Emma App Alternatives: Bank-Linked Picks, and the No-Bank Option Most Lists Skip

Emma app alternatives split into two camps: bank-linked apps such as Snoop and Monzo, and manual apps that skip bank access entirely. Portofelo (ours) is in the second group: you log spending on your phone with no bank connection, and AI receipt scanning does most of the typing. Which camp suits you depends on why you're leaving Emma: the paywall, or the bank link.

All prices and plan limits below were checked against each company's own pricing or help pages in September 2026, in the currency each company publishes. One disclosure before we start: I build Portofelo, and I've listed its weaknesses as plainly as everyone else's.

Why People Look for an Emma Alternative

Most people searching for an Emma alternative have one of three reasons: features they used to get free are now on a paid plan, they're uneasy linking a bank account, or the app stopped behaving the way it used to.

The paywall. Emma's free tier, Emma Basic, now allows 2 bank logins. Custom categories, data export and manual accounts all need Emma Pro (£9.99/month) or Ultimate. Emma's own plan comparison page also lists budgeting under Plus and above. Price and plan changes come up again and again on r/UKPersonalFinance. One thread titled "Another Emma price change... best free alternatives?" still appears in Google's discussion results two years on. The bank link. Emma is built on Open Banking. Its help centre says you need to connect a current account, savings account or credit card before the app works, and manual accounts are Pro and Ultimate only. If you don't want a third-party app reading every transaction, the free version of Emma is simply not usable. Reliability. Recent Trustpilot reviews of Emma mention accounts failing to sync and balances refreshing less often than expected. Some of that isn't Emma's fault. Under UK Open Banking rules, an app can only refresh your data in the background four times a day, and every bank-linked app shares that limit. It's worth knowing before you switch to another bank-linked app expecting different results.

A fourth group arrived this summer: former Moneyhub users whose app closed and who are now shopping for a replacement.

Which alternative fits depends on which of these describes you, so the sections below are organised that way.

Emma vs Snoop

Snoop is the closest bank-linked alternative to Emma. It trades Emma's broad dashboard for a free app built around spotting bills and subscriptions you could cut, and Snoop's paid tier is a little cheaper than Emma Pro.

What Snoop does free: it links your bank accounts and credit cards through Open Banking, tracks bills and subscriptions, analyses your spending, and sends money-saving suggestions it calls "Snoops". Free users also get a credit score from Equifax and 3 custom categories, which Emma reserves for Pro. Snoop Plus costs £5.99/month or £47.99/year, according to Snoop's help centre (December 2025). Some older Snoop help pages still show £4.99, so check the in-app price. Plus adds unlimited custom categories, CSV transaction export, a net worth graph, payday-to-payday tracking, refund tracking and custom spend reports. Emma's paid tiers, for comparison: Plus £4.99/month (£41.99/year), Pro £9.99/month (£83.99/year) and Ultimate £14.99/month (£124.99/year).

Where each one wins:

• Snoop is better value if you want custom categories and export. Snoop Plus gets you both for £5.99, while Emma needs Pro at £9.99.
• Emma is the broader app. It has rent reporting, cashback, bank transfers, net worth on Pro, and more bank connections on paid tiers.
• Neither works without a bank link. Snoop's "offline accounts" are Plus-only and track a balance, not individual transactions.

Snoop is owned by Vanquis Banking Group, which bought it in 2023, and it's registered with the FCA as an account information service provider. Emma Technologies is FCA-authorised too. If your problem with Emma is price, Snoop is the obvious move. If your problem is the bank link, Snoop doesn't solve it.

Other Bank-Linked Alternatives to Emma

Monzo: Budgeting Built Into a Bank Account

Monzo isn't an app you add on top of your bank the way Emma is. It is the bank, and the budgeting tools are part of the current account.

The free Monzo account includes up to 20 Pots for setting money aside, bill Pots that pay Direct Debits and standing orders straight from a Pot, and weekly spending reports under Trends. If Monzo is where your salary lands, that covers a lot of what people used Emma for.

The catch is seeing your other banks. Connected accounts from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Amex and others need Monzo Extra at £3/month or a higher plan (Perks £9, Max from £19). Extra also adds custom categories and an automatic Google Sheets export. At £3, that's the cheapest way in this article to get Emma Pro-style categories alongside a multi-bank view. The trade-off is that you have to open a Monzo account and actually use it as your main account.

Moneyhub Has Closed Its App: Where to Go Instead

Moneyhub shut its consumer app in summer 2026 to focus only on business clients. Its help centre gave the closure date as 31 July 2026, though some press reports said mid-August. Accounts that weren't moved or exported were deleted.

The app itself didn't disappear. WPS Advisory took it over, and it continues as WPS LifeStage, which users could opt into. If you liked Moneyhub's pensions and investments view, check that first.

If you're leaving that ecosystem altogether:

• Emma is actively marketing to former Moneyhub users and is the closest like-for-like dashboard.
• Snoop is the free option if you only need spending and bills.
• A no-bank app, covered next, makes sense if the closure put you off handing your data to another aggregator.

If You Don't Want to Link a Bank at All: Portofelo (ours)

Portofelo (ours) never connects to a bank. The free tier has no caps on transactions, budgets or accounts, and includes 50 AI receipt scans a month.

Every comparison of Emma alternatives I read treats a no-bank app as a fallback for people who can't cope with Open Banking. That undersells it. Not linking a bank is a legitimate choice with real advantages:

• Nobody else sees your transactions. Your spending data lives in a database on your iPhone, not with an aggregator. Moneyhub users just learned what happens when an aggregator changes its business model.
• Nothing to reconnect. There's no refresh limit, no connection to reconfirm, and no bank that isn't supported.
• Cash counts. A bank-linked app can't see a £20 note. A manual app records it like anything else.
• You notice what you spend. Logging £14 yourself makes you register £14 in a way an automatic import doesn't.

The honest objection is that manual entry is tedious, and the tedious part is almost always the supermarket shop. That's what receipt scanning is for. Photograph the receipt and Portofelo reads the individual line items and categorises each one, so "Tesco £62" becomes what was actually in the bags. Neither Emma nor Snoop can tell you that, because a bank transaction only has a total. Pricing: the free tier is not a trial. Portofelo Pro is €2.99/month (charged in pounds on the UK App Store). It adds cloud backup and sync, CSV export, and unlimited scans. Export on Emma needs Pro at £9.99. Where it won't suit you:

• iPhone only. There's no Android app.
• No automatic imports. A missed direct debit stays missed until you log it, so a bank-linked app captures more.
• No shared or couple budgets yet.
• Receipt scanning needs a connection. The image is sent off for processing and isn't stored. Everything else works offline.

If Portofelo isn't right, Goodbudget is the other established no-bank option. It uses envelope budgeting, and its free tier has 20 envelopes, 1 account and 2 devices. It has no UK bank sync, and Premium is US$10/month.

For more depth, see budget apps that never ask for your bank login and the best offline budget apps.

What's Actually Free vs Paid on Emma

Emma's core app is free and doesn't start a subscription when you download it. Most of the features people switch over (custom categories, export and manual accounts) are Pro and Ultimate only.

Here's how Emma's own help centre and plan pages break it down (September 2026):

\*Emma's plan comparison page lists budgeting from Plus upwards, while its Basic plan page still mentions budgets. Check in the app before relying on it.

A few details worth knowing:

• Some review sites are out of date. At least one says Emma Plus unlocks custom categories. Emma's own help article says the feature is available on Pro and Ultimate only.
• Annual plans save about 30% on Emma: £41.99, £83.99 and £124.99 a year.
• Rent reporting is UK-only. Emma's help centre and plan pages give the tiers shown in the table, but its comparison page shows different ones, so confirm in the app if this feature is why you're staying.
• Ultimate adds business accounts, unlimited transfers, and sharing the plan with up to 4 people at £5.99/month each.

If you mainly want custom categories and export, that's £9.99/month on Emma, £5.99 on Snoop, £3 on Monzo Extra, or free categories plus €2.99 for export on Portofelo.

Emma and Its Alternatives at a Glance

Here's how Emma's £4.99–£14.99 tiers compare with Snoop, Monzo's current account and Portofelo's no-bank option.

If you want a wider list of free apps rather than Emma replacements specifically, see the best free budgeting apps in 2026.

A Few More Emma Alternatives Worth a Mention

PocketSmith, YNAB, Actual Budget, Chip, HyperJar, Plum and 118M8 all get suggested as Emma alternatives, but most of them solve a narrower or different problem than Emma does.

PocketSmith is a forecasting tool rather than a like-for-like Emma swap: it projects your cash flow years ahead. UK bank feeds are available through Salt Edge. It's priced in US dollars. The free plan covers 2 accounts with manual imports only, and paid plans with bank feeds start at $9.99/month billed yearly. YNAB and Actual Budget are both zero-based budgeting apps. YNAB costs $14.99/month or $109/year after a 34-day trial. Actual Budget is free and open source if you host it yourself, but its UK bank sync is limited and experimental. Both are covered in YNAB alternatives: cheaper apps that do the same job. Chip is a savings and investing app, not an expense tracker. The free Basic plan charges a 0.25% platform fee, and ChipX costs £5.99 every 28 days. HyperJar is a prepaid card that lets you split money into "jars". It's a different model from Emma, not a tracker. It's e-money, so balances aren't covered by the FSCS. Plum automates saving and investing. It has a free Basic plan, then Plus, Boost and Max at £3.99 to £14.99 a month. It won't replace Emma's spending view. 118M8, from 118 118 Money, tries to stop impulse purchases before they happen. It shows prices as hours of work and suggests a 24-hour pause. It's free, and Premium at £1.99/month adds linking other banks.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free version of the Emma app?

Yes. Emma Basic is free and doesn't start a subscription, but it's limited to 2 bank logins, and custom categories, data export and manual accounts need Emma Pro (£9.99/month) or Ultimate (£14.99/month). Emma's own comparison page lists budgeting from Plus (£4.99/month) upwards.

Which is better, Emma or Snoop?

Snoop is better value if you want custom categories and export, because Snoop Plus includes both for £5.99/month against £9.99 for Emma Pro. Emma is the broader app, with rent reporting, cashback and more bank connections on paid tiers. Both require linking a bank account.

What budget apps does Martin Lewis recommend?

We couldn't find any Martin Lewis or MoneySavingExpert recommendation of Emma, Snoop or any other specific budgeting app. MSE offers its own free Budget Planner, and Emma and Snoop only come up in users' posts on the MSE forum. Treat any "Martin Lewis recommends this app" claim with suspicion, especially in adverts.

What is the best budgeting app in the UK?

No single app is best for everyone. For automatic bank-linked tracking, Emma and Snoop are the strongest free options, and Monzo is excellent if it's already your bank. If you don't want a bank connection, Portofelo (iPhone) and Goodbudget are the main manual choices.

Is there an Emma alternative that doesn't need my bank details at all?

Yes. Portofelo never asks for bank details: you log spending by hand or by scanning receipts, and the free tier has no caps on transactions, budgets or accounts. Goodbudget also works without a bank link. Emma and Snoop both require one.

What happened to Moneyhub?

Moneyhub closed its consumer app in summer 2026 (31 July according to its help centre; some reports said August) to focus on business clients. WPS Advisory took the app over as WPS LifeStage, and accounts that weren't moved or exported were deleted.

The Verdict

If Emma's paywall is the problem, Snoop gives you custom categories and export for less, and Monzo Extra is cheaper still if you're willing to bank with Monzo. If you've come from Moneyhub, look at WPS LifeStage first, then Emma or Snoop.

If the problem is the bank link itself, another aggregator won't fix it. That's the case for a no-bank app like Portofelo: nothing to connect, nothing to refresh, and receipt scanning to cut out most of the typing.

Prices and plan details checked September 2026.