses. It’ll try to determine which expenses happen regularly (you will need to help categorize some of them, or at least re-categorize when it gets it wrong) and then it can work its magic to determine what’s what.
Once you’ve done the work, it can show you all your spending categories with beautiful colors and emojis (which you can change) and then can help you adjust your budget so you spend more in the areas you want.
It’s a great way to find out just how many streaming services you’ve signed up for and are paying for!
Investments
Copilot can track your connected investment accounts, including brokerage accounts, crypto exchanges, and retirement accounts. It tracks investment account balances and gives you the ability to drill down for specific information.
For example, Copilot can display both balances and returns in your investment accounts. It can provide both live balanced estimates and estimated returns on your investments. That includes displaying your top movers for the day or any other time frame you choose.
Copilot can also provide security allocations between multiple accounts. The security allocations include cash, derivatives, foreign and domestic equities, exchange traded funds, fixed income investments, loans receivable, mutual funds, and a general category known simply as “other.”
You can also connect crypto wallets to Copilot, including Ledger and Trezor.
If you’re into crypto, cryptocurrency addresses for Bitcoin and Ethereum can be linked to your account.
Is Copilot Safe?
Copilot uses 256-bit encryption to protect your data at rest and Transport Layer Security (TLS) to protect it in transit. In addition, they don’t start your bank login credentials, partnering with data aggregators like Plaid and Finicity to connect with your financial institutions.
Copilot does not access your data, except when necessary to provide direct services. Examples when you request support for data-related issues. Otherwise, they use aggregated and anonymized data for internal analytics and business purposes.
Copilot App Pricing
Copilot app comes with a single, simple fee after a two-week free trial:
- Paid month – $13 per month
- Paid annually – $95 ($7.92 per month)
What’s nice about Copilot is that there are no ads and no “ads disguised as recommendations.” You’re paying for the app so your screens aren’t cluttered with annoying ads – that’s a huge plus.
Copilot Pros and Cons
Pros
- Allows you to connect your crypto wallets
- Track multiple investment accounts
- Calculates security allocations across multiple accounts
- Simple pricing model
Cons
- Mac desktop and iOS only, no Android support
- Lacks some advanced budgeting functionality of some competitor apps
Copilot App Alternatives
There are several apps available that allow you to track your different financial accounts and your budget.
Here at WalletHacks.com, our three favorites are Mint, Personal Capital, and YNAB. All are suitable alternatives to Copilot for different reasons.
Before signing up (and paying for) with Copilot, I recommend giving them a closer look.
Copilot vs. Mint
Intuit recently announced the Mint will be shut down and folded into Credit Karma.
The big question with any budgeting app is how does it stack up against Mint?
With Copilot, the big advantage is that it links up with just as many financial institutions while does a good job at:
- Integrating your investments into your overall picture (net worth)
- Good categorization that leads to better recommendations for reallocating your budget
Copilot also just looks a whole lot better – from the overall design to the emojis to having zero ads (which you pay for, so it is a tradeoff) – Copilot feels better overall.
Mint is the only one of the most popular budgeting software plans in the industry, but it’s also completely free. It includes budgeting and bill tracking, but it also comes with free credit monitoring. It’s a perfect choice if you’re looking for a free and comprehensive budgeting system and want to track your credit score regularly.
Mint does have one big advantage – it’s free (ad-supported). That’s $6 a month you can put towards something other than an app.
Copilot vs. Empower Personal Dashboard
Empower Personal Dashboard offers its free financial dashboard that enables you to connect multiple financial accounts to the platform. You can then take advantage of budgeting, financial management, investments, and retirement planning.
One of the standout features of Empower Personal Dashboard is the combination of their retirement planner tool, which helps you to prepare for your retirement financially, and the fee analyzer. The analyzer will help you precisely identify how much you’re paying in fees in various funds in your 401(k) plan. You’ll improve your long-term portfolio performance by moving into lower fee funds.
Find out more in our full Empower Personal Dashboard review.
Copilot vs. YNAB
You Need A Budget (YNAB) is the premium budgeting system that operates with four basic rules:
- Rule One – Give Every Dollar a Job
- Rule Two – Embrace Your True Expenses
- Rule Three – Roll With The Punches
- Rule Four – Age Your Money
YNAB is one of the more interesting and user-friendly budgeting systems because it’s designed to put you in control of your money as quickly as possible. It will enable you to prioritize spending, evening out significant, upcoming expenses, build flexibility into your budget, and get yourself 30 days ahead on your spending – rather than being perpetually behind.
Check out our YNAB review for more details.
The Bottom Line on Copilot
If you are an iOS person (or Mac), Copilot could be the financial management app and budgeting app you’ve been looking for. It will help you keep an eye on your entire financial universe and get better control of where your money goes.
They’ll allow you to see how much you spend in each category of your life, so you can make changes to redirect more money into savings and investments. You can include your investment accounts, including crypto and retirement accounts, on the app.
The monthly fee gets you added features and an ad-free experience – and ads are an annoying staple of many free budgeting apps. In other words, the cost of about $70 per year isn’t a lot when you consider the benefits you’ll get from Copilot.
But if you’re looking for a simple and less expensive way to accomplish financial management and budgeting, Simplifi by Quicken or Empower Personal Dashboard may be better alternatives. And if you want what is perhaps the most comprehensive financial management system that will get you from where you are to where you want to be financially, YNAB may be the better choice.
All in all, Copilot is an beautiful financial management and budgeting tool. The main limitation is that it’s not available for Android devices yet.
