YNAB, Monarch and Copilot are excellent, and we'll say exactly what each is best at. Then we'll show you the three things none of them do — and why the automation you're paying them for is the part that works least well in Australia.
Not faint praise. These are real advantages, and if one of them is what you need, it's the right call.
The most respected method in personal finance, with twenty years of refinement behind it. Deep multi-account reconciliation and a community that answers anything within the hour.
The catch hereIts bank import covers the US, Canada and some UK banks — Australian banks aren't supported directly, so you type it in anyway or pay a third-party bridge on top of the subscription. And it wants you to budget by calendar month.
The complete picture of a household's money — budgets, investments and net worth in one place, built for two people from day one.
The catch hereThe whole proposition rests on connected accounts, and that layer is built for the US market. Take the automatic feeds away and you're paying a premium price for a manual tracker.
The best-looking money app anyone has made, with the strongest automatic categorisation in the category.
The catch hereIt's Apple-first — iPhone, iPad and Mac, with a web app that arrived recently and still trails iOS. No native Android, and bank connections run through Plaid's US institutions.
| Fortn | YNAB | Monarch | Copilot | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free to start PRO tier coming |
US$109/yr | US$99.99/yr | US$95/yr |
| Built around | Your pay cycle | Calendar month | Calendar month | Calendar month |
| Australian bank feeds | Not needed manual by design |
Via paid third party | Not the home market | Plaid, US institutions |
| Needs a banking login | Never | For automatic import | Core to the product | Core to the product |
| Works fully offline | Yes | No | No | No |
| Platforms | Any browser installs to home screen |
Web, iOS, Android | Web, iOS, Android | Apple-first; web trails |
| Loans between your own envelopes | Yes, tracked and repaid | Move money, no memory | No | No |
| Money is locked to its purpose | Yes | By convention only | By convention only | By convention only |
| Investment & net-worth tracking | Projection, not portfolios | Limited | Strong | Strong |
| Automatic categorisation | No | Partial | Yes | Best in class |
| Maturity | New | 20 years | Established | Established |
Prices are the publicly listed US-dollar rates for the standard individual plan, re-checked September 2026; Monarch also sells a higher "Plus" tier at US$199/yr, and YNAB offers a 34-day free trial. Australians pay the converted amount plus whatever their card charges for the conversion. Everything in this table is a factual claim about a competitor — if any of it has gone out of date or we've got something wrong, tell us at hello@fortnfinance.com and we'll correct it.
Every app on this page lets you move money between categories. None of them remembers that you meant to move it back — and none of them arrives knowing what the categories should be.
Groceries runs dry, so you cover it from Travel. Everywhere else that's a transfer, and the trip quietly gets smaller forever. In Fortn it's a recorded loan — denominated in the box it came from, repaid on a rhythm you set, settled at the next payrun. Your holiday fund knows it's owed.
In every other app an envelope is a label on one big pile — nothing stops you spending the house deposit on a night out except your own memory. In Fortn each box holds its own currency: money saved for Travel isn't spendable as Treats. The boundary is real, not a note to self.
Every other app hands you an empty budget and asks you to invent your own categories — the hardest part, on day one, when you know least about your own money. Fortn arrives with five letters in a fixed order and a share of your pay for each. The order is the lesson: the ground gets covered before the fun does.
That's the whole argument, and it isn't a dig — it's a market fact. The best budgeting apps were built where bank connections work, and they work least well here. So an Australian pays a premium price for the automation, then does the typing anyway, or pays a second subscription to a bridge that patches the feed.
Fortn starts from the other end: assume the typing, make it take thirty seconds on payday, and spend the design budget on what happens after the money is in — the method, the real balances, and the promise your Travel box remembers you made.