If you're looking for an alternative to Quicken, you're in the right place.
Before web-based personal finance tools, Quicken was one of the best personal finance budgeting and bill management software available. Where else could you get software that pulled all your financial information, organized your bills, helped you pay for those bills, and was a money consigliere? The only “downside” was that you had to pay for it.
But over the years, other companies brought new offers, built from the ground up, and took advantage of the newer technology. They use code that runs faster, connects seamlessly with other financial companies (like bank accounts and credit cards), and just have fewer issues doing regular tasks like tracking your net worth. Most importantly, many are free, so you can try them yourself.
I was a fan of Quicken, but let's accept reality – Quicken breaks a lot. It doesn't sync your accounts randomly sometimes, you have password problems, screens that should appear are blank or lag, and it's not a great user experience.
The bottom line:
If you're tired of Quicken, its support and sync issues, and want a suitable free alternative or replacement – we tried some options, and here are our favorites.
Here are some of the best Quicken alternatives available:
🏆 Editor's Top Picks
We compiled a pretty big list below but here are the two that stand out among the crowd:
- Empower – It covers nearly as much ground as Quicken (sadly, no bill pay, but no one does that) and is regularly updated, so you don't have to worry about sync problems. It has a solid suite of investment tools, a robust budgeting system, and portfolio analysis that beats the rest. It's free and what I use personally.
- Tiller Money – Hands down, the best spreadsheet automation tool on the market. If you want to move to a spreadsheet you can customize to exactly what you need, Tiller Money will pull the data. It takes time to set up, but you can build it from scratch or use a template, and Tiller Money will save you a ton of time and hassle.
The Full List of Quicken Alternatives:
- Empower (Personal Capital) – free financial dashboard and wealth planner
- Tiller Money – spreadsheet automation for full customization
- Vyzer – sophisticated asset tracking for higher net worth
- ProjectionLab – gorgeous financial planning and forecasting tool
- You Need a Budget – best-in-class budgeting tool & mindset shift
- Simplifi – Inexpensive, online, & light version Quicken
- Lunch Money – beautifully designed budgeting app
- CountAbout – can import data from Quicken
- Pocketsmith – a budget planner, calendar, and projector
- Banktivity – native Mac application
- MoneyDance – not cloud-based
- EveryDollar – follows Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps
- GoodBudget – follows the envelope budgeting method
- GnuCash – open-source and free
- DollarBird – date & calendar-based budgeting
- MoneyWiz – a freemium app with cryptocurrency support
- PocketGuard – freemium budgeting-focused app
1. Empower (Personal Capital)
Quicken's strength was being a financial dashboard and helping you manage your financial life – it was more than a simple budgeting app. This is why, when considering alternatives to Quicken, we settled on Empower (previously known as Personal Capital) as the best replacement.
If you're past the “help me with my budget” phase of your financial life, then you want to keep an eye on your investments (taxable and retirement) and whether you will reach your goals – whether that's retirement, a big vacation, buying a home, getting married, … you name it. Empower has the tools to analyze your progress and advise on whether you'll reach your goals – on top of the typical budgeting tasks.
Best of all – it's free. You can get it up and running quickly, so you don't have to worry that you're investing a ton of time into a tool that's not a good fit.
You can also schedule a discussion with a financial advisor if you want more hands-on assistance. The initial call is complimentary (no cost), and you only pay if you opt for their Advisor service (optional, but this is how they are able to offer the tools for free). You can read my full review of Empower for this in greater detail.
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: One of the big problems with Quicken is that you run into synching and connection issues – fortunately, Empower is web-based, so it is updated regularly. It also has a rich set of tools for analyzing your finances, from investment to retirement to budgeting and even intermediate savings goals like a house or education. There is also a budget and expense tracking component that works decently well.
I like their retirement planner, a tool that helps you project your future financial needs and whether you'll get there. I have never talked to an advisor there.
What could be better? The budget and expense tracking pieces are good, but it's not as old as Quicken so they aren't as complex. You can't, for example, manage your bill pay through this tool. I don't find it to be a negative because it works for me, but people with really complicated budgets may find it limiting.
As with any service that connects with many banks, there are little quirks here and there (for example, all of my holdings at Ally Invest are categorized as cash – annoying but they are working on a fix) but overall it works well.
(since you access it with a browser, it is compatible with Mac OS!)
2. Tiller Money
If you are thinking about quitting Quicken and moving to a spreadsheet stored locally (or Google Docs), you'll want to know about Tiller Money. I use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to track our net worth and if you want a hand in pulling data, you'll want to check out Tiller Money.
Tiller Money will automate your spreadsheets at a low cost of just $6.58 a month ($79 per year after a free 30-day trial). With a bit of tweaking, it'll pull your data for you and put it into a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel document.
You can start with one of their free templates or build your own, but after the initial work, you'll have a fully automated spreadsheet tailored to what you need. You can use this to track your net worth, set a budget, or anything else you can imagine. (see our review of Tiller Money)
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: Quicken offers a lot of features out of the box and Tiller requires a bit of work to get it up to the same speed and quickness – but when you do, Tiller is nearly infinitely more customizable because it's built into a spreadsheet. If you put in the work, you can create your own reports, your own dashboards, and have completely visibility into your finances.
Tiller has some great resources, including templates, to get you off the ground but it does require an investment of time. Quicken is now cloud-based so if you want to avoid putting your data into the cloud, going with a spreadsheet is your best option. Tiller makes it possible for you to get automation AND keep your data locally.
What could be better? Tiller doesn't require you to be a master at Excel or Google Sheets but it helps if you are comfortable around a spreadsheet. You don't need to know advanced functions but you have to be comfortable with the basics of spreadsheets or have a desire to learn it.
3. Vyzer
Vyzer is a financial dashboard and management system that is designed for higher net worth individuals who are managing a variety of investments. One of the limitations of tools like Quicken is that it's difficult to track assets that don't fit neatly into one of their integrations (and even then, sometimes the integrations don't work).
With Vyzer, you're able to track assets that aren't held neatly in a brokerage or bank account. They offer a service where you can upload any form and they will parse it and add it to your assets. They literally have a person review the paperwork and fill in the information for you when you sign up for their premium plan ($79/month).
Do you rent out any real estate? Is it pain to track the cash flow? With Vyzer, they will do it for you and send that data to your dashboard. No one else offers this. This allows you to analyze your portfolio, manage your cash flow, and do all analysis you need because now those assets are being tracked.
But they also have a free tier, just added in mid-2023, where you can track three portfolios (linking up three banks/brokerages) and use with their tools to see how they compare. This isn't a timed trial, it's three portfolios tracked forever with access to a lot of their tracking and performance tools.
4. ProjectionLab
ProjectionLab is one of the best looking financial tools I've ever seen. It's a financial planning tool that includes deterministic projections, historical backtesting, simulations and more to help you plan for your future. What it lacks in the budgeting department, it makes up for in the planning department.
ProjectionLab has three tiers (and a 7-day free trial) – Basic (free), Premium ($9/mo), and Pro ($45/mo). Basic lets you play around with the tool but will not save your data unless you upgrade to Premium. Premium gives you access to every non-financial advisor feature of the tool (everything a regular person would need).
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: Quicken is primarily a budgeting tool and ProjectionLab is more about financial planning, which is ultimately what we are all working towards. Whereas Quicken focuses on spending and saving as a means towards reaching your goals, ProjectionLab can tell you if that saving (and how you are invested) will help you achieve those goals.
What could be better? It is not a budgeting tool so if that's important for you, this tool will not be a good alternative.
Our review of ProjectionLab goes into much greater detail, including a tour by the founder.
5. You Need a Budget (YNAB)
You Need a Budget is a powerful budgeting software but it also can help you build a budget that you can grow into. But it does more than track your money, it helps you build a framework for growing your wealth.
Think of it like Quicken with a personality and a philosophy.
YNAB's philosophy revolves around four rules:
- Give Every Dollar a Job
- Embrace Your True Expenses
- Roll With The Punches
- Age Your Money
Those four pillars form the foundation for a budgeting app that has helped many people transform their financial lives and improve their spending habits.
If you're looking to transition to a financial tool that will help you (as in help you make the change, not just record expenses), you should take a look at YNAB.
(or, read our You Need a Budget review for more)
Why it is a good alternative to Quicken: Quicken only tracks your budget, YNAB does that AND helps you build a budget that meets the demands of your life and your savings needs. Sometimes you need something more than an app that connects to your bank account. If you want to change the way you budget, while still tracking it, YNAB is your solution.
YNAB is not an entire personal finance management suite – it focuses on budgeting and only budgeting. You won't get investment tools, retirement planning, or wealth management. It's strictly about building, maintaining, and transitioning into the budget you want.
What could be better? YNAB was designed to be a budgeting tool and so it is a budgeting tool – it doesn't help with broader financial needs like retirement, managing your investment portfolio, and the rest. To say it would be a better tool if it incorporated those would be ignoring how it has a straightforward, and important, mandate.
Learn more about You Need a Budget
6. Simplifi by Quicken
Simplifi by Quicken is a lightweight budgeting app built by the same team as Quicken. The app has all of basic features you'd expect in a budgeting app – tracking spending, setting a budget, setting savings goals, and detailed reports of income and expenses so you can analyze your spending. It uses Plaid so it syncs up with thousands of institutions.
It also includes light investment tracking with real time quotes, performance, and even tracks cryptocurrencies.
Simplifi costs $3.99 a month but for a limited time they're offering it for just $2 a month, making one of the more affordable paid apps available. Our Simplifi review goes into greater details.
Why is it a good alternative to Quicken? It's built by the same folks who built Quicken, but mobile first, and checks off all the boxes for a budgeting app without the clunky legacy software.
What could be better? Simplifi, much like others on this list, does not support bill pay within the app. They do offer a “Bill Connect” feature that lets you see the bills in the app (and plan for them) but there's no way to pay for them through the app.
7. Lunch Money
Lunch Money is a beautifully designed budgeting app that does one thing very well – budgeting. In this, it's much like Quicken in that everything you could possibly want in a budgeting package is in Lunch Money.
You're able to sync your bank accounts or, if you prefer, upload CSVs with your transaction data. If you're a programmer, you can take advantage of their developer API too. Once your data is in Lunch Money, you can split, group, tag, and categorize all of your transactions exactly as you want. Afterwards, you can set a budget, which will link up with your transactions and give you an idea of where you are.
Finally, there's a net worth calculator that can help you understand your progress.
Lunch Money costs $10 per month or $100 per year and has a 14-day trial.
Why is it a good alternative to Quicken? It does the budgeting very well and it's simple and easy to use. It's also cheaper than Quicken and still has the ability to track your investments as well.
What could be better? Quicken offers bill pay features that very few other software packages have, including Lunch Money. Lunch Money won't be able to pay your bills for you but it can track recurring subscriptions and let you know when expenses are due. Check out our full review.
8. CountAbout
The founders built CountAbout to be a Quicken alternative. Founded in mid-2012, it is one of the only personal finance apps that will import data from Quicken. If you're looking to transition away from Quicken but worry about losing all your data, you can feed it your Quicken file and it'll populate itself. That'll make the transition far less painful!
Like Quicken, CountAbout isn't free but it costs $9.99 for the Basic subscription and $39.99 for Premium subscription. The Premium subscription includes automatic transaction downloads. A subscription model means you have complete data privacy and you won't get annoying ads like other companies.
Why is it a good alternative to Quicken? CountAbout has a lot of similar features to Quicken's: split transactions, recurring transactions, attachments, budgeting, and more.
CountAbout is web-based, with multi-factor account security, so you don't have to download a program onto your computer, and there's no need to deal with unwieldy syncing issues – all you need is a web browser. And with CountAbout's iOS and Android apps, your financial information is always at your fingertips.
Check out the key features (reminds me a lot of Quicken):
Imports data from Quicken and Mint
Thousands of financial institutions
Multi-factor login protection
Android and iOS apps
Category customization (add, delete, rename)
Tags (add, delete, rename)
Reporting for Account balances
Reporting for Category activity
Reporting for Tag activity
Report exporting
Attachments
Individual Account QIF importing
Budgeting
Running register balances
Account reconciliation
Graphs for Income & Spending
Recurring transactions
Investment balances by Institution
Memorized transactions
Split transactions
Description renaming
Invoicing
9. Pocketsmith
Pocketsmith is a freemium budgeting tool that uses calendars and the concept of “event-based budgeting.” Being calendar-based means that rather than viewing your transactions as merely a long list of transactions, the calendar helps you understand when those transactions are happening and if they are doing so on a regular basis. This helps inform you about your spending and one of the more visual ways, when compared to others on this list.
PocketSmith has a free option that makes you manually import transactions, 12 budgets, 2 accounts, and projections for 6 months out. Foundation ($9.95/mo) will get you automatic transaction importing, unlimited budgets, 10 accounts, and 10 years of projections. Flourish ($16.66/mo) gets you 18 connected banks, 18 dashboards, and 30 years of projections. Fortune ($26.66/mo) gives you unlimited accounts and 60 years of projections.
(here's our review of Pocketsmith)
10. Banktivity
Built specifically for MacOS, Banktivity is a personal finance money manager that will import data from Quicken so you don't lose anything in the transition process. It'll do everything you want in a personal finance app, including budgeting, track spending, schedule and pay bills, monitor your investments (including real estate), and pull data from financial institutions.
It also has some powerful reporting options that, if you're a report junkie, you will probably really enjoy building, tweaking, and rebuilding. All this is also possible across iOS devices too with seamless mobile app synchronization.
It is not free though, it has an annual subscription based on the level service you want. It starts at $49.99 a year for Bronze up to $99.99 per year for Gold.
11. MoneyDance
MoneyDance is not as well known as some of the other alternatives I've listed but I wanted to mention them because they're one of the few money apps that don't rely on the cloud. If you are concerned about your data being stored online, this solution is an alternative that keeps your data local to your computer.
You can still link your accounts online, so they pull your transactions automatically, but they only store them on your computer. You can enter transactions manually if you didn't want to link your accounts.
MoneyDance looks and feels like a checkbook, with the check register for transactions, but has charts and tables for reporting. It does budgeting but can also track your investments as well, albeit not as feature-rich as others.
MoneyDance is free to download and try but it costs $65 ($99/yr subscription if you want updates). The free version has all the same features as the paid version. The free version's limitation is that you can only enter 100 manual transactions.
12. EveryDollar
Have you heard of Dave Ramsey?
Many folks swear by his approach and EveryDollar is built with that in mind. His approach takes into account human psychology, rather than relying solely on math, and explains why it is so effective. It also explains why ideas like the debt snowball work so well, we need to work with our biases and tendencies if we hope to succeed. EveryDollar is a budgeting tool affiliated with Dave Ramsey's group, the Lampo Group.
Much like YNAB, it's a budgeting tool that uses the principles of zero-based budgeting.
In zero-based budgeting, you assign every dollar to a category (or job, in YNAB parlance). It's a level of rigor that can be refreshing or restricting, depending on your personality. The app itself is beautiful, available on your smartphone, and there is both a free and paid version. The paid version costs $79.99 a year.
(paid version offers phone support and automated transaction importing… which is a big time-saver; otherwise, you must manually enter the data)
13. GoodBudget
GoodBudget is a free budgeting app based on the envelope budgeting method. Envelope budgeting is when you set aside a prescribed amount for each category of spending, then spend it down each month.
It's one of the most popular money management techniques in personal finance. The envelope refers to the manual method of managing these types of budgets where you put the money into an envelope. When you run out of money, you either borrow cash from another envelope or you make do.
GoodBudget adds technology to the mix and will synch up bank accounts to help track your income and your spending. You set the amount for each category and then watch as your spending nears the limit each month. It's available for both iOS and Android phones.
14. GnuCash
GnuCash is a free open-source accounting software that, if you're willing to put into the work, can replicate a lot of the Quicken experience for those who are willing to scale the learning curve. It features double-entry accounting (every transaction must debit one account and credit another), which is effective but will require an adjustment if you're not used to it.
It offers a lot of the functionality of Quicken like splitting transactions, categorizing transactions, managing multiple accounts, schedule transactions, and reporting that includes all kinds of charts and reports (balance sheet, P&L, portfolio valuation, etc).
The big benefit is that it does budgeting as well as investments. It's not strictly a budgeting tool.
Lastly, it offers QIF importing, so you can import your Quicken files, plus OFX (Open Financial Exchange) protocol. So you can pull in your data if your bank offers you the ability to export transactions.
15. Dollarbird
Dollarbird is another personal finance app with an eye towards collaboration and a monthly calendar. You synchronize your accounts (banking, brokerage, and credit cards) with Dollarbird and they build a schedule of future income and expenditures to help with planning. Dollarbird also offers a 5-year financial plan that lets you establish longer-term financial goals and track your performance against them.
The innovation they bring to the table is the idea of calendar-based money management. You can collaborate with other people (partner, family, or a team) to manage a team budget, though the collaborative piece requires the Pro version ($39.99 / year).
16. MoneyWiz
Of all the alternatives on this list, I know the least about MoneyWiz despite them being around since 2010. They support practically every operating system you can imagine – everything from Windows to Android to iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad – and it'll sync them in real-time.
It's a powerful budgeting tool that integrates with 16,000+ banks in 51+ countries – which includes cryptocurrencies if you're in that investment class. If importing from your financial institution concerns you, you can manually enter data as well and it works just as well. For budgeting, you can work with their categories (which are multi-level) or add your own (and subcategories). You can split transactions, bulk edit, tag, and create powerful reports. It won't pay your bills for you but does have notification features.
It's a freemium product with the free version that has all the functionality minus synching across multiple devices and automated transaction downloads. For that, you need to buy the Standard ($29.99) or Premium ($49.99/yr or $4.99/mo).
17. PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a fairly simple budgeting app that links your credit cards, checking and savings accounts, investments, and loans all in one place. It has a complete picture (or at least what you tell it) of your finances but its strengths are in the budgeting – how it updates and categorizes your spending as it happens and looks for opportunities to save. Using your spending, it also builds a personalized budget based on your data as well as the goals you set for yourself.
They have a free version and a Plus version. The free version has all that you need for tracking your expenses and keep an eye on them. Plus allows you to add custom categories, track cash transactions like income and bills. Plus costs $3.99 per month or $34.99 per year.
One of these will make a fine replacement for Quicken.
Quicken Alternatives Frequently Asked Questions
Empower Personal Dashboard is the best free Quicken alternative because it offers budgeting and wealth management tools. Many other tools offer one or the other, Personal Capital offers both so you can get it all in one place. And if you want, they also offer an advisory service to help you with your investments too.
No – Quicken is now a subscription-based service that cost anywhere from $41.88 to $107.88. Quicken Starter is the cheapest plan at $41.88 per year while the Quicken Home & Business can be as much as $107.88 (not counting discounts). There are often sales and discounts so if you do decide to pay, don't pay full price, but with so many free alternatives you probably won't want to.
Unfortunately no alternatives let you pay bills through Quicken, but tools like Tiller and You Need a Budget offer tools to help you manage your bills and bill payments so you don't miss them. You can't make the payments like Quick Pay or Check through any of these tools, you have to execute them yourself.
Intuit created Quicken Online to try to compete with Mint. Near the end of 2009, they gave up and acquired Mint. Afterward, they opted to shut down Quicken Online and sold the entire Quicken unit to H.I.G. Capital in 2016. Quicken Online no longer exists but you can try Simplifi by Quicken as an alternative.
Some of the best tools out there are cloud-based. Many on this list store your information online. If they are somehow compromised, they potentially could leak your data. They have a lot of security protocols in place to prevent this type of thing, but nothing is 100% safe. The ones that do not store your data in the cloud are less powerful, but … they don't store your data in the cloud.
Moneydance Personal Finance, which is included in the list above, is one alternative that is a local program and stores your financial data locally. It still has the functionality of pulling data from hundreds of financial institutions so it will still save you time.
Tiller is a tool that integrates with a Google Sheet (which is cloud-based) and Microsoft Excel (which local). They do store some of your information since they have to get the credentials to pull your data but it's not like other services that contain the credentials and the data.
Any cloud-based alternative will work on the PC and a Mac. It's cloud-based so they work in your browser, which makes them operating system agnostic.
If you want a piece of personal finance software designed specifically to run on Macs, Banktivity is your best option. It's one of the few personal finance applications built specifically for the MacOS and it has the richest feature-set. Most importantly, especially if you use an iPhone or iPad, it seamlessly integrates among the three.
I haven't used Quickbooks and I'm not familiar with the world of accounting, but GnuCash is often cited as a powerful and free alternative to Quickbooks and Quicken.
It has a lot of features present in accounting software, like double-entry accounting and small business accounting, but many folks have success using it as a personal accounting software package. It's a software program you download and install locally, which means it's not cloud-based, and it's completely free.
It's extremely unlikely that Quicken will be discontinued. They have retired older versions of the software and given users a path towards upgrading to their subscription product (which carries no year in its name), but it's now owned by private equity firms and they're unlikely to shut down Quicken given how much they've invested in buying it.
Ed says
An important point about CountAbout is that the $9.99 or $39.99 is per year! That’s pricey, even surpassing Quicken for all but the simplest of accounts . I prefer a one-time fee rather than the constant reach into my wallet. I chose Ace Money which is a very good substitute for Quicken on a PC (the Mac version runs via an emulator…. hopeless and looks like a DOS program). As I recall it was something like $60 one time and syncs most accounts pretty well. MoneyDance I found very simple and a poor substitute. I’m happy with the switch to Ace money and have moved on from Quicken
FrugalPrice says
I’ve been a happy user of PersonalCapital and would recommend it to others. It’s free and the app tells me exactly what I need to know about my investments. It reminds me of the things I loved about Quicken way back when. Big thanks to you Jim for telling me about it!
Tom says
I have used Quicken for many years, ever since Microsoft Money was discontinued. It used to be great but today it is fraught with errors that cause me to spend more time trying to figure out what is wrong with the application and sync than I spend managing my spending and investments. I really do not want a cloud-based application. Call me old school but like have all of my information on my personal computer or in my file cabinets. Really ready for a STABLE alternative that can download my CC and investment transaction and reconcile correctly. Kind of like Quicken used to be?
JV Smith says
Agree with Tom. I have used Quicken since its very first version. For me it has always been not much more than an electronic check book for all of my banking and property accounts. And I plan to continue using my old (2016) version of Quicken as long as it works. But I absolutely do not want my data stored in the cloud. So I’ll go back to using spreadsheets or paper if I have to.
MV Smith says
I agree with JV Smith. I’m using an even older version of Quicken as an electronic checkbook record. It’s wonderfully easy to get all the info you need as far as dollars in and dollars out and what’s deductable. with the exception of investments in securities.
Brokerage info has to be issued to the IRS and you get a copy of that information and that takes precedent over anything in personal records so Quicken is all I need.
Ken Pyzik says
All — if you want a good alternative Quicken – I now use Gnucash. It is a free open-source program that runs on Mac, PC, Unix and other O/Ss. I have been using it now for about 2 years (ever since Quicken announced they were going to subscription model – YUK!). Give it a try. PS — you can import Quicken data into Gnucash. Good Luck!
A. D. Stratton says
I tried GnuCash- use many other open source programs. But be aware that GnuCash requires some knowledge of coding and a willingness to babysit the program until you get it the way you want. I haven’t the time or patience to do that. My finances are simple, and I want to keep managing them simple too.
Joe H. says
I still use Quicken 2001. It is the only program I’ve found that let’s you see an entire years budget on one screen. I had to install it on Windows 7 and then upgrade to Windows 10.
Kathy says
Me too. I agree Quicken 2016 seems to require patches, then my miracle offers 2019 as a fix. Grrr. I want a program like my MS Money was back in the day. Just a local off the cloud electronic check register.
Ahmad Ghosheh says
I am with you. I want my book keeping on my computer not on the cloud where it’s shared with everyone, yes they do share information.
Spietz1727 says
Agree. I’m using Quicken 2014 using all data on local drives. With all of the negative issues of upgrades and cloud data storage, I plan to stay with 2014’s much simpler processes and local data security. I use a cloud backup with Box.com and pay bills through my bank, where I’ve never had an issue.
I think the problem many people run into is the integrations start to degrade as financial institutions change technology and a 5+ year old software isn’t updated to keep up. The holy grail is always something that works forever (why I love spreadsheets too!) but when it fails, it’s often without warning. I think that’s why so many people visit this page to find alternatives to Quicken – they are facing these issues now or are afraid to run into them in the future.
Ann says
Still looking for Quicken alternative. My finances are simple, just juggling multiple accounts. I don’t need (or want) the online stuff, and much prefer to work my finances offline and keep on my own computer (with regular encrypted backups). Do not want a subscription that could end unexpectedly. I had Quicken 2007 and upgraded to 2016 because I worried about having files that might be unreadable should I lose the program. Used 2016 for a couple of years, but the graphical interface is pretty awful on it. So, dumb me, I “upgraded” to 2019,- was assured that I could still use the software on computer after my “membership” expires. But just learned that part of the screen real estate will be given over to nags about renewing. Forget that. It’s been suggested to download Quicken 2013, which is available free at Quicken if you poke around in “transferring files” in the help section. Or I might even give MoneyDance a try. Tried GnuCash, but I don’t really want to put that much effort into making it work for my needs. (I do use quite a few other open-source software, but GnuCash made me nuts.)
ron says
Here we are …. 3 years later and still no viable alternative to Quicken. I am extremely confident of this assertion. Why? Because every year, I download most of the “alternatives” and within minutes find one or more “dealbreakers”. I am assuming that a.) a user has an existing Quicken file with moderately complex investment transactions or that b.) a user would want to perform complex transactions in their chosen software.
Most reviews I have ever read over the past decade have no idea about the intricacies of what a user may require. They basically just rehash whatever the product marketing tells them. i.e. imports Quicken QIF file. Yeah … right. Good luck with that one.
I also had hope for GnuCash but found it to be one of the worst pieces of software I have ever used, for too many reasons I won’t go into here. I will look into MoneyDance again this year but I am not holding out much hope.
If nothing else, after I go through this annual exercise … it makes me appreciate how much better Quicken is … even though it is undeniably horribly bad in so many respects.
Art75070 says
I have been a Quicken Home & Business user for many years, in the US and more recently in Canada. The Canadian operation has now moved to a subscription mode and the Home & Business version now has an annual subscription fee of $90 per year – to me, that’s a real ripoff. To discourage you from continuing to use your current, non-subscription version, they have now disabled two key features – downloading & categorizing transactions from financial institutions and downloading stock quotes.
I have tried all the major alternatives out there, and my favorite by far is one I rarely see mentioned – KDE’s KMyMoney
SoloNupe84 says
I’m a Quicken Home & Business user for almost 20 years as well and switched to using a Mac over a decade ago. I’ve kept VirtualBox on my Mac(s) only so I can continue using Quicken H&B. So I’ve been looking for a equivalent Mac product. My syncing feature on H&B 2016 end TODAY, unless I upgrade to 2019.
I’m not familiar with using the double-entry accounting method (tried Quickbooks years ago and quickly gave up because I felt like I was back in Business school…there’s a reason my MBA is in marketing and not finance). Have you really found KMyMoney to be as robust AND user-friendly as Quicken H&B? What, if any, issues/missing features have you found?
Sten Duncan says
I am also a very long-time Home & Business user. I own several rental properties – each with its own LLC and bank accounts. I also use Quicken to make invoices for my husband’s (small) consulting business.
I have multiple accounts at multiple banks so the ability to download transactions is absolutely necessary.
I have Quicken H&B 2017 and I have been looking for a decent alternative for years now. I absolutely refuse to go to a subscription-based software/service and I will NEVER, EVER put all of my financial information on the web. How many data breaches do we need to see to know that this is a very, very, very bad idea.
Has anyone found a reasonable replacement yet?
I’m afraid given those restrictions, there aren’t many options available. Have you considered Quickbooks?
Bob says
Frustrating. Just tried MoneyDance and CountAbout – the two closest things to what I’m looking for – and found them worse than even Quicken for the features I really care about. I just want an easy to use electronic register I can enter transactions into for all my accounts then reconcile against statements as they come in. Not much to ask. And I think just about EVERYONE I know wants one too. We all hate Intuit software but are reluctantly using it because nothing else out there does the two things Intuit does reasonably well: Easy, rapid transaction entry and account reconciliation. Of course, lately it seems that Quicken is just getting worse with each new release. Bugs creep in and are never fixed. I think maybe it’s time to just write my own solution and get insanely rich off it. There’s a huge market out there for an easy to use electronic register. Can’t understand why nobody is jumping on it to knock Intuit off that hill they occupy all by themselves.
Jeff S says
I just read that Intuit sold off Quicken in 2016…
B Gneiser says
As was mentioned in the article.
Vernon Dickinson says
For several years I used MoneyCounts a very simple program but it was bought out and ended up being discarded by Intuit and users advised to use Quicken. I to want a simple program that will keep an electronic register on multiple bank accounts and capable of downloading bank transactions that is not cloud based.
Some of the newer programs will do a wonderful job of budgeting but will not give a decent P&L or Income & Expense report that is helpful for the preparation of one’s tax reports.
I tried Moneydance but could never link it to download transactions from any of my banks in mid-America. Would someone please come up with a simple accounting program. While not being a budgeting program per say if it had the capability of doing fund accounting an individual could allocate their income to the various funds and be directly subtracted when the expenditure account (whether called a Category of account is set up to come from a given fund) is posted to in the register.
Vernon
Scot D Deabs says
I’m also looking for an alternative that can produce tax reports. Does someone have a comparison that includes support for tax preparation.
Pam S says
I, too, used MoneyCounts before they were sold off to Intuit and discarded. Excellent program, and was always sorry it had gone away. I’ve used Quicken every since, although constantly looked for a viable alternative. I do not want a web based system, and everyone seems to be going to that. (cheaper for them to provide…) I’ve looked into a couple mentioned here, but now will HAVE to be finding something else as I’m not paying the crazy subscription fees Quicken has moved to. I was able to get 2017 as my last upgrade, and will have to move to something else when that runs out as I do download my banking and investment transactions.
Jake says
I used Quicken 2007 for home and business (Windows version) for 10 years. Tried the upgrade to 2011 but went back to 2007 version as new features were just complications. Now we have switched to Mac computers and bought 2017 Quicken for Mac. Hugely disappointed, can’t even print a reconciliation statement along with the illogical interfaces. Much more complicated than the Windows versions I’m used to. I agree with the comment above. We need a simple way to keep our basic financial accounts and good reminders when bills come due. A good “simple” old fashioned system really would sell to most of us. Just the essentials please!!
Charles Bridges says
I have windows 7 and would lie to know if I can use Quicken home and business
The website says that Windows 7 will work but might be the minimum you must have to get it to work.
Jeff johnson says
Does anyone know if I can still use quicken 2015 to enter transactions get report or does not lockup at some point. also does anyone know if in quicken you can enter current prices manually. I do not need their price updates ?
Kyle says
One huge knock against PersonalCapital? Canadian banks are as of right now, unsupported, and when support for Canadian banks is implemented is entirely unknown.
Kyle says
It’s also worth noting that MoneyDance allows a 100 transaction free trial, but after that you need to pay $50USD to register the software with a key.
Quicken’s starter version is a mere $30USD.
.SusanC says
you forgot…. mere $30 ‘PER YEAR.” Each and every year. Forever.
Paul Hunsberger says
and they have also outsourced their quality control to you as well. Their fixes fix the problem, but break other things that you use all the time
Joel says
All I am looking for is a program to to enable me to write checks from my computer to be printed on blank checks off my printer and keep a running check register. Nothing more nothing on line. What program is available?
There are numerous check writing software packages but I don’t know of one that will keep a running check register that also integrates with your bank.
Kenneth says
You can do that with Quickbooks desktop very easily. Quickbooks is very stable however it is business accounting software. I use for personal accounting, vendors are dedts, customers are sources of income, and inventory are investments. Works well
John says
You forget the most important part of not storing data online…subpoenas! If the IRS or a spouse want your data, you can (yes, illegally, but it worked for Hillary) destroy your computer. You can’t do that with online storage.
ikomrad says
I agree with the importance of having offline storage of your data. I used Mint for 6 years and recently closed my account because it created a rule that went through and recategorized all of my transactions incorrectly. There was no way to undo it or restore a previous backup. 6 years of work gone.
With the account closed, I also lost access to 6 years of carefully categorized transactions and notes I made in each transaction for later reference.
Personal Capital is ok for some things, but you can’t split transactions. So if you to CostCo, buy clothes, electronics, and groceries, you cannot split the transaction up to show how much you spend in each category. Also you cannot do zero-sum budgeting which is how I budget(every dollar gets a job ).
Sandra Vincent says
This looks totally different then Quicken. It’s really all your finances in one place vs being able to categorize them and get a total of them. I don’t see where this would work for anyone with a business and needing info for schedule C or F. Am I mistaken?
Looking at it–looks like I might be better off just manually entering the business transactions that I have. I’m going to run these side by side this year and see what happens but I don’t see where you can reports or even a total. I can do without a report if I can get a total in a category.
Kris C says
Has anyone heard if Microsoft is going to open source the last release of MS Money? That would be something to look at.
I still miss MS Money. I still don’t understand why MS decided to discontinue right when it finally beat Quicken as the best personal finance software package.
I haven’t heard this – MS Money has been gone for so long that I doubt much will happen with it at this point.
E Silky says
Which of these solutions are able to print checks when you need to print one (there are certain things I don’t like using the bank’s ‘bill pay’ for – brand new accounts, one time payments, the boy that mows my yard, and some others).
I have sheets of checks that Quicken can print when I need one. I am fed up with Quicken (for the last couple years), but don’t just want a financial tracking and planning app. I want it to be able to print checks and reports (occasionally) and remind me of upcoming bills I need to pay.
B Gneiser says
I’m on my third attempt at finding something acceptable to switch to from Quicken. I downloaded MoneyDance then Banktivity to take advantage of their free trials. One limited the free trial to 100 manually entered transactions, and there were way more than 100 errors in the import from Quicken. The other didn’t include linking to financial institutions as part of the trial. And more importantly, neither would link to my main financial institution. So I ended up in Mint and after investing a LOT of time into trying to get all my accounts set up and linked, I just discovered it doesn’t reconcile! My must haves: 1. A huge number of institutions that will link with it since many of my accounts are in small, local institutions. (Mint actually connected to more than Quicken did, but not quite all, and the workaround to try to handle an account manually is awful.) 2. Ability to reconcile checking and savings accounts. 3. Importing from Quicken would be awesome; something I had resigned myself to doing without when I switched to Mint. 4. Ability to set up manual accounts (for the few that won’t link directly) that have a place for entering transactions, not just a total value like real estate has in Mint. Don’t care a whit about budgeting or investing other than keeping track of what I have. Don’t need investment advice. The only description above that even mentions reconciliation is CountAbout. Would it fulfill the rest of my requirements?
Dan S says
In addition to the 2019 version being total crap, I hate that they lock banks into using the QFX (Quicken File Exchange) format for syncing statements with your bank. If you’re not familiar with QFX it goes like this…OFX (Open File Exchange) is the protocol developed by Open Source developers for bank syncing. My understanding is that Inutit took this and wrapped it with their proprietary code to make it QFX. They then tell the banks that it is more secure. Well, that’s a lie. One of the largest banks in CT uses OFX (Peoples United Bank). If QFX was so much more secure then OFX would not be suitable, would it?
Who of us like to be forced into anything.
I brought my business banking and other accounts to a local bank which offers free banking. I am switching banks for my business accounts to go back to the old bank. It’s not free and it does require a minimum but the headache of not having features that the old bank offered due to it’s being OFX, along with not having to pay Inuits annual subscription fee greatly outweighs the benefit of free banking for me.
smayer97 says
QFX has nothing to do with security…it is all about control. It is a business model to create a revenue stream by having the FIs/Banks pay Quicken for support and to support the cost of maintaining the download functionality. If FIs/Banks do not use QFX and are registered with Quicken (Quicken performs a verification step), the data cannot load into Quicken.
Mahlen says
I’m still using Quicken 2013, which still works ok. We live a few months of the year at a different location, so a cloud-based Quicken-like program would be ideal for me. I could access my records at different locations. I still write some checks with Quicken and haven’t found an alternative with check writing capabilities. I don’t really need the bank and investment updates that Quicken used to provide for 3 years before having to update to the latest version. Any suggestions with check-writing ability would be much appreciated.
FLS says
Add me to the list. My Quicken 2015 file runs slow as molasses and Quicken support tells me it is likey corrupted. But because they don’t support 2015 anymore, they can’t help me fix it (I used the data validation tool, and that didn’t help) unless I buy Quicken 2019, which I understand is horrible and is now an expensive subscription where they sell you the first year cheap to try to lock you in. And even Quicken support says they can’t guarantee I’ll be able to retain all my history if I switch, as the corrupt file many not transition correctly.
I just need a working check register for a handful of bank accounts and a handful of investment accounts. I don’t need it to keep my budget, or to tell me how to invest. Just keep track of all the transactions. I’d like to be able to transfer my chart of accounts from Quicken, as I’ve built it over 20 years of using Quicken to be just what I want it to be. And, of course, I want to be able to retain my history so I can look at spending patterns and investment performance over multiple years. I don’t even do anything on-line with Quicken because even their stock price downloads have gotten kludgy.
I’m stunned this has gotten to be such a problem. You’d think this would be an easy application to provide, not a complex one.
Rusty says
I’m a long time but worn out Quicken user. I had to take over our familiy’s “bookkeeping” after my wife’s illness and Quicken kept me afloat the first year. Now I spend more time on the software than the purpose. After reading the blog and your comments, it looks like CountAbout is what I need. I mostly just need bank downloads from 5 accounts at 2 banks, reconciliation, and categorization. Good reports a bonus but need the reconciliation.
I don’t see a lot of comments about the accuracy of CountAbout in downloading and their support. The Quicken kids at support give different answers to the same question on the same day.
KC says
Microsoft Money had an excellent cash flow report – say I budget $500/Mo. for groceries; but, only spend $375 one month. The report would adjust the future cash balance projection by adding the unspent money. THAT’S what I’m looking for. What program has that report?? Thanking you in advance for your feedback.
I’m afraid I am not aware of any software that will do that now.
Joe says
I’ve been looking for this for a long time. It seems like only Quicken has this, but since they are stuck in 2001 and won’t move to the cloud, I can’t justify staying with them.
Jen M. says
I really only use Quicken to import and reconcile my spending across checking, savings, and credit cards. Which of these alternatives do that? I broke down and bought Quicken 2019 when my older version was no longer supported, and it’s terrible.
Chuck says
Like many who have commented on this site, I also chose to leave Quicken once they went to their subscription business model. My costs for Quicken would have just about tripled — and the program wasn’t worth it.
I also refuse to gather all of my financial data into a single set of files in the cloud. It just seems WAY too risky to me.
Overall, I like open source software but the learning curve for gnucash was formidable even though my background includes coding and finance (though not at the same time). I didn’t have the kind of time required to understand the program and get it to work for me.
I moved to Moneydance about a year ago. I am reasonably happy with it, although it too has its quirks. I much prefer it’s business model over subscriptions. You buy it once — and look around on the web, there are discounts available — and you get that version plus the next version at no additional charge. You can continue to use what you purchased until it no longer works for you — it does not “expire” after a fixed time period. That’s more like, and a little better than, the older Quicken business model which I had thought was OK.
Regarding the transition:
It may seem obvious, but Moneydance is not Quicken. As I made the transition, I was frustrated by Moneydance’s quirks. But I realized that it really didn’t have any more or any worse quirks than Quicken — they were just different quirks that I hadn’t discovered and gotten used to yet. That’s why transitions can be hard and one of the reasons why the new product initially feels worse than the old product. Having used Moneydance now for almost a year, I feel about Moneydance much as I felt about Quicken when I abandoned it. It is not perfect. There are some quirks I find fairly bothersome and there are a lot of other quirks I really don’t get too concerned about.
One comment author indicated that Moneydance wouldn’t connect with their financial institutions. My experience has been that, if I had been able to download to Quicken, I was able to download to Moneydance. Through various family accounts, I have successfully set up automated downloads from American Century, Chase (we only have credit cards with them), Charles Schwab, Star One, Vanguard, and US Bank (we only have a credit card with them). I have been unable to set up a connection with First Tech Federal CU, but I had lost that connection just before leaving Quicken. Since First Tech was unresponsive to my concerns, I have moved to Star One.
One quirk you will want to know about — Moneydance does not have a built-in routine to gather securities pricing. However, there is a quite suitable extension that you can add to the program and it will automatically pull quotes as you open the program. Secondary quirk is that Moneydance seems to reset the price of a security whenever a transaction involving that security is accepted. To reconcile current portfolio values, just run the extension again to reset the prices back to their current values.
Bottom line: I can honestly recommend Moneydance to Quicken users who want to move off of that platform. Moneydance is not perfect, but I have found it works well for me.
Disclosure: I have no affiliation with any software supplier, financial or otherwise, or any supplier of related products or services.
Last note: I have not used personal financial software for budgeting or for printing checks so I have no input on either program relative to those functions. I do income/expense tracking, investment portfolio tracking and management, and ad hoc reporting.
Melissa says
I LIKE software that I can download and OWN, so that I cant be extorted later. This is why I’m furious with Quicken. But is there something that can import Quicken files, that will give me a SIMPLE checkbook?
Sadly, I don’t think there is one that you download and own AND imports from Quicken.
Glenn S. says
Why are you furious with Quicken? Quicken is still a CD or downloadable software that resides on your PC/Mac, just like it always has. And all the data in your Quicken data files still stays on your PC/Mac, just like it always has. Quicken now offers some cloud services (at no additional cost) but that is an opt-in thing that Quicken does not require anyone to use. Quicken’s change to subscription service hasn’t changed anything about Quicken itself except that now if you want to upgrade to get the latest features and capabilities you can do that as soon as they become available for free instead of needing to wait 3 yrs to buy a new CD or download.
Daniel J Friedman says
FYI as of 2020-01-24 Quicken, the software I’ve used for many years and the company so many of us have come to dislike, has announced by email that
– users who prefer to keep their financial data offline in quicken on their PC or Mac are now sunk
– the buy it and use model of software is replaced by the “pay us regularly” model
UGH!! Here is their notice:
You’re receiving this email as a registered user of Quicken 2017.
If you have not yet upgraded to Quicken membership, all of your connected services will no longer be supported as of April 30, 2020:
Downloading transactions & balances from financial institutions
Downloading stock quotes & headlines to Quicken
Paying bills online with Quicken
Access to the free Quicken mobile app
Access to free support
To continue using these services, upgrade to Quicken membership before April 30, 2020 and take 10% off any plan you choose.
WOW – this is huge news – I find it surprising they’re going to these lengths to get you to upgrade.
Glenn S. says
I’ve been a Quicken user for many years (MS Money before that). This article wrongly states that Quicken is now cloud based and many of the Quicken posts say the same incorrect thing. Quicken IS NOT cloud based. It is a program that resides on your PC/Mac and saves your data file on that same PC/Mac or on a connected storage device, just like it always has. There is now the option for users who wish to to save their Quicken data files on the cloud so they can access it from other devices (different PC, smart phone, browser, etc.) and for data file backup but there is nothing that requires anyone to use that cloud service. And for those who do not want even their their financial institution login information saved in their Quicken data files, don’t worry because the default is to not do that…you have to opt in for Quicken to save that information into its password protected PW Vault (also stays in your data file, not on the cloud).
The main difference between the old pay-for-the-program and the new subscription program is how you pay for it and how long you need to wait before you can get program features and capabilities upgrades.
With the pre-subscription program you bought the program (CD or download) which you own and can use forever but the license for Quicken online services (financial data downloads and bill pay) expired after 3 yrs. Quicken would provide program fixes during that 3 yrs but if you wanted to get newly developed features and capabilities you would need to pay for it, again (i.e, buy another new 3- yr program CD/download).
With the subscription program you still get a CD or download and the installed program resides on your PC/Mac which you can keep and use forever (just like before) but your license to use those Quicken online services expires after 1 or 2 yrs (depending on your subscription plan) at which time you need to renew it. During the time your subscription is active you will get not only upgrades for Quicken fixes but will also get new features and capabilities upgrades as soon as they are available without having to pay an upgrade fee.
As far a subscription cost goes: Don’t buy Quicken from their website. Google it and you can easily find it for sale for 25%-50% lower than on their website. You can even buy Quicken 2018 or 2019 (the year markings now are nothing more than marketing) for even bigger discounts because it’s tough for a retailer to sell something as new in 2020 when it is marked with 2018/2019. Install the program, register your license and your Quicken program will be upgraded immediately to the latest version for free (only if you want to do that since Quicken never forces anyone to upgrade if they don’t want to).
Quicken does have its problems but I have yet to find any alternative program that comes anywhere close to having the comprehensive suite of features and capabilities of Quicken…including none of the alternative programs listed in this article.
Dante says
Yea, you forgot one big issue about Quicken though, those very very annoying multiple pop ups you can’t get rid of asking you to log in constantly. Secondly, it is always trying to connect to the network in the background even if you don’t see it.
Third, when the subscription runs out it’s like somebody turned off the add blocker and the constant messages to upgrade will drive you crazy! Oh, but let’s not forget that Quicken says you can continue to use the software after the subscription runs out, but what they don’t tell you is they still make you log on to get past the screen unless you what to constantly close them or have to close your software once or twice to get past that messages. Believe me I have tried and even blocked the program through my security software with no luck. I have reverted back to 2016 H+B which at least is easier to get past the messages. I am also running it in compatibility mode in Win 10 with no issues other than the pop ups.
The reason they need the connectivity is so they can push update messages to you disguised as software updates. Too bad somebody hasn’t come up with a hack to turn them off! The funny thing is they put a check block to say don’t show the message again but it will do it anyway with a new message.
I’m with others, bring back MS Money! It was an outstanding program. Just say no to any on line data or internet connectivity for any reason with your finances!! Financial institution are constantly being hacked but yet they all say connect with us, it’s safe, yeah right!
Philip S Shear says
Daniel J Friedman is right. I recently received the same notice last week which is what led me to this post. I have used Quicken since it was a DOS program in the 80s. After April, I will not be able to download my banking and brokerage information anymore. I don‘t care about their bill pay. My bank has offered free bill pay for 25 years and it works great. I am not even sure if I will be able to generate reports after April.
They have not added any feature in the last 20+ years that I need or want; and I certainly do not plan to go subscription or cloud. At this point, and after reading about the alternatives and all the comments, I have no idea what my next step will be.
I’m not sure what the best option is if you don’t want to use the cloud or pay a subscription.
David Despain says
Don’t let the Quicken program try to “update banking info” I had Quicken 2014 and was happy with it, but I needed to add a new account. When I did, the update feature took over and allowed for my data file to be corrupted. Even the backup wouldn’t work and I “lost” data from 2016 to present.
Not so funny thing is that the only solution offered was to upgrade to a supported version of Quicken. Once I did that, my data file was restored and everything is as it was. Crooked Quicken forced me to upgrade and I feel cheated. So, if you are adding an account in an unsupported version, be wary to cancel the update as soon as it appears or your data file or program will be updated to not accept the old information.
Thanks for sharing your experience and I’m sorry that happened to you!
RadioFan says
Microsoft has published the “sunset” edition of Money for those who want to continue using Microsoft Money without online connectivity
c says
Read the privacy disclosure for Bankitivity. It collects personal information such as ‘the web site you visit after visiting ours’. Wow. Creepy.
charlie says
The only option for me has been Moneydance. It did not import from quicken correctly, but I have been able to manipulate the data enough that it works just fine. It actually downloads data much cleaner than quicken. Although nothing is going to be absolutely perfect, this program is very close compared to Quicken. Never thought I’d leave Quicken and probably wouldn’t have even looked had they given their long time users more consideration.
Dwayne says
Sunset version of MS Money Deluxe can be found here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20738
I’m done with Quicken since they won’t even allow me to import downloaded OFX files after 5/30/20. I’m not doing subscription and the hole sunset thing has become annoying. Currently using GNUCash but will go back to MS Money if GNUCash doesn’t work out for me.
Dan says
Very informative thread. I’ve been using Quicken for decades, most recently Q2007. However, with a new computer running Mac OS Big Sur, the program is no longer supported and I have to move to the online version of Quicken. But I’m told (by Quicken) that because the program on my computers used a 32-bit data and the new cloud-based version uses 64 bit, my legacy data will not be available. So much for quicken.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, basic check register that will let me reconcile accounts and assemble categories for end-of-year tax prep? That’s literally all I need. I don’t need retirement planning or real estate management or any of those kinds of support, Just a good check register. Thanks.
Tyrone says
Microsoft Money is free and comes with every copy of Windows, in the App section. The fact this article doesn’t talk about that pretty much tells you this article wasn’t well researched.
It was excluded because it was last released over 10 years ago (14 years in fact) and is no longer being supported by Microsoft.
Joe says
You say “Quicken is now cloud-based so if you want to avoid putting your data into the cloud, going with a spreadsheet is your best option”.
You can actually use Quicken in a non-cloud mode, and that’s how I have it configured. Preferences has “Mobile & Web” and “Quicken ID & Cloud Accounts” settings. My cloud “Last Sync” is Never. But I’m not advocating Quicken, I’m here looking for an alternative since they are now an expensive yearly subscription… just letting you know that is not correct info that you are providing to the masses.
Great to know, thanks Joe!
Amy says
OMGosh, thank you thank you for reseraching and writing this article. Quicken must have 1 COBOL programmer on staff because their product hasn’t been fixed or updated in so many years… and now that it is subscription based and I have to acknowledge that I’m paying for it annually–I hate myself. They aren’t getting another dime from me. You are an angel and a genius. Thank you again.
Roy Gertig says
I’ve been a Quicken user on and off for years (since having a disc mailed to me). Now you can download Quicken and license it. But now, Quicken has joined the likes of money-grubbing scum like Adobe, Microsoft and the like that rip you off each year with a hefty subscription fee. Gone were the days when you purchased a software product, validated the license, and used it until you either wanted to upgrade or, unfortunately, had to. A really disgusting move Quicken, IMHO.
ron says
Not exactly a fair assessment …. Quicken has a lot of ongoing/recurring expenses, so if you want this functionality, such as 1.) support, 2.) bank connectivity and 3.) securities valuation) you have to pay for it.
1.) Product development – provision of new functionality, bug fixes for existing functionality.
2.) Financial institution connectivity – Every time a bank changes it’s connectivity methods (direct connect, web, etc.) or there is a new and better security standard or protocol put in place, Quicken has to respond and make the necessary changes to all of the banks affected. Just adding adding new financial institutions takes effort and has an associated cost
3.) Support – keeping on top of all of the ongoing issues takes an army of qualified support staff that need to be trained and kept up-to-date on all of the changes.
4.) Security value updates – Quicken has a cost for providing this service from a major provider.
Subscriptions have been the way forward for the past decade and will continue to be the norm going forward.
Here’s the thing … there are NO viable Quicken alternatives out there, especially if you need to take your data with you. Under the covers, it is has a much richer feature set than the dozen or so alternatives I have looked at it. And the majority of these “alternatives” charge a recurring fee as well. So, all in all … i am not complaining about the subscription model. When I complain, it is because of the reliability or lack thereof.
* I never thought in a million years I would be coming to the defense of Quicken. But when I see comments like this, I’m left no choice.
Paige says
I didn’t realize Quicken had support. Their lack of answers is one reason I’m looking around
Myron Greenspan says
Very interesting, especially since I never heard of any equivalents of Quicken. Thank you.
If I only want to download data from bank and generally track expenses to make it easier when time to file 1040, and don’t need budgeting retirement planning etc., what is the best of the free or least expensive options? Thanks.
Sue says
For me, the entire purpose of using Quicken (I’ve been using it since DOS, I think – so the 80’s I guess) is direct connect. I may be nuts, but I feel there’s a security about tunneling into my bank using Quicken instead of using a hackable browser.
I would definitely consider an alternative because I’m not a fan of the current management and having to pay for a yearly license and I think it’s buggier than ever, but the direct connect is one of my needs.
As far as I know, none of the alternatives offer something similar to Direct Connect (if they did, you’d see them offer Bill Pay and whatnot and none of them seem to).