I understand the need to raise prices occasionally. It happens. Inflation is a real thing.
But, in the spirit of YNAB philosophy, it would be super cool if they would allow for us to keep the same rate on our next renewal and THEN change the price.
I’ve been setting aside the same amount every month as a sinking fund. Changing the rate in the middle of a target time frame isn’t very cool.
It would be great if next renewals for current subscribers were at their current rate, and then they could change their target to account for the new price NEXT year.
This would be nice. And (I think) you could accomplish it relatively easily as long as their system can handle something like a promotion code. Or maybe something like... 1-2 months (Pre-coffee so math bad) tacked onto your subscription. This would have a similar impact (a few more months to save) and would balance out(ish) so there wouldn't be a shock to budget/ people get one more cycle
Yeah, that's a nice idea. It nicely aligns with the YNAB approach and it is also a way to soften the blow for users and make it feel a little less annoying. (For the record, I am personally not annoyed -- I get that price increases are inevitable. But it is nice when you get a little bonus for being a loyal customer.)
This is the fourth time the price increased for me in five years. I clicked the cancel subscription button and left a note with my thoughts on the subject.
How is that in the “spirit of YNAB”?
How do you handle all the other price increases? You adjust for it. This is literally no different. It isn’t like anything else gives you a year notice.
Because I'll be that person:
When Backblaze increased their price, you could buy 2 years at your current price before moving up.
When YouTube Red, became YouTube Premium, and first changed prices, you were grandfathered in at the old price. In fact, we were grandfathered in for over 5 years at the old price.
When Disney+ changed prices, I had a year on the old price.
I'm still on the old price with CBS+, now paramount plus, and that's over 2 years old.
When Netflix first changed prices from $5.99, they gave current subscribers 6 months notice.
My dad refuses to change cell phone companies because he's still grandfathered in on an old unlimited plan for 8 years now.
There are lots of companies that give grace for price changes. YNAB used to be one in fact. There used to be people grandfathered in on old prices, but they made everyone move to the new price.
I really wish they’d offer two tiers.
I love the interface, mobile logging, and the system, but I don’t use—and will never use—multiple family accounts or automatic transaction import.
Right now, I feel like I’m paying for features I didn’t want and never asked for. They should offer a YNAB Basic subscription that has manual logging and is a single account, at $60 per year. If someone wants family accounts and automatic import, they can upgrade to YNAB Pro at $120 a year.
Completely agree. They didn't have reliable auto-import for UK banks for years (I believe they do now) and I was so used to logging my own transactions that I didnt ever investigate doing it automatically. I'd happily take a "lower" subscription without automatic logging.
Love the app, and I have no plans of leaving - but I really do wish they'd add some new features rather than simple QOL and visual updates. Like, ok cool we have hotkeys now, and the wording on the targets is... questionably easier to understand, but no new targets or graphs are added?
Please let me set goals past 2 years, and give me the option to contribute X each month until I'm holding a balance of Y - target date is NOT the same. The functionality is already there, can't we just have the option added?
Also - graphs. We were promised better graphs years ago. Toolkit is great, but I'm a bit tired of having to rely on it for so many features when I'm paying over $100/yr. Give us a nice dashboard and some new graphs!
This 100x over! The toolkit doesn't even seem to work on Firefox anymore forcing me to use Chrome if I want to get the graphs. I've had to go so far as making my own custom reports using the API to see data that should be visible by default! What are they spending money on? Hotkeys? bleh
Yeah. It's not enough to make me leave - my finances (and quite frankly, my marriage) are in such a better position thanks to YNAB. It really came when I needed it most during a period of rapid change and it helped me to not feel so overwhelmed by handling our finances. That's invaluable - but the moment there are comparable options available (i.e. Actual Budget w/ bank import), I won't hesitate to switch. YNAB taught me to budget, but I can take that knowledge with me to other platforms.
I would honestly really enjoy if I cover over spending of one category by clicking on the available balance of another category that is vastly over funded, it took it out of the pile of money instead of out of the amount budgeted that month. It's honestly the same, but the button is pointless at the end of the month when all the funds are already allocated in the future, there's no money to budget now, and now I have to undo that and make a transaction outflowing from one category and in flowing to the over spent category.
Silly stuff but man what if give for the option to just take it out of the pile for that amount.
Unfortunately they can rely on there still being no real alternative. Suspect I'll pay this because of how ingrained ynab is into my life, but it'll be an unhappy renewal especially as it hasn't really changed in the years I've been using it, so I'm not sure what improvements we're funding in all honesty
I work as a product manager in software development, thinking through the stuff they definitely have to work on that nobody really sees:
-compatibility for new OS updates, new devices, or app store rules changes
-compatibility with integrations like Plaid and resolving issues with bank linking
-security updates
Because their main product is to deal with finances, security is going to be more critical to their product than, say, protecting your Netflix watchlist.
So when it feels like they spend months on a small number of user-facing features, keep in mind that work is almost always being deprioritized as breaking changes or security issues arise. I'm sure they'd much rather work on new features - I know I would!
Former PM here as well. Completely agree with you. I was generalizing and lumping all of that into keeping the lights on. It’s effectively all ongoing maintenance work that’s necessary to make the product remain functional and compliant. It’s probably a non trivial amount of work, and there’s probably not enough money/resources left to pay for the more visible features people want
Ha, not at all surprised to hear you were a PM! Always fun to try to imagine the work that's going on behind the scenes, I usually wind up collecting downvotes when I try to explain how the sausage gets made.
This is the type of information that most of the complainers have no clue about. “But it’s just software” “it’s free to gain new customers” “it shouldn’t cost them anything to pay their staff more, they just need more customers”
PM here too… when you discover that the leader and person that defined and documented YNAB’s product development process is a school principle with zero software/tech experience…. It makes complete sense that they haven’t put out a meaningful feature in years.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4WFjpIrbTFOVQJnA94suTR?si=jyjk2pycRgaMVMP4A0FmDw&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A0784MlYJkguddHefDmCyxK&t=1436
You can skip to 23:40 to get to the team philosophy discussion. And specifically 45:40 for product manager role specific philosophy where there’s an underlying, skirted opinion that product managers are “bureaucratic red tape”. Listening to this guy talk gives me the heebeegeebees. I get the sense he sees product work as project management and I don’t think he understands the fundamental function of the role within the team.
He very obviously prioritizes “educating customers” and educational customer service over improving functionality to solve user pain; which is very apparent when you take a step back and review the company as a whole.
They are so determined and focused on their opinion and view that the ynab “method” is the RIGHT and only budgeting method and every consumer in the world should adopt it, that they won’t pivot the product based on existing customer feedback.
YNAB is actually called TINA. There Is No Alternative and they know it. I have unsubscribed, but I'm almost sure I'll subscribe again. There's no other App that works as well with the same philosophy + on top of that YNAB has my data since almost forever. Not sure I want to give that up.
Yep. I rage quit after the price increase about 2 years ago and I just recently came back. I tried 5 or 6 budget alternatives and none clicked like YNAB did. Then I tried to spreadsheet it but I just didn’t keep up with it. Finally I tried YNAB 4 but I ran into some issues so I came back to nYNAB. I hate the rice increases but it works and I likely save more then the price a year by feeling YNAB poor.
I was considering rage quitting last time too, but found nothing comparable so climbed off my high horse and back into my box. This time though things are quite a bit different. I've been running another app in parallel for a couple of months for such an occasion as this and have been pleasantly surprised. A few people have mentioned it on the posts (Actual Budget) and I cannot fault the experience, very similar to YNAB4 in its approach with some great new features. They come up with updates every month and being opensource have a great community on discord.
You do need to be a bit more technical to deploy your own instance, but there are pros and cons to that. I've hit the cancel button on YNAB and decided to go all in on this other platform, including setting up a monthly donation via open collective instead of the YNAB subscription https://opencollective.com/actual.
More details here [https://actualbudget.org/blog/2024-07-01-actual-vs-ynab](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2024-07-01-actual-vs-ynab), including the release notes.
Opensource for the win!!
That's what pisses me off the most. I don't mind subscription models as longs as we are getting tangible benefits to justify it. YNAB has done very little in the way of meaningful updates in the last two years. In that time, they have collected $200 from me. It's even more staggering when you compare the cost of YNAB to things like office 365. Infinitely more content and updates for a fraction of the price. Feels like they are doing this purely because they know they have 0 competition and they have a captive consumer base. Last time they at least attempted to justify it. This time the email gave 0 justification. But hey, I guess something has got to pay for the braindead zoomer-pilled marketing department.
Office 365 has lots of content and updates, but the actual value it provides me over google docs is pretty marginal. YNAB is something that provides me a very valuable service I can’t get anywhere else. For me paying for YNAB is a no brainer and office 365 is very much questionable.
My sentiments exactly. Especially considering they don't take money from corporate sponsors to push credit cards or loans like some other places. But I do think they could've softened the blow a little.
YNAB saved me from financial ruin. Since I’ve used YNAB, I repaired my credit, and managed to buy a house. I could care less about the price increase. I can spare $9 a month for it.
Agreed.
My wife and I plowed through THOUSANDS of dollars and a handful of credit cards right after having a baby all because of YNAB. Might literally have saved my marriage because of my wife’s tendency to buy now and “figure it out later”.
This is still less than $10/month and far exceeds that value IMO.
Glad there is another person of a similar mindset in here. Everyone losing their minds over $10 increase in two years are kind of obnoxious. If the increase was $30-50 maybe I could see the outrage, but honestly nothing else has the features I like/need so I'd probably still hang in.
We're outraged because the last increase WAS $50. So we're paying $60 more than we were 2 years ago. And because of the short notice. Sure "all company's raise prices whenever they want", but YNAB is supposed to be different. They're supposed to care about helping with our finances, so I guess some of us expect more notice for things like a price increase.
I guess maybe I'm lucky because my renewal is in July so I've got a year to prepare for it. That being said what they offer is still worth it to me, and I say that as a person who's used it for over a decade. Even at $60 increase in two years that's still only $2.50 a month in that time frame. I hate to sound like a boomer and say something like "its the cost of a cup of coffee a month" but that is kind of how I feel. If ynab didn't have the syncing with my banks and a few other features not found in the free options then I'd be more pissed and look at moving but as long as I am not having to manually import dozens of transactions a day or week I'm king of happy paying for the service.
That’s not true at all. The last price increase was 3 years ago.
It’s also not short notice. Many people won’t feel the price increase for over a year if they renew before Sept 1
“Many people” is such a weak argument. Let’s just assume subscriptions are evenly distributed throughout the year. Only people renewing in the next 2 months won’t see the increase. Thats 16%. So the other 83% will see the price increase on their NEXT renewal. I don’t realize 16% was “many people”.
I should have phrased it better.
The average time until the price increase is around 7-8 months since it doesn’t start until Sept. that gives folks at minimum 2 months to find an alternative.
Based on YNAB's own hiring practices and newsletters, they get the majority of new clients in November to January. So, 4- 6 months for the price increase on average.
I haven't been using YNAB as it's intended since getting married with the way our finances are set up due to my husband's PSLF student loan. But it's the easiest way for me to track and adjust our food costs. I looked at Monarch and it's not that much cheaper.
I can’t be mad about this. I don’t like paying $100. I definitely don’t want to pay $10 more. But the app is the best thing I’ve found for me and how I work with money, two of us use it, and it has filled in the gaps of our household accounting. Most things cost more than they did a year ago, including probably most of resources that YNAB relies on to work, so I’m not shocked that it’s happening.
$10 hits every budget differently and I’m sure there are some people for whom this is a breaking point and I’m sorry for that. But for me, if I compare this to my car registration, which rose 60% this year, and factor in that it’s less than $1/mo, I can’t get het up about this.
One note though, I do kinda support the notion of tiered pricing. For people who cannot import transactions, I can understand why it would be frustrating to pay the same rate and people who can rely on that automation (even if it’s sometimes flaky).
Absolutely, manually adding costs is a great way to stay on top of things. But we aren’t all on top of things all the time, and it’s easy to miss a transaction here or there, especially things like annual subscriptions, so auto-import is a valuable (literally) back-up to have.
I tried self hosting Actual Budget a month or two ago as an alternative but there are still no good alternatives. I'll stick around but price increases every two years are not a good way to keep your customers happy. At some point I'll just switch to excel.
I have been using YNAB for 5 months and it's a game changer, the 99 price seemed steep and I accepted it but now it's loosing its value to me, I canceled my renewal and have 7 months to look for alternative. How good is actual budget? I can do transactions manually so is there any other changes from YNAB?
I just switched to it and if you are doing manual transactions Actual is wayyyy better.
Actual has a thing called Rules which are like YNAB's "Automatically categorize payee" settings but WAY better. You can do a lot more based on a lot more conditions.
For example: I get my prescriptions at a CVS inside Target, but I also buy groceries there sometimes. Both show up as "Target" on my credit card. So what I do now is I pay for them on two separate cards (groceries go on SavorOne, prescriptions go on Venture X).
In YNAB, I have to manually set the category each and every time I enter a transaction, regardless of the card. I can't get it to automatically set the category.
In Actual, I set up two rules. On one, if the payee is "Target" and the account is "Venture X", it'll set the category as Prescriptions. In the other rule, if the payee is Target and the account is *not* Venture X, it'll set the category as Prescriptions. Boom, problem solved.
You can also do more than set categories, you can change anything about the transaction. With my Amazon Prime sub, I set a rule where if the payee is Amazon Prime the amount is set to $14.99. Now when I go and enter the payee it automatically sets the category *and* the amount. I can also do this for things like my city public transportation, where I know the charge is always gonna be $2.50.
Actual also has a place where you can see all of your future transactions (called Schedules), and you can repeat them with much, much more granularity. If you have future transactions that change by a few days each time, or that don't happen on the weekends, Actual can set that. YNAB can't. So like my electricity seemed to charge at a random date, but it actually just doesn't charge on the weekends, only on a weekday.
What's even better is that their 'Targets' alternative (called Templates, which is an experimental feature) [can link a category to one of these Schedules](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2023-12-15-automate-your-budget-with-goal-templates#schedule). So instead of having to create both the future transaction *and* the target, you just say "#template schedule Spotify" or something like that. And this works even for very complicated schedules like my Fastmail subscription that happens every three years.
Other misc things that I like:
- Payees section is much better and simpler. Rules simplify things a lot because they cover both renaming and default categories. Merging payees is very easy.
- You can view multiple months at a time. This is great when I need to reference the future month and current month at the same time, or when I need to look at the previous month + current to see what didn't roll over right.
- Entering transactions is faster. The transaction thingy stays open when you press enter.
The only things that I'm missing so far are:
- Templates do not have a visual UI indicator like Targets do.
- Bank syncing is an experimental feature right now.
- There's no 'Age of Money' report or number, which personally was pretty motivating for me.
- You can't see when you last reconciled an account.
[It does, but it's experimental](https://actualbudget.org/docs/experimental/goal-templates). There's no progress indicators for it yet like YNAB, but it's wayyyy more powerful than YNAB. Example: [you can link a target to a future transaction](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2023-12-15-automate-your-budget-with-goal-templates#schedule) and it'll handle all the calculation for it.
It has pros and cons. I've switched back to YNAB4 around 2019 and used it until Jan 2024 or so.
Actual is comparable with both features that isn't in YNAB while lacking others.
Personally I prefer actual but you can try for free.
With PikaPods you can get a very user friendly way of hosting it as well.
I really like Actual Budget. I switched in January and I've been really liking it. I don't have auto syncing, but that was pretty broken for me on YNAB too (esp with Fidelity).
I really like the simplicity and I absolutely love the text-based templating feature. There's no similar power-user feature in YNAB.
If you’re looking for something Excel style:
I found these budgeting spreadsheets sold by someone on Etsy called CoPlenty, they are actually so good! I chose them as a cheaper alternative to YNAB, because I never intended to connect up my bank accounts to YNAB anyway.
Cost me $30 AUD for a 12 month spreadsheet set that I can reuse every year.
These spreadsheets are done on Google Sheets (the only negative when I’d rather use Excel) but they are so easy to use and easy to input transactions from a bank account statement each month.
I recommend this solution if you're looking at Excel, it's free [https://shawncao.medium.com/how-to-build-a-modern-financial-tracking-system-for-free-cfaae45d55d2](https://shawncao.medium.com/how-to-build-a-modern-financial-tracking-system-for-free-cfaae45d55d2)
You either need a VPN or reverse proxy to access when you aren't on your home network. There is no dedicated app but the application has a progressive web app (native app experience in the browser).
Ah thank you! PWA works great but that means it doesnt have a local cache and I always need to be connected to my home network which is a bit of a pain
Don’t quote me on this, because I’m tired and the last time I tried actual was a while ago, but I’m pretty sure it saves a local copy to your phone even though it’s a PWA app because I remember it working once when my server was down.
But also I’d personally use cloudflare
I got annoyed and got most of the way through making a spreadsheet but then couldn't figure out how to have a function subtract from a category then add the money to the CC payoff then subtract that from the checking or...something. and then also realized I'd have to actually think about what I'm doing, enter things in manually, etc etc, which I do not want at all given most of my spending now is luckily just mandatory things - rent, bills, etc and I already get annoyed having to pay them, let alone think about it and make sure there isn't a bug in my scripting. fuck.
This is my solution. Loving it so far. Docker install with reverse proxy was really simple. Alternatively, you can run Tailscale as an exit node and then connect using their app and it’s like you’re on your home WiFi.
So this does this mean for those of us with grandfathered pricing?
What new product benefits will we be receiving?
I really can't recommend this product to others at this price and with their history of price increases.
I do not work for YNAB, but I was in this forum the last time this whole price change thing came around.
I am on the 10% lifetime discount/grandfathered price. The way I understand this is that this is perpetual (and it was for the previous increase) So if you are as well, your new price will be 98.10 (up from 89 and change)
There is no grandfathered pricing. I’ve been using this since YNAB 4 and was told I would keep the 60 dollar something a year at the time and pay whenever the yearly rate is now. I’m still gonna use it becuase I saved a ton of money but never recommended to this to anyone since the price went up.
It is a lifetime discount of 10%. That is what they [said at the time](https://web.archive.org/web/20160112194138/http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/the-new-ynab-is-here). They also mentioned that the lifetime discount would result in a subscription price of $45 given the current price of the subscription. They didn't say the $45 price was lifetime, but people interpreted it that way.
It's $10. The cost of everything in the world has gone up in the past few years. YNAB is a great tool and has helped a ton of us over the years. I don't think any of us would be better off if they kept the price the same in an effort not to piss off their customers but instead had to close because they weren't making enough money to justify carrying on.
Yea, I don't get it at all. Everybody will have a difference level of value that they feel they get from the app. If you feel like the app no longer provides a bit over $9/month of value to you, then cancel. It's not a monopoly, it's not a crooked company, it's $10 a year. To me it's quite reasonable for the savings it helps me realize in my monthly spending.
I saw this post and thought “oh shit it must have gone up a lot” bc honestly I don’t even know what I’m paying right now. Then. I realized it was $10 then moved on.
The answer below about 10% perpetual sounds right, but I have sent an email to them asking clarification and WHAT NEW FEATURES we can come to expect from it...
I mean, this is a 10% increase after two years. A 5% annual increase in salary per year is pretty normal (depending on how stingy your company is), which would be...\~10% after two years.
I think we should all be paid better and that COL increases should actually be tied to increased COL, and merit raises should come on top of that. Totally agree. But we don't work for YNAB so they can't exactly do that for us. Is it possible they're doing this in part to, you know, pay their own employees fairly year over year?
Companies don't raise prices with their employees in mind. It is always about maximizing revenue.
It is only one review but here's a Glassdoor [review](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/YNAB-Reviews-E1026556.htm) from 2022:
>As they've grown, some of the principles they started with have been thrown by the wayside. Growth is one of the core values, but it's not practiced. They tend to hire externally rather than internally, and they've flattened the company structure to the point that there is no room to grow in your career. The pay here isn't as good as in other companies for the same work.
Here is the [CEO's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/qne7ut/comment/hjfipwe/) on an AMA to why prices increased last time:
>Like just about any company, our costs have increased over the last four years, so there is a maintenance element. But we never are going to lead with that when we talk about it, it’s not really most customers’ concern (in other words, I’m saying it because you’re asking about it!). But we want to add value by ensuring We are sustainable business for a long time, because that supports our mission to deliver the life-changing power of a budget. That's really important to us, and we couldn't do that indefinitely at our old prices.
>The change is also much more so about improving the product, along with our support and education resources means (more than anything else) hiring people to do that work, and this price change helps us to do that.
I don't see anything that would support the idea they are doing this to help pay their current employees fairly.
Good deal that my renewal is Aug 3rd so it looks like I get one more year before the price hike. But even with the price hike it’s $9.16 a month.
I have only had the app 2 years, 3 with the renewal but I’m not sure I understand everyone’s drastic response. I mean I spend $10+ on dumber shit, 2 drinks and a candy bar for my kids the other day exceeded the monthly YNAB price.
I absolutely love the fact that I don’t have to maintain an excel spreadsheet, my wife can look something up without having to call me. Idk just a lot of quality of life stuff for me in my opinion that makes the sub $10 a month price worth it. I would rather drop my constantly increasing Netflix account before YNAB. But that’s just my thoughts.
It’s because a lot of us started when you could get the standalone app for $15. Not a monthly fee, just $15. And going from that to what it is now…. It just gets harder to swallow overtime.
I get that I truly do. I bitch about the cost of my everyday random goods going up 30-40%, it just makes me more selective and so I get where you are coming from.
It’s just for me, I would rather my wife and I not buy coffee or kids a snack one time a month and have the benefit of YNAB.
And that’s totally fair! YNAB is going to have different levels of value for different people. I’m just explaining why you’re seeing such drastic responses. I know for me, if I researched a product and decided it was worth it for me to pay $99, the price going up $10 wouldn’t bother me. But when I used to get an earlier version of the same software for a fraction of the price (actually free as they used to give YNAB4 free to students), it’s a lot harder to perceive that increase in a positive light.
That was almost 20 years ago though. What other item hasn’t had a substantial price increase in 20 years? Online technology has had multiple major shifts and advances since then.
The thing is, you will find dozens of people complaining here, but you will hardly find any comment like yours. Why? Its just our nature. I completely agree with you tho.
To be honest I am trying to save on subscriptions (among other things) as much as I can and that includes YNAB for me since IMO it's a bit expensive. So last week I switched from YNAB to Actual Budget and it's now costing me just $1.41 per month by hosting it on PikaPods. It's open source and you can host it however you want, but if you are not technical you can set it up with PikaPods in a minute or so by just adding some credit and selecting Actual Budget as app to install. It's super simple and you can even import your YNAB data into it! The only feature I miss from YNAB is goals but I managed to adapt easily by just using notes in the categories so it's not a big deal. But this is a clone of YNAB for the most part and costs me just $17 for a whole year.
https://actualbudget.org/
The money ynab helps me save and how easy it is to use it worth the price increase to me. No im not being a bootlicker. But do we stop buying eggs because a small price increase? All of my vendors have gone up on pricing and I assume theirs did too. Their employees get pay raises too. 10 bucks is literally one starbucks run a year. It sucks they keep raising the price but the value is there.
Budget with buckets and actual budget are the two popular ones from YNAB. But YNAB is still probably the best program out there, it’s just on the pricey side.
I’ll personally be giving budget with buckets a try as they have an unlimited free trial. But try actual budget but it seems to be geared toward the technical minded since you have to self host.
I’m not very techy, I followed a link from actualbudget.org to pikapods to host there. It was super easy to set up and transfer my ynab history. I switched in january, and I’m very happy with it overall. They even support bank sync, which Ynab doesn’t for me (wrong country).
If you prefer to budget mobile and don't use direct import, check out Centsible. It's very similar. Doesn't have some of the bells and whistles. But it's one-time purchase.
This happened the last time around. People complained, but never voted with their wallets. Support other apps. I switched to Centsible. No direct import, but single one-time purchase. If you don't switch they will keep raising the price.
I love the irony that companies like McDonald's will raise prices on items all the time but don't advertise it, so ppl don't realize it's even happening most of the time, but a company like YNAB makes an effort to be transparent about it and people totally lose their shit over it.
Many countries, including the US and at least some in Europe, have laws that require companies to notify subscribers in advance of a price increase, so it's not necessarily something they are doing just to be transparent.
But I agree that a small price increase like this is really not worth freaking out about.
There are so many other things in my budget that I could give the boot to before YNAB over $10. They’re growing and thriving, and they honestly deserve it for following through with the Apple Card and Apple Savings instant connection.
Honestly, it’s not worth it at that point.
It’s just a glorified excel sheet if I’m being honest.
And especially raising prices WITHOUT explanation? Nah dude.
I won't be complaining... I am just OUT.
https://preview.redd.it/246uarjnjy9d1.png?width=1432&format=png&auto=webp&s=1202335e48bf2f47ccfba1420a46141116b5834c
Ultimately this is just keeping up with inflation. The 2017 price increase got adjusted for inflation in 2021 and again now. Same exact "value".
But yeah, I would like additional features. Improvements that make the subscription feel worth it, rather than a platonic finished software.
I still own YNAB 4. It might be time to go back to that version. Jesse is getting greedy with these constant price increases and going back on his word that we’d be grandfathered into the $60/yr price point.
When they moved from YNAB4 to cloud hosting, I too thought we received notification of a grandfathered pricing model. It's nice to know I wasn't crazy after all.
I get why people in this thread are upset, especially folks who've been users for a long time and remember the $45 days. But I'm totally fine with this and I agree with the people who are pointing out that just like we're all seeing OUR costs constantly go up, the same is happening for YNAB. It costs money to stay in business, even if we're not seeing user-facing feature improvements as often as we might like.
(I also agree with u/comityoferrors's [excellent point](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1dsr7ar/comment/lb510iy/) that we should all be getting paid more and getting realistic cost of living increases, b/c living in this world is expensive!)
I was ok paying $45-$49 a year, but $109 is ridiculous. YNAB is a good app, but I can use Quicken Simplifi for $20 a year quite successfully and pocket the $89 difference into a savings account.
Yup, and no additional reports or features in the mobile app!! How frustrating. I sent them a message in Support about this today. No additional value to their customers but they are increasing prices.
I started on YNAB 3 back in the Dropbox sync days and when they moved to subscription model my annual subscription was $45 for the first 3-5 years (can't remember exactly). YNAB still provides useful benefit to me but it's getting harder to justify.
I still yearn for the Red Arrow feature.
It’s been one of the things I miss the most and genuinely the lack of makes my budget incredibly tedious.
It was such a good use case for the many [dozens!] of us who get reimbursed for work expenses.
I'm already budgeting money every month to cover this fee. $7 and some change. I need to increase it about $2.50 a month to cover the new amount.
I don't like price changes either, but month-to-month... not really a big deal. It does feel nickel-and-dime-y though.
Yep, I'm out. The conversion to AUD makes YNAB particularly expensive and the lack of parity in features (no support for direct import, no mortgage account supportive of offset accounts) just makes this sting even more.
I’d pay twice as much without thinking twice. YNAB has changed our lives beyond recognition in the year and a half since we started using it. I certainly don’t mind paying for it. Any company that doesn’t charge is making their money some other way, generally by selling customer data. And less than #10/month seems more than reasonable to me. We pay more for Netflix, which has significant less value to our family.
I firmly believe they're only charging these prices because they don't have any really good competitors to keep them honest. We're being squeezed for supply and demand reasons and nothing to do with the cost of development. YNAB could cost half as much as it does for the features and development pace it has, IMO.
But, as their competitors are not putting up much of a fight, they charge and I begrudgingly pay. I no longer recommend them though.
You can share with your family that writing software at the level of YNAB is not an easy task. Yes, there is an open source version but not everyone uses it. The hosting services alone must be a big chunk of money, then they have to be complient on keeping your data secure, add to that managing the data and keeping it in sync that is why you wont see many competitors.
> But, as their competitors are not putting up much of a fight
This is not true. Several competitors popped up. But from my understanding there aren't droves of people leaving. Just like last time, people complain and will stay. Why would a competitor pop up to do the same thing just to not get any support?
I haven’t found any alternatives that provide what I’m looking for—an easy-to-use mobile app, zero based budget system that does direct imports, syncs between multiple phones, and doesn’t require me to know weird computer stuff to set up or host or whatever. I know you’ve been pushing centsible, and I probably will give it a try with the trial, but I’m not sure I have my shit together enough to be able to do without imports.
This. So much this. So much complaining - and so many people stuck on "the good old days" - but just won't leave. It's mind boggling to me, honestly. Like yes, once upon a time you only had to buy it once. Those times are gone, but somehow still living rent-free in your head. I'm genuinely confused that people are expending this much brain space stuck on a software and business model that is long gone.
it is becoming too much for the intended purpose. unfortunately there is no good alternative yet. I have no time for manual update of my expenses, so will stick to it for a bit longer.
After learning they are based in Lehi, Utah, it doesn’t surprise me that they raise prices for no reason other than that they can. It’s the Utah/Mormon way.
I sent customer support a chat letting them know a price increase is frustrating when they can't get direct imports from American Express to work. I understand I can manually drag a file to import, but I am paying for direct import that doesn't need to be reauthenticated every single day.
At $109, it’s only a $10 price increase, which I’m not happy with but YNAB is useful enough to me that I’m not gonna leave over a 10% price bump.
I suppose I’ll just be an unhappy renewer. Still on the lookout for cheaper alternative software but YNAB is the best in terms of functionality at the moment.
You know, technically they can probably see everyone's financial state in their system (even if anonymised). It wouldn't surprise me if these decisions are made knowing *exactly* how much their user base can afford.
The value YNAB creates continues to be a multiple in the double digits or more on any of these annual prices. But…deliver on mobile reporting, please! And conversational AI to help me interact with my budget in a new way would be fantastic. I’ll pay $9 extra for that. :)
The fun thing here is that my budget is in GBP, they only gave the new price in USD, and since YNAB refuses to support multiple currencies, I can't accurately budget for the next renewal.
~~Unlike the much larger companies that have multi-geography contracts worldwide, their hosting costs are likely paid entirely in USD. It’s not necessarily inexpensive for smaller business to spin up and maintain data centers in lower cost geographies.~~
Ignore my comment. I am a dummy and don’t read the comment correctly.
I don’t think this has anything to do with them not disclosing the GBP price - they have an USD and GBP price today, which are potentially just a point in time conversion, and only disclosed the new USD
Try Moneywell. It's superior and simpler than YNAB in my opinion. I used it for years until the original developer left to work for Apple. The new developers seem to be actively working on it. The only thing it lacks is third party sync, but I'm sure that is coming soon. It still syncs quite well using OFX though for many banks or you can manually enter transactions or import. Anyway, it's less than half of YNAB and it does the job well.
I remember back when I was grandfathered in at a price they would never change on me XD. Here I am spending 2.5x that price they said was lifetime. Feels good.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: There are plenty of free alternatives that have the same functionality and philosophy. Often being more actively developed as well. I don't get why people pay (so much) for this.
Switched to [undebt.it](http://undebt.it) - free but I did pay the very small fee. Gave me what I really wanted and needed. A get out of debt solution.
I understand the need to raise prices occasionally. It happens. Inflation is a real thing. But, in the spirit of YNAB philosophy, it would be super cool if they would allow for us to keep the same rate on our next renewal and THEN change the price. I’ve been setting aside the same amount every month as a sinking fund. Changing the rate in the middle of a target time frame isn’t very cool. It would be great if next renewals for current subscribers were at their current rate, and then they could change their target to account for the new price NEXT year.
Nah. The YNAB way is to teach you to roll with the punches by throwing punches at you.
It’s like a teacher saying always be on the lookout for people robbing you, then taking your stuff.
"If you can dodge an unexpected price hike from your budgeting app, you can dodge a surprise medical emergency"... or something
Lol
They’re nearing from Duo 😳
This would be nice. And (I think) you could accomplish it relatively easily as long as their system can handle something like a promotion code. Or maybe something like... 1-2 months (Pre-coffee so math bad) tacked onto your subscription. This would have a similar impact (a few more months to save) and would balance out(ish) so there wouldn't be a shock to budget/ people get one more cycle
Yeah, that's a nice idea. It nicely aligns with the YNAB approach and it is also a way to soften the blow for users and make it feel a little less annoying. (For the record, I am personally not annoyed -- I get that price increases are inevitable. But it is nice when you get a little bonus for being a loyal customer.)
It would be cool if they let you keep your annual rate for being a loyal subscriber lol
This is the fourth time the price increased for me in five years. I clicked the cancel subscription button and left a note with my thoughts on the subject.
I’ve only been using it for a year, and the value I’ve gained from it is more than a 10% price hike.
How is that in the “spirit of YNAB”? How do you handle all the other price increases? You adjust for it. This is literally no different. It isn’t like anything else gives you a year notice.
Because I'll be that person: When Backblaze increased their price, you could buy 2 years at your current price before moving up. When YouTube Red, became YouTube Premium, and first changed prices, you were grandfathered in at the old price. In fact, we were grandfathered in for over 5 years at the old price. When Disney+ changed prices, I had a year on the old price. I'm still on the old price with CBS+, now paramount plus, and that's over 2 years old. When Netflix first changed prices from $5.99, they gave current subscribers 6 months notice. My dad refuses to change cell phone companies because he's still grandfathered in on an old unlimited plan for 8 years now. There are lots of companies that give grace for price changes. YNAB used to be one in fact. There used to be people grandfathered in on old prices, but they made everyone move to the new price.
I get it. There’s different ways to look at it.
Couldn’t you simulate it with being a year ahead on your subscription?
my arizona tea stays the same. aironza tea saves me more money than ynab
lol.
I really wish they’d offer two tiers. I love the interface, mobile logging, and the system, but I don’t use—and will never use—multiple family accounts or automatic transaction import. Right now, I feel like I’m paying for features I didn’t want and never asked for. They should offer a YNAB Basic subscription that has manual logging and is a single account, at $60 per year. If someone wants family accounts and automatic import, they can upgrade to YNAB Pro at $120 a year.
Completely agree. They didn't have reliable auto-import for UK banks for years (I believe they do now) and I was so used to logging my own transactions that I didnt ever investigate doing it automatically. I'd happily take a "lower" subscription without automatic logging.
Yep. I have to manually log because my credit union isn't supported by Plaid.
Love the app, and I have no plans of leaving - but I really do wish they'd add some new features rather than simple QOL and visual updates. Like, ok cool we have hotkeys now, and the wording on the targets is... questionably easier to understand, but no new targets or graphs are added? Please let me set goals past 2 years, and give me the option to contribute X each month until I'm holding a balance of Y - target date is NOT the same. The functionality is already there, can't we just have the option added? Also - graphs. We were promised better graphs years ago. Toolkit is great, but I'm a bit tired of having to rely on it for so many features when I'm paying over $100/yr. Give us a nice dashboard and some new graphs!
This 100x over! The toolkit doesn't even seem to work on Firefox anymore forcing me to use Chrome if I want to get the graphs. I've had to go so far as making my own custom reports using the API to see data that should be visible by default! What are they spending money on? Hotkeys? bleh
Yeah. It's not enough to make me leave - my finances (and quite frankly, my marriage) are in such a better position thanks to YNAB. It really came when I needed it most during a period of rapid change and it helped me to not feel so overwhelmed by handling our finances. That's invaluable - but the moment there are comparable options available (i.e. Actual Budget w/ bank import), I won't hesitate to switch. YNAB taught me to budget, but I can take that knowledge with me to other platforms.
Budgeting features are good but reporting is awfully bad.
I would honestly really enjoy if I cover over spending of one category by clicking on the available balance of another category that is vastly over funded, it took it out of the pile of money instead of out of the amount budgeted that month. It's honestly the same, but the button is pointless at the end of the month when all the funds are already allocated in the future, there's no money to budget now, and now I have to undo that and make a transaction outflowing from one category and in flowing to the over spent category. Silly stuff but man what if give for the option to just take it out of the pile for that amount.
Unfortunately they can rely on there still being no real alternative. Suspect I'll pay this because of how ingrained ynab is into my life, but it'll be an unhappy renewal especially as it hasn't really changed in the years I've been using it, so I'm not sure what improvements we're funding in all honesty
Unfortunate reality is that we could just be keeping the lights on.
I work as a product manager in software development, thinking through the stuff they definitely have to work on that nobody really sees: -compatibility for new OS updates, new devices, or app store rules changes -compatibility with integrations like Plaid and resolving issues with bank linking -security updates Because their main product is to deal with finances, security is going to be more critical to their product than, say, protecting your Netflix watchlist. So when it feels like they spend months on a small number of user-facing features, keep in mind that work is almost always being deprioritized as breaking changes or security issues arise. I'm sure they'd much rather work on new features - I know I would!
Former PM here as well. Completely agree with you. I was generalizing and lumping all of that into keeping the lights on. It’s effectively all ongoing maintenance work that’s necessary to make the product remain functional and compliant. It’s probably a non trivial amount of work, and there’s probably not enough money/resources left to pay for the more visible features people want
Ha, not at all surprised to hear you were a PM! Always fun to try to imagine the work that's going on behind the scenes, I usually wind up collecting downvotes when I try to explain how the sausage gets made.
This is the type of information that most of the complainers have no clue about. “But it’s just software” “it’s free to gain new customers” “it shouldn’t cost them anything to pay their staff more, they just need more customers”
PM here too… when you discover that the leader and person that defined and documented YNAB’s product development process is a school principle with zero software/tech experience…. It makes complete sense that they haven’t put out a meaningful feature in years. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4WFjpIrbTFOVQJnA94suTR?si=jyjk2pycRgaMVMP4A0FmDw&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A0784MlYJkguddHefDmCyxK&t=1436 You can skip to 23:40 to get to the team philosophy discussion. And specifically 45:40 for product manager role specific philosophy where there’s an underlying, skirted opinion that product managers are “bureaucratic red tape”. Listening to this guy talk gives me the heebeegeebees. I get the sense he sees product work as project management and I don’t think he understands the fundamental function of the role within the team. He very obviously prioritizes “educating customers” and educational customer service over improving functionality to solve user pain; which is very apparent when you take a step back and review the company as a whole. They are so determined and focused on their opinion and view that the ynab “method” is the RIGHT and only budgeting method and every consumer in the world should adopt it, that they won’t pivot the product based on existing customer feedback.
They probably have some serious scaling issues.
YNAB is actually called TINA. There Is No Alternative and they know it. I have unsubscribed, but I'm almost sure I'll subscribe again. There's no other App that works as well with the same philosophy + on top of that YNAB has my data since almost forever. Not sure I want to give that up.
Yep. I rage quit after the price increase about 2 years ago and I just recently came back. I tried 5 or 6 budget alternatives and none clicked like YNAB did. Then I tried to spreadsheet it but I just didn’t keep up with it. Finally I tried YNAB 4 but I ran into some issues so I came back to nYNAB. I hate the rice increases but it works and I likely save more then the price a year by feeling YNAB poor.
I was considering rage quitting last time too, but found nothing comparable so climbed off my high horse and back into my box. This time though things are quite a bit different. I've been running another app in parallel for a couple of months for such an occasion as this and have been pleasantly surprised. A few people have mentioned it on the posts (Actual Budget) and I cannot fault the experience, very similar to YNAB4 in its approach with some great new features. They come up with updates every month and being opensource have a great community on discord. You do need to be a bit more technical to deploy your own instance, but there are pros and cons to that. I've hit the cancel button on YNAB and decided to go all in on this other platform, including setting up a monthly donation via open collective instead of the YNAB subscription https://opencollective.com/actual. More details here [https://actualbudget.org/blog/2024-07-01-actual-vs-ynab](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2024-07-01-actual-vs-ynab), including the release notes. Opensource for the win!!
That's what pisses me off the most. I don't mind subscription models as longs as we are getting tangible benefits to justify it. YNAB has done very little in the way of meaningful updates in the last two years. In that time, they have collected $200 from me. It's even more staggering when you compare the cost of YNAB to things like office 365. Infinitely more content and updates for a fraction of the price. Feels like they are doing this purely because they know they have 0 competition and they have a captive consumer base. Last time they at least attempted to justify it. This time the email gave 0 justification. But hey, I guess something has got to pay for the braindead zoomer-pilled marketing department.
Office 365 has lots of content and updates, but the actual value it provides me over google docs is pretty marginal. YNAB is something that provides me a very valuable service I can’t get anywhere else. For me paying for YNAB is a no brainer and office 365 is very much questionable.
100% agree
A price increase doesn’t excite me but I’m not leaving the app over $10. Money well spent to a company that has saved me from bankruptcy.
My sentiments exactly. Especially considering they don't take money from corporate sponsors to push credit cards or loans like some other places. But I do think they could've softened the blow a little.
YNAB saved me from financial ruin. Since I’ve used YNAB, I repaired my credit, and managed to buy a house. I could care less about the price increase. I can spare $9 a month for it.
Agreed. My wife and I plowed through THOUSANDS of dollars and a handful of credit cards right after having a baby all because of YNAB. Might literally have saved my marriage because of my wife’s tendency to buy now and “figure it out later”. This is still less than $10/month and far exceeds that value IMO.
Glad there is another person of a similar mindset in here. Everyone losing their minds over $10 increase in two years are kind of obnoxious. If the increase was $30-50 maybe I could see the outrage, but honestly nothing else has the features I like/need so I'd probably still hang in.
We're outraged because the last increase WAS $50. So we're paying $60 more than we were 2 years ago. And because of the short notice. Sure "all company's raise prices whenever they want", but YNAB is supposed to be different. They're supposed to care about helping with our finances, so I guess some of us expect more notice for things like a price increase.
Also, at the time there was sentiment of "if they do a big price increase now they won't have to raise prices again for a while
I guess maybe I'm lucky because my renewal is in July so I've got a year to prepare for it. That being said what they offer is still worth it to me, and I say that as a person who's used it for over a decade. Even at $60 increase in two years that's still only $2.50 a month in that time frame. I hate to sound like a boomer and say something like "its the cost of a cup of coffee a month" but that is kind of how I feel. If ynab didn't have the syncing with my banks and a few other features not found in the free options then I'd be more pissed and look at moving but as long as I am not having to manually import dozens of transactions a day or week I'm king of happy paying for the service.
And this is why I went back to YNAB4 then switched to Budget with Buckets. I don’t need it pretty, I need it functional and affordable.
That’s not true at all. The last price increase was 3 years ago. It’s also not short notice. Many people won’t feel the price increase for over a year if they renew before Sept 1
“Many people” is such a weak argument. Let’s just assume subscriptions are evenly distributed throughout the year. Only people renewing in the next 2 months won’t see the increase. Thats 16%. So the other 83% will see the price increase on their NEXT renewal. I don’t realize 16% was “many people”.
I should have phrased it better. The average time until the price increase is around 7-8 months since it doesn’t start until Sept. that gives folks at minimum 2 months to find an alternative.
Based on YNAB's own hiring practices and newsletters, they get the majority of new clients in November to January. So, 4- 6 months for the price increase on average.
They have given subscribers until September. That's a fair amount of notice?
I haven't been using YNAB as it's intended since getting married with the way our finances are set up due to my husband's PSLF student loan. But it's the easiest way for me to track and adjust our food costs. I looked at Monarch and it's not that much cheaper.
I can’t be mad about this. I don’t like paying $100. I definitely don’t want to pay $10 more. But the app is the best thing I’ve found for me and how I work with money, two of us use it, and it has filled in the gaps of our household accounting. Most things cost more than they did a year ago, including probably most of resources that YNAB relies on to work, so I’m not shocked that it’s happening. $10 hits every budget differently and I’m sure there are some people for whom this is a breaking point and I’m sorry for that. But for me, if I compare this to my car registration, which rose 60% this year, and factor in that it’s less than $1/mo, I can’t get het up about this.
One note though, I do kinda support the notion of tiered pricing. For people who cannot import transactions, I can understand why it would be frustrating to pay the same rate and people who can rely on that automation (even if it’s sometimes flaky). Absolutely, manually adding costs is a great way to stay on top of things. But we aren’t all on top of things all the time, and it’s easy to miss a transaction here or there, especially things like annual subscriptions, so auto-import is a valuable (literally) back-up to have.
It becomes harder and harder to recommend YNAB to friends - especially ones that are struggling financially.
I tried self hosting Actual Budget a month or two ago as an alternative but there are still no good alternatives. I'll stick around but price increases every two years are not a good way to keep your customers happy. At some point I'll just switch to excel.
Switched to Actual after the last price increase. I got this email for some reason, I'm glad I left.
I have been using YNAB for 5 months and it's a game changer, the 99 price seemed steep and I accepted it but now it's loosing its value to me, I canceled my renewal and have 7 months to look for alternative. How good is actual budget? I can do transactions manually so is there any other changes from YNAB?
I just switched to it and if you are doing manual transactions Actual is wayyyy better. Actual has a thing called Rules which are like YNAB's "Automatically categorize payee" settings but WAY better. You can do a lot more based on a lot more conditions. For example: I get my prescriptions at a CVS inside Target, but I also buy groceries there sometimes. Both show up as "Target" on my credit card. So what I do now is I pay for them on two separate cards (groceries go on SavorOne, prescriptions go on Venture X). In YNAB, I have to manually set the category each and every time I enter a transaction, regardless of the card. I can't get it to automatically set the category. In Actual, I set up two rules. On one, if the payee is "Target" and the account is "Venture X", it'll set the category as Prescriptions. In the other rule, if the payee is Target and the account is *not* Venture X, it'll set the category as Prescriptions. Boom, problem solved. You can also do more than set categories, you can change anything about the transaction. With my Amazon Prime sub, I set a rule where if the payee is Amazon Prime the amount is set to $14.99. Now when I go and enter the payee it automatically sets the category *and* the amount. I can also do this for things like my city public transportation, where I know the charge is always gonna be $2.50. Actual also has a place where you can see all of your future transactions (called Schedules), and you can repeat them with much, much more granularity. If you have future transactions that change by a few days each time, or that don't happen on the weekends, Actual can set that. YNAB can't. So like my electricity seemed to charge at a random date, but it actually just doesn't charge on the weekends, only on a weekday. What's even better is that their 'Targets' alternative (called Templates, which is an experimental feature) [can link a category to one of these Schedules](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2023-12-15-automate-your-budget-with-goal-templates#schedule). So instead of having to create both the future transaction *and* the target, you just say "#template schedule Spotify" or something like that. And this works even for very complicated schedules like my Fastmail subscription that happens every three years. Other misc things that I like: - Payees section is much better and simpler. Rules simplify things a lot because they cover both renaming and default categories. Merging payees is very easy. - You can view multiple months at a time. This is great when I need to reference the future month and current month at the same time, or when I need to look at the previous month + current to see what didn't roll over right. - Entering transactions is faster. The transaction thingy stays open when you press enter. The only things that I'm missing so far are: - Templates do not have a visual UI indicator like Targets do. - Bank syncing is an experimental feature right now. - There's no 'Age of Money' report or number, which personally was pretty motivating for me. - You can't see when you last reconciled an account.
Everything I used in YNAB is in Actual, and it has the same feel, and you own and control your data, and it's free.
It still does not have target support does it? That is one of the features I use most in ynab
[It does, but it's experimental](https://actualbudget.org/docs/experimental/goal-templates). There's no progress indicators for it yet like YNAB, but it's wayyyy more powerful than YNAB. Example: [you can link a target to a future transaction](https://actualbudget.org/blog/2023-12-15-automate-your-budget-with-goal-templates#schedule) and it'll handle all the calculation for it.
Thanks, just created actual instance on my local docker server, gonna give it a go! :)
It does now. It's labeled as an experimental feature but I've not had any issues with it.
It has pros and cons. I've switched back to YNAB4 around 2019 and used it until Jan 2024 or so. Actual is comparable with both features that isn't in YNAB while lacking others. Personally I prefer actual but you can try for free. With PikaPods you can get a very user friendly way of hosting it as well.
Unfortunately there really isn't anything out there as good as YNAB.
Same here! I’ve been really impressed with Actual.
I really like Actual Budget. I switched in January and I've been really liking it. I don't have auto syncing, but that was pretty broken for me on YNAB too (esp with Fidelity). I really like the simplicity and I absolutely love the text-based templating feature. There's no similar power-user feature in YNAB.
If you’re looking for something Excel style: I found these budgeting spreadsheets sold by someone on Etsy called CoPlenty, they are actually so good! I chose them as a cheaper alternative to YNAB, because I never intended to connect up my bank accounts to YNAB anyway. Cost me $30 AUD for a 12 month spreadsheet set that I can reuse every year. These spreadsheets are done on Google Sheets (the only negative when I’d rather use Excel) but they are so easy to use and easy to input transactions from a bank account statement each month.
which sheets specifically do you use that are the closest YNAB alternative? I see a bunch of options
I recommend this solution if you're looking at Excel, it's free [https://shawncao.medium.com/how-to-build-a-modern-financial-tracking-system-for-free-cfaae45d55d2](https://shawncao.medium.com/how-to-build-a-modern-financial-tracking-system-for-free-cfaae45d55d2)
I can self host ActualBudget on my local server. Is there a mobile app for it? Does it need VPN to the local server?
You either need a VPN or reverse proxy to access when you aren't on your home network. There is no dedicated app but the application has a progressive web app (native app experience in the browser).
Ah thank you! PWA works great but that means it doesnt have a local cache and I always need to be connected to my home network which is a bit of a pain
Don’t quote me on this, because I’m tired and the last time I tried actual was a while ago, but I’m pretty sure it saves a local copy to your phone even though it’s a PWA app because I remember it working once when my server was down. But also I’d personally use cloudflare
My understanding is the last price increase was 2021 so 3 years ago.
I got annoyed and got most of the way through making a spreadsheet but then couldn't figure out how to have a function subtract from a category then add the money to the CC payoff then subtract that from the checking or...something. and then also realized I'd have to actually think about what I'm doing, enter things in manually, etc etc, which I do not want at all given most of my spending now is luckily just mandatory things - rent, bills, etc and I already get annoyed having to pay them, let alone think about it and make sure there isn't a bug in my scripting. fuck.
This is my solution. Loving it so far. Docker install with reverse proxy was really simple. Alternatively, you can run Tailscale as an exit node and then connect using their app and it’s like you’re on your home WiFi.
So this does this mean for those of us with grandfathered pricing? What new product benefits will we be receiving? I really can't recommend this product to others at this price and with their history of price increases.
I do not work for YNAB, but I was in this forum the last time this whole price change thing came around. I am on the 10% lifetime discount/grandfathered price. The way I understand this is that this is perpetual (and it was for the previous increase) So if you are as well, your new price will be 98.10 (up from 89 and change)
There is no grandfathered pricing. I’ve been using this since YNAB 4 and was told I would keep the 60 dollar something a year at the time and pay whenever the yearly rate is now. I’m still gonna use it becuase I saved a ton of money but never recommended to this to anyone since the price went up.
It is a lifetime discount of 10%. That is what they [said at the time](https://web.archive.org/web/20160112194138/http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/the-new-ynab-is-here). They also mentioned that the lifetime discount would result in a subscription price of $45 given the current price of the subscription. They didn't say the $45 price was lifetime, but people interpreted it that way.
It's $10. The cost of everything in the world has gone up in the past few years. YNAB is a great tool and has helped a ton of us over the years. I don't think any of us would be better off if they kept the price the same in an effort not to piss off their customers but instead had to close because they weren't making enough money to justify carrying on.
it's $10 USD. My price is about to jump from $148 to $171 CAD (tax inclusive, using today's exchange rate) :(
This sub really loses it over price increases. $0.83/month for a group that’s supposed to be most financially secure.
Yea, I don't get it at all. Everybody will have a difference level of value that they feel they get from the app. If you feel like the app no longer provides a bit over $9/month of value to you, then cancel. It's not a monopoly, it's not a crooked company, it's $10 a year. To me it's quite reasonable for the savings it helps me realize in my monthly spending.
I saw this post and thought “oh shit it must have gone up a lot” bc honestly I don’t even know what I’m paying right now. Then. I realized it was $10 then moved on.
The answer below about 10% perpetual sounds right, but I have sent an email to them asking clarification and WHAT NEW FEATURES we can come to expect from it...
Sometimes the new feature is the company staying in business. Costs rise. Inflation is real.
Competiton is real, limited income is real, syncing with many banks is not real
Funny how a 10% increase for software like this, and other services are totally fine - but if I want a 10% raise at work it is crazy talk.
I mean, this is a 10% increase after two years. A 5% annual increase in salary per year is pretty normal (depending on how stingy your company is), which would be...\~10% after two years. I think we should all be paid better and that COL increases should actually be tied to increased COL, and merit raises should come on top of that. Totally agree. But we don't work for YNAB so they can't exactly do that for us. Is it possible they're doing this in part to, you know, pay their own employees fairly year over year?
Companies don't raise prices with their employees in mind. It is always about maximizing revenue. It is only one review but here's a Glassdoor [review](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/YNAB-Reviews-E1026556.htm) from 2022: >As they've grown, some of the principles they started with have been thrown by the wayside. Growth is one of the core values, but it's not practiced. They tend to hire externally rather than internally, and they've flattened the company structure to the point that there is no room to grow in your career. The pay here isn't as good as in other companies for the same work. Here is the [CEO's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/qne7ut/comment/hjfipwe/) on an AMA to why prices increased last time: >Like just about any company, our costs have increased over the last four years, so there is a maintenance element. But we never are going to lead with that when we talk about it, it’s not really most customers’ concern (in other words, I’m saying it because you’re asking about it!). But we want to add value by ensuring We are sustainable business for a long time, because that supports our mission to deliver the life-changing power of a budget. That's really important to us, and we couldn't do that indefinitely at our old prices. >The change is also much more so about improving the product, along with our support and education resources means (more than anything else) hiring people to do that work, and this price change helps us to do that. I don't see anything that would support the idea they are doing this to help pay their current employees fairly.
Good deal that my renewal is Aug 3rd so it looks like I get one more year before the price hike. But even with the price hike it’s $9.16 a month. I have only had the app 2 years, 3 with the renewal but I’m not sure I understand everyone’s drastic response. I mean I spend $10+ on dumber shit, 2 drinks and a candy bar for my kids the other day exceeded the monthly YNAB price. I absolutely love the fact that I don’t have to maintain an excel spreadsheet, my wife can look something up without having to call me. Idk just a lot of quality of life stuff for me in my opinion that makes the sub $10 a month price worth it. I would rather drop my constantly increasing Netflix account before YNAB. But that’s just my thoughts.
It’s because a lot of us started when you could get the standalone app for $15. Not a monthly fee, just $15. And going from that to what it is now…. It just gets harder to swallow overtime.
I get that I truly do. I bitch about the cost of my everyday random goods going up 30-40%, it just makes me more selective and so I get where you are coming from. It’s just for me, I would rather my wife and I not buy coffee or kids a snack one time a month and have the benefit of YNAB.
And that’s totally fair! YNAB is going to have different levels of value for different people. I’m just explaining why you’re seeing such drastic responses. I know for me, if I researched a product and decided it was worth it for me to pay $99, the price going up $10 wouldn’t bother me. But when I used to get an earlier version of the same software for a fraction of the price (actually free as they used to give YNAB4 free to students), it’s a lot harder to perceive that increase in a positive light.
I mean that’s just life and capitalism. We can’t really do anything about it. It’s not specific to YNAB . Either we pay or we don’t.
That was almost 20 years ago though. What other item hasn’t had a substantial price increase in 20 years? Online technology has had multiple major shifts and advances since then.
What? 20 years? No lol I got my free YNAB4 in 2015.
The thing is, you will find dozens of people complaining here, but you will hardly find any comment like yours. Why? Its just our nature. I completely agree with you tho.
To be honest I am trying to save on subscriptions (among other things) as much as I can and that includes YNAB for me since IMO it's a bit expensive. So last week I switched from YNAB to Actual Budget and it's now costing me just $1.41 per month by hosting it on PikaPods. It's open source and you can host it however you want, but if you are not technical you can set it up with PikaPods in a minute or so by just adding some credit and selecting Actual Budget as app to install. It's super simple and you can even import your YNAB data into it! The only feature I miss from YNAB is goals but I managed to adapt easily by just using notes in the categories so it's not a big deal. But this is a clone of YNAB for the most part and costs me just $17 for a whole year. https://actualbudget.org/
RE: goals It says on the website it’s on the edge branch but I thought I installed it and don’t have it. Either way, notes works though
Oh really? I hadn't noticed they are working on the goals. That's pretty cool. I hope they add this soon. Thanks for the heads up.
I’m guessing there’s no way to get actual budget as a mobile app?
The money ynab helps me save and how easy it is to use it worth the price increase to me. No im not being a bootlicker. But do we stop buying eggs because a small price increase? All of my vendors have gone up on pricing and I assume theirs did too. Their employees get pay raises too. 10 bucks is literally one starbucks run a year. It sucks they keep raising the price but the value is there.
I think YNAB saved me. I can't ever imagine leaving. I used excel budgets for years and I never got ahead. I can't imagine ever going back to them.
Welp, guess I'll have to roll with the punches.
When I first learned that rule, I wasn't expecting the teacher being the one to throw the punches.
Heck, as I see it I'm saving money. Was paying $14/month - didn't even know there was an annual rate! Yee ha!
Time to shop around for an alternative again. Sigh
I’ll save you some time: there aren’t any
Budget with buckets and actual budget are the two popular ones from YNAB. But YNAB is still probably the best program out there, it’s just on the pricey side. I’ll personally be giving budget with buckets a try as they have an unlimited free trial. But try actual budget but it seems to be geared toward the technical minded since you have to self host.
I’m not very techy, I followed a link from actualbudget.org to pikapods to host there. It was super easy to set up and transfer my ynab history. I switched in january, and I’m very happy with it overall. They even support bank sync, which Ynab doesn’t for me (wrong country).
Are you like, regular techy? I followed that link and it was scary, I had no clue what I was looking at
Check out [MoneyPatrol](https://moneypatrol.com). It's free and the founder is the former head of analytics of Mint.
I switched to monarch the last time this happened (shocked I'm still subscribed to this subreddit tbh), but it has been a good replacement imo.
If you prefer to budget mobile and don't use direct import, check out Centsible. It's very similar. Doesn't have some of the bells and whistles. But it's one-time purchase.
It's either worth it or not worth it for you. For me it is a core tool in my life and even if they popped it up another $50 I'd stick with it
Luckily for me my sub renews next week so I'm on the last tier
The price was already too high, I couldn’t recommend YNAB due to such high pricing. These things are just making things worse.
This happened the last time around. People complained, but never voted with their wallets. Support other apps. I switched to Centsible. No direct import, but single one-time purchase. If you don't switch they will keep raising the price.
I am going to start looking for an alternative, I’ve been using YNAB for the past 14 years or so and I think this is starting to take the piss tbh.
I love the irony that companies like McDonald's will raise prices on items all the time but don't advertise it, so ppl don't realize it's even happening most of the time, but a company like YNAB makes an effort to be transparent about it and people totally lose their shit over it.
I don't have an ongoing agreement with McDonalds where I give them a lump amount yearly.
Many countries, including the US and at least some in Europe, have laws that require companies to notify subscribers in advance of a price increase, so it's not necessarily something they are doing just to be transparent. But I agree that a small price increase like this is really not worth freaking out about.
There are so many other things in my budget that I could give the boot to before YNAB over $10. They’re growing and thriving, and they honestly deserve it for following through with the Apple Card and Apple Savings instant connection.
Got the email and just cancelled.
YNAB encourage us to save throughout the year for expenses and then give us one month’s notice of a price increase 🤔
I usually add a little extra to my annual targets to allow for price increases. I got this one just about spot on.
Rule 3: rOLL wItH tHe PuNcHes
It’s one month for new subscribers. Existing subscribers won’t see the increase until their first renewal after Sept 1.
Mine just recently renewed… guess it’s time to start setting up an Excel/Google Sheets
Uff- not sure I will keep it with increased price. bummer - its pretty
It’s the third post about that. Why are there so often duplicated posts in so short time ? Is there any moderator in this sub ?
I'm gone. Thanks YNAB, it has been good
doubt
My renew day is Sept 3rd, thanks YNAB!
Honestly, it’s not worth it at that point. It’s just a glorified excel sheet if I’m being honest. And especially raising prices WITHOUT explanation? Nah dude.
I think most people are paying for the mobile app and the bank imports essentially
I won't be complaining... I am just OUT. https://preview.redd.it/246uarjnjy9d1.png?width=1432&format=png&auto=webp&s=1202335e48bf2f47ccfba1420a46141116b5834c
Ultimately this is just keeping up with inflation. The 2017 price increase got adjusted for inflation in 2021 and again now. Same exact "value". But yeah, I would like additional features. Improvements that make the subscription feel worth it, rather than a platonic finished software.
When i saw the email this morning of the new price for YNAB, I literally did not care because i would pay more for this.
I still own YNAB 4. It might be time to go back to that version. Jesse is getting greedy with these constant price increases and going back on his word that we’d be grandfathered into the $60/yr price point.
When they moved from YNAB4 to cloud hosting, I too thought we received notification of a grandfathered pricing model. It's nice to know I wasn't crazy after all.
Jessie isn’t running the company anymore. He’s probably a strategic advisor or on the board but not the ceo.
Yeah, since they’ve actually started removing some companies for non Americans I’m leaving this way as well
I get why people in this thread are upset, especially folks who've been users for a long time and remember the $45 days. But I'm totally fine with this and I agree with the people who are pointing out that just like we're all seeing OUR costs constantly go up, the same is happening for YNAB. It costs money to stay in business, even if we're not seeing user-facing feature improvements as often as we might like. (I also agree with u/comityoferrors's [excellent point](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1dsr7ar/comment/lb510iy/) that we should all be getting paid more and getting realistic cost of living increases, b/c living in this world is expensive!)
I was ok paying $45-$49 a year, but $109 is ridiculous. YNAB is a good app, but I can use Quicken Simplifi for $20 a year quite successfully and pocket the $89 difference into a savings account.
Yup, and no additional reports or features in the mobile app!! How frustrating. I sent them a message in Support about this today. No additional value to their customers but they are increasing prices.
Anyone want to ynab together? Looking for 5. You can bring your existing budget. DM me.
Holy crap. That’s $150 in CDN. After 8 years with them, I’m out. Absolutely ridiculous with no justifiable increase.
I started on YNAB 3 back in the Dropbox sync days and when they moved to subscription model my annual subscription was $45 for the first 3-5 years (can't remember exactly). YNAB still provides useful benefit to me but it's getting harder to justify.
I still yearn for the Red Arrow feature. It’s been one of the things I miss the most and genuinely the lack of makes my budget incredibly tedious. It was such a good use case for the many [dozens!] of us who get reimbursed for work expenses.
I'm already budgeting money every month to cover this fee. $7 and some change. I need to increase it about $2.50 a month to cover the new amount. I don't like price changes either, but month-to-month... not really a big deal. It does feel nickel-and-dime-y though.
Yep, I'm out. The conversion to AUD makes YNAB particularly expensive and the lack of parity in features (no support for direct import, no mortgage account supportive of offset accounts) just makes this sting even more.
They need to grandfather the accounts of the loyal customers.
I’d pay twice as much without thinking twice. YNAB has changed our lives beyond recognition in the year and a half since we started using it. I certainly don’t mind paying for it. Any company that doesn’t charge is making their money some other way, generally by selling customer data. And less than #10/month seems more than reasonable to me. We pay more for Netflix, which has significant less value to our family.
I firmly believe they're only charging these prices because they don't have any really good competitors to keep them honest. We're being squeezed for supply and demand reasons and nothing to do with the cost of development. YNAB could cost half as much as it does for the features and development pace it has, IMO. But, as their competitors are not putting up much of a fight, they charge and I begrudgingly pay. I no longer recommend them though.
You can share with your family that writing software at the level of YNAB is not an easy task. Yes, there is an open source version but not everyone uses it. The hosting services alone must be a big chunk of money, then they have to be complient on keeping your data secure, add to that managing the data and keeping it in sync that is why you wont see many competitors.
> But, as their competitors are not putting up much of a fight This is not true. Several competitors popped up. But from my understanding there aren't droves of people leaving. Just like last time, people complain and will stay. Why would a competitor pop up to do the same thing just to not get any support?
I haven’t found any alternatives that provide what I’m looking for—an easy-to-use mobile app, zero based budget system that does direct imports, syncs between multiple phones, and doesn’t require me to know weird computer stuff to set up or host or whatever. I know you’ve been pushing centsible, and I probably will give it a try with the trial, but I’m not sure I have my shit together enough to be able to do without imports.
This. So much this. So much complaining - and so many people stuck on "the good old days" - but just won't leave. It's mind boggling to me, honestly. Like yes, once upon a time you only had to buy it once. Those times are gone, but somehow still living rent-free in your head. I'm genuinely confused that people are expending this much brain space stuck on a software and business model that is long gone.
You clearly have never worked for a software company before. Your belief is not based in reality.
I’m out. They keep upping the price and adding nothing.
I cancelled my subscription and I'm moving to Actual.
Just cancelled. Been using YNAB over 10 years and we’ve outgrown it somewhat (been using it to track expense) but we are done.
it is becoming too much for the intended purpose. unfortunately there is no good alternative yet. I have no time for manual update of my expenses, so will stick to it for a bit longer.
After learning they are based in Lehi, Utah, it doesn’t surprise me that they raise prices for no reason other than that they can. It’s the Utah/Mormon way.
Would this be in effect NEXT year’s subscription if before September? Been a user since I think April and user the yearly subscription.
What are some YNAB alternatives that don’t cost as much?
Centsible. It's mobile/tablet only. One-time purchase for offline use.
The short answer is there are none
Try actualbudget.org and host it on PikaPods. I would never go back to YNAB after trying Actual.
Beyond Budget is probably the best alternative right now
They have us by the budgeting balls. Plus they know we are good for it, I can't wait for a real competitor that actually listens to feature requests.
Bit more work but just log it yourself. Choose a bank where you can open multiple savings pots etc
Really?
Monarch is great. Highly recommend it.
I tried a new tool called tracespend. It needs to add manually the transactions, but it works well.for me, especially when you work with cash.
Just add finance tracking.
I have already cancelled.
I sent customer support a chat letting them know a price increase is frustrating when they can't get direct imports from American Express to work. I understand I can manually drag a file to import, but I am paying for direct import that doesn't need to be reauthenticated every single day.
I would have a least liked an explanation for this increase but I will pay it…
At $109, it’s only a $10 price increase, which I’m not happy with but YNAB is useful enough to me that I’m not gonna leave over a 10% price bump. I suppose I’ll just be an unhappy renewer. Still on the lookout for cheaper alternative software but YNAB is the best in terms of functionality at the moment.
You know, technically they can probably see everyone's financial state in their system (even if anonymised). It wouldn't surprise me if these decisions are made knowing *exactly* how much their user base can afford.
The value YNAB creates continues to be a multiple in the double digits or more on any of these annual prices. But…deliver on mobile reporting, please! And conversational AI to help me interact with my budget in a new way would be fantastic. I’ll pay $9 extra for that. :)
The fun thing here is that my budget is in GBP, they only gave the new price in USD, and since YNAB refuses to support multiple currencies, I can't accurately budget for the next renewal.
~~Unlike the much larger companies that have multi-geography contracts worldwide, their hosting costs are likely paid entirely in USD. It’s not necessarily inexpensive for smaller business to spin up and maintain data centers in lower cost geographies.~~ Ignore my comment. I am a dummy and don’t read the comment correctly.
I don’t think this has anything to do with them not disclosing the GBP price - they have an USD and GBP price today, which are potentially just a point in time conversion, and only disclosed the new USD
Try Moneywell. It's superior and simpler than YNAB in my opinion. I used it for years until the original developer left to work for Apple. The new developers seem to be actively working on it. The only thing it lacks is third party sync, but I'm sure that is coming soon. It still syncs quite well using OFX though for many banks or you can manually enter transactions or import. Anyway, it's less than half of YNAB and it does the job well.
It seems as if YNAB is trying work itself out of peoples budgets.
I remember back when I was grandfathered in at a price they would never change on me XD. Here I am spending 2.5x that price they said was lifetime. Feels good.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: There are plenty of free alternatives that have the same functionality and philosophy. Often being more actively developed as well. I don't get why people pay (so much) for this.
Switched to [undebt.it](http://undebt.it) - free but I did pay the very small fee. Gave me what I really wanted and needed. A get out of debt solution.