EveryDollar alternative: track purchases without linking your bank

EveryDollar and Bankless Budget side by side

EveryDollar details are from EveryDollar's own page, read October 16, 2026. Check before you sign up, because they change.

What changes when your bank's alerts do the typing

Many card issuers can email you each time you make a purchase, and those alerts usually name the store and the amount. Gmail files each one under a label, and Bankless Budget turns it into a transaction in your budget. Here is one purchase, start to finish:

• Catching up is one import. On the free plan you press Import when you like, and everything since your last import comes in at once, up to 30 days back. On Plus, each purchase comes in as your bank sends the alert.
• You still see every purchase. Each one lands in your transaction list with its category, so you can look over the week and fix anything that's wrong. You lose the typing, not the noticing.
• Alerts you already get can count. If your bank emails you alerts today, the Gmail filter can file the old ones too, so your first import starts with purchases already in it.
• Plus tells you when you go over. You can turn on an email for when new purchases put a category, or the month's total, over budget.

How it works

1. You turn on purchase alerts at your bank and have them sent to your Gmail address.
2. A Gmail filter puts them under one label.
3. Bankless Budget fetches the messages under that label, and only those. It sends each alert's text to Google's Gemini AI to pull out the merchant, amount, date, card and a suggested category, which you can correct.

Who sets that limit: when you sign in, Google asks you to approve read-only access to your Gmail. Google grants it for the whole mailbox, because it has no way to limit an app to one label. Our code is what limits it to the label you choose. The permission can't send, delete or change email. More in Why we built a budget app that never connects to your bank and our Privacy Policy.

Turning on the alerts and making the filter takes a few minutes per bank, once. Our guides walk through it for Chase, Capital One, American Express and more. After that you sign in with Google, enter the label's name and choose a budget.

What it costs

Bankless Budget Free: up to 100 imported transactions a month, brought in when you press Import. It doesn't ask for payment details.

Bankless Budget Plus: $7.99 a month or $79 a year, for up to 1,000 bank alert emails a month. Each purchase imports as the alert arrives, you can get an email when a budget goes over, and you get CSV and Google Sheets export and three years of history.

EveryDollar Premium is $17.99 a month, or $79.99 a year, with a 14-day free trial for new users. Paid monthly, Plus costs less than half as much. Paid yearly, the two cost about the same, so the choice comes down to whether you want your bank connected and which way of budgeting suits you.

Who Bankless Budget is for

• You want a clear picture of your spending, without planning every dollar in advance. One monthly amount for each category, and a dashboard that shows what you've spent, what's left, and whether you're on pace for the month.
• You use EveryDollar's free version and typing in every purchase is where your budget falls apart.
• You'd like purchases filled in for you, but not by connecting your bank.
• Your cards can email you purchase alerts, and you use Gmail.

Who should stay with EveryDollar

• You budget zero-based and want the app built around it. EveryDollar is a zero-based budgeting app: you plan where every dollar of income goes before you spend it. Bankless Budget doesn't ask you to.
• Typing purchases in is how you stay on track. The free version's feature list says to “Manually enter and track transactions”. If that habit works for you, it costs nothing.
• You want sinking funds, paycheck planning or coaching. Those are EveryDollar features. We don't offer them.
• You're happy to connect your bank and like EveryDollar's method. Then Premium is probably the simpler choice.

What alert emails can't do

• Some alerts are thin. Not every bank names the store in its alert. When one doesn't, the purchase lands in a list for you to finish by hand.
• No alert, no transaction. Cash, and any card you haven't turned alerts on for, you add by hand in the app. Manual entries never count toward the free plan's limit.
• No balances. An alert reports a purchase, not what's left in the account.
• An AI reads the alert text. Gemini sees the content of each alert in your label, and nothing else from your inbox. We use Google's paid Gemini API, and its terms say Google doesn't use what we send to train its models or improve its products. Google keeps it only for a limited time, to check for misuse of the service.

For the wider set of ways to budget without connecting a bank, see Budgeting apps that work without linking your bank.