Goodbudget vs Hearth Budget: Digital Envelopes, With or Without Bank Sync

Goodbudget is the digital descendant of the cash envelope system: deliberate, manual, and proud of it. Hearth Budget uses the same envelope method but adds bank sync with a shared review inbox, so transactions arrive on their own while you and your partner stay in charge of the budget.

If you're choosing between these two, you already like envelopes. Good. The real decision is how the transactions should get into them.

Where Goodbudget shines

It's the purest envelope app around. Goodbudget has been doing digital envelopes since the days when it was called EEBA, and the method is implemented faithfully. Fill your envelopes when you get paid, spend from them, stop when they're empty. There's no feature sprawl pulling you away from the core idea.

Manual entry as a feature, not a gap. Goodbudget deliberately has no automatic bank sync. You enter transactions by hand or import a file from your bank. For some people this is exactly right: typing each expense keeps you honest, and nothing enters your budget without passing through your own fingers. If you believe automation is where mindfulness goes to die, Goodbudget agrees with you.

A long track record and a real free tier. Goodbudget has been around for well over a decade, and the free plan (about 20 envelopes and 1 account) is enough for a simple household budget to run indefinitely. Households can share a budget across devices, so a couple can both log expenses.

Where Hearth is different

Bank sync, but with a review inbox. This is the headline difference. Hearth's bank sync (new, in beta) connects US and Canadian banks through Plaid, and transactions arrive in a shared review inbox. Nothing touches the budget until you or your partner confirms it, so automation never silently miscategorizes anything. Once a merchant rule exists ("always put Spotify in Subscriptions"), confirming is one tap. Refunds are handled too.

Here's why we built it that way. Most apps make you choose between automatic (convenient, but you stop paying attention) and manual (mindful, but tedious). Goodbudget picked manual. Fully automatic apps picked convenient. The review inbox gives you both: transactions arrive on their own, but you stay the one who decides. If you've been doing manual entry for years and quietly falling behind every busy week, this is the middle path. We compared the two approaches in more depth in automatic vs manual expense tracking.

Built around two people. Goodbudget supports household sharing, and it works. But Hearth starts from the couple: you share a "nest," the envelopes are shared by default, and both partners see the same numbers in real time. The review inbox is shared too, so either of you can clear it over morning coffee. Budgeting together stops being one person's chore.

Small quality-of-life extras. Streak tracking makes daily logging a habit rather than a backlog. Receipt scanning reads line items so a grocery run doesn't become typing practice. Spending analysis shows you where the month actually went. iOS and Android, like Goodbudget.

Price

Goodbudget: free tier with about 20 envelopes and 1 account. The premium plan is about $10 a month or $80 a year, at the time of writing, which unlocks unlimited envelopes and more accounts. Note that premium still doesn't add bank sync; that's a philosophy, not a paywall.

Hearth Budget: free to start. Hearth Plus, which includes bank sync, is $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year.

Both have genuinely usable free tiers, which is rarer than it should be. On the paid side, Hearth Plus at $34.99 a year is less than half of Goodbudget's premium, and it includes the bank sync that Goodbudget doesn't offer at any price.

Which should you pick?

Pick Goodbudget if you want strictly manual budgeting, on purpose. If typing every transaction is part of the practice for you, Goodbudget is the most committed tool for that, and adding bank sync you'll never use would be paying for nothing.

Pick Goodbudget if a long track record matters to you. It has been quietly doing one thing well for a very long time, and there's comfort in that.

Pick Goodbudget if you don't want to link a bank account at all, for security or privacy reasons. That's a legitimate stance. (If you're on the fence, we wrote honestly about the question in is it safe to link your bank account to a budgeting app.)

Pick Hearth if you like the mindfulness of manual entry but keep falling behind. The review inbox keeps the "you decide" part and removes the "you type everything" part.

Pick Hearth if you're budgeting with a partner and want the app to assume that from the first screen: shared nest, shared envelopes, shared inbox, same numbers for both of you.

Pick Hearth if you want the cheaper premium. $34.99 a year versus about $80, with bank sync included.

Two envelope apps, one honest fork in the road: do you want transactions to arrive on their own, or do you want to carry each one in yourself?

See your envelopes first

Whichever way you lean, you can sketch your envelopes right now with our free envelope budget planner, no signup needed. And if the review inbox sounds like your middle path, Hearth is free to start; the full Plus details are on our pricing page.