Forbidden Finance · Comparison
Forbidden Finance vs Monarch Money
Monarch is a subscription personal-finance app covering budgeting, net worth, investments, and goals, with unlimited household members included. It grew rapidly as the leading Mint replacement and sells two tiers, Core and Plus.
Monarch Money is best for: Households that want unlimited members and deep investment analytics under one subscription.
Facts about Monarch Money were checked against their published pages in August 2026; every cell links its source. Spot something out of date? Tell us at support@403fin.io and we'll fix it.
At a glance
| Dimension | Forbidden Finance | Monarch Money |
|---|---|---|
| The basics | ||
| Price | Free tier forever; paid plans $4.99–$14.99/mo. No free trial — 30-day money-back guarantee on web purchases. | No free tier. Core $14.99/mo or $99.99/yr; Plus $199.99/yr (annual only); 7-day trial.↗ |
| Business model | Subscriptions only. No ads, no data sales, no cross-sells. | Two-tier subscription; no third-party ads in product. Venture-funded ($75M Series B, 2025).↗ |
| Security & privacy | ||
| Data selling & ads | We never sell user data, share it with advertisers, or build behavioral profiles for third parties. | States it will never sell financial data; discloses sharing device/analytics data with advertising partners for retargeting, with an opt-out.↗ |
| Bank credentials & tokens | Bank credentials never touch our servers (entered with regulated aggregators); sensitive tokens encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage. | Data encrypted at rest and in transit; credentials handled by its aggregators.↗ |
| Encryption inside the database | Sensitive financial fields are sealed under encryption keys unique to each account before they reach the database; keys live in a separate key service. Amounts are aggregated in memory after decryption, so financial values never need to sit readable in the database. | Not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗ |
| Database-level isolation | PostgreSQL row-level security enforces per-account isolation inside the database engine itself. | Not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗ |
| Deletion & export | Self-serve: 30-day recovery window, then permanent deletion and destruction of the account’s encryption keys. Full data export on every tier. | Self-serve permanent deletion; CSV transaction download.↗ |
| Sign-in security | Passkeys, authenticator-app (TOTP) MFA, biometric unlock, session management. | 2FA plus one-time passcodes on unrecognized devices. Passkeys: not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗ |
| Security testing & audits | Built by a founder with a professional penetration-testing background; an independent, human-led penetration test is scheduled ahead of full launch. Not yet SOC 2 certified — we say so plainly. | First-party SOC 2 claimed, with a trust center. Its own penetration-testing or bug-bounty program is not publicly documented (the "strongest bug bounty" its page cites belongs to its data providers).↗ |
| Features | ||
| Bank sync | US & Canada via regulated aggregators (daily + updates when your bank reports changes); UK/EU via bring-your-own open-banking connections; CSV & JSON import. | Three aggregators — Plaid, Finicity, MX — with user-selectable provider per institution; CSV import.↗ |
| Budget methods | All 8 methods: 50/30/20, Pay Yourself First, Zero-Based, Envelope, Kakeibo, FIRE, Values-Based, Custom. | Two approaches: Flex budgeting (default) and category budgets with rollovers; zero-based style possible but not enforced.↗ |
| Investment tracking | Brokerage connections with holdings, activity & cost basis (Pro+); per-lot detail and tax-lot CSV export (Premium). | Holdings with benchmark-relative performance; cost-basis gains/losses and Morningstar analysis on the $199.99/yr Plus tier.↗ |
| Multi-currency | 1 / 3 / 10 / unlimited currencies by tier, with exchange-rate conversion. | Effectively single-currency: displays $ only, no conversion; USD/CAD recommended.↗ |
| Partner / household | 1 partner (Pro) or up to 5 users (Premium). You choose exactly which accounts to share; partners work in a shared budget while each also keeps a private budget; connection slots can be lent. | Unlimited household members, each with their own login, at no extra cost; advisors can be invited.↗ |
| Platforms | Web (installable PWA), iOS, Android. Android direct download available today; app-store listings Coming Soon. | Web, iOS, Android (+ Apple Vision); no native desktop app.↗ |
| Open source / self-host | Proprietary, not self-hostable. The exit stays open: full data export on every tier. | Proprietary, no self-host, no general developer API; one open-source Mint-export tool.↗ |
Security, side by side
We compare only what Monarch Money publicly documents. "Not publicly documented" means exactly that — it is not an accusation, and plenty of solid engineering never makes it to a marketing page. Here's what each side is willing to put in writing.
What Forbidden Finance puts in writing
- Data selling & ads: We never sell user data, share it with advertisers, or build behavioral profiles for third parties.
- Bank credentials & tokens: Bank credentials never touch our servers (entered with regulated aggregators); sensitive tokens encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage.
- Encryption inside the database: Sensitive financial fields are sealed under encryption keys unique to each account before they reach the database; keys live in a separate key service. Amounts are aggregated in memory after decryption, so financial values never need to sit readable in the database.
- Database-level isolation: PostgreSQL row-level security enforces per-account isolation inside the database engine itself.
- Deletion & export: Self-serve: 30-day recovery window, then permanent deletion and destruction of the account’s encryption keys. Full data export on every tier.
- Sign-in security: Passkeys, authenticator-app (TOTP) MFA, biometric unlock, session management.
- Security testing & audits: Built by a founder with a professional penetration-testing background; an independent, human-led penetration test is scheduled ahead of full launch. Not yet SOC 2 certified — we say so plainly.
The full story, including what we're NOT certified for, is on the Security & Privacy page.
What Monarch Money documents
- Data selling & ads: Privacy policy: "We will never sell your financial data." Some cookies "may allow our Advertising Partners to receive your Device/IP Data and Web Analytics Data for targeted advertising purposes" (Do Not Sell opt-out available). OpenAI is named as a service provider for AI features.↗
- Bank credentials & tokens: Security page also claims first-party SOC 2 certification — the only one of the big subscription apps to do so — with a trust center at trust.monarch.com.↗
- Encryption inside the database: Monarch documents encryption at rest/in transit and SOC 2; per-user encryption keys and specific algorithms are not publicly documented.↗
- Database-level isolation: Not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗
- Deletion & export: No fixed post-deletion recovery or purge window is published; retention is "for as long as necessary to provide you with our Services or to perform our business or commercial purposes."↗
- Sign-in security: 2FA plus one-time passcodes on unrecognized devices. Passkeys: not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗
- Security testing & audits: First-party SOC 2 claimed, with a trust center. Its own penetration-testing or bug-bounty program is not publicly documented (the "strongest bug bounty" its page cites belongs to its data providers).↗
Where Monarch Money is a better fit
An honest comparison cuts both ways. If these match what you need,Monarch Money is a fine choice — we'd rather you pick the right tool than churn out of the wrong one.
- Bigger households: unlimited members with their own logins under one subscription, no per-seat fee — we cap at 1 partner (Pro) or 5 users (Premium).
- Deep investment analytics: benchmark-relative performance, and on Plus, cost-basis gains/losses with Morningstar-powered analysis.
- Connection resilience: three aggregators (Plaid, Finicity, MX) with the ability to re-link a stubborn institution through a different provider.
- Vendor attestation: Monarch claims its own SOC 2 certification and runs a public trust center — a document you can actually request.
- Shipped AI today: an AI Assistant, AI insights, and weekly recaps are live (ours are Coming Soon).
Trade-offs to know about Monarch Money
- Effectively single-currency: $ display only, no conversion, USD/CAD recommended
- No free tier; Plus features cost $199.99/yr on top of Core
- Discloses sharing device/analytics data with advertising partners for retargeting
- Doesn’t publicly document row-level or per-user encryption inside its database
Why pick Forbidden Finance over Monarch Money
Shipped today
- A free-forever tier and cheaper paid ladder — Monarch has no free tier at all.
- Real multi-currency with conversion; Monarch recommends USD/CAD only and converts nothing.
- Investment holdings with cost basis from $9.99 Pro — Monarch gates gains/losses behind $199.99/yr Plus.
- Per-account encryption inside the database with key destruction on deletion — Monarch claims SOC 2 but doesn’t document row-level protection.
- No retargeting data sharing: our marketing runs consent-gated, pageview-only analytics.
- 30-day money-back guarantee on web purchases instead of a trial that auto-converts.
On the way
- Flexible budget periods — pick your own start date and frequency, or alternate phases: run a 6-month budget, or three high-income months followed by three lean ones, the way contractor income actually works Coming Soon
- AI-powered insights (privacy-gated, on open models) Coming Soon
- API access Coming Soon
- MCP connector for AI assistants Coming Soon
- Dedicated FIRE planning tools Coming Soon
- Debt payoff tools Coming Soon
Unshipped features stay labeled until they're real — that's the same honesty rule the rest of this page runs on.
Switching from Monarch Money?
Export your data from Monarch Money, then bring it in with Forbidden Finance's CSV & JSON import — available on every tier, including Free, so you can test-drive with your real data before paying anything. The help docs walk through imports step by step.
Common questions
Monarch Core is $14.99/month or $99.99/year, and Plus is $199.99/year, with no free tier (7-day trial). Forbidden Finance has a free-forever tier and paid plans from $4.99 to $14.99/month — with investment tracking included from the $9.99 Pro tier rather than a separate premium tier.
Monarch’s privacy policy states "We will never sell your financial data." It also discloses that some cookies allow advertising partners to receive device/IP and web-analytics data for targeted advertising (with an opt-out), and names OpenAI as a service provider for its AI features. Forbidden Finance never sells user data, runs no ads, and its AI features (when they ship) run privacy-gated on open models.
Not meaningfully — Monarch displays everything with a $ symbol, performs no conversion, and recommends connecting only USD or CAD accounts. Forbidden Finance supports 1 to unlimited currencies by tier with exchange-rate conversion.
It is the app most Mint users migrated to — Monarch reported roughly a 20-fold subscriber increase in 2024 and raised a $75M Series B in 2025. The trade-off versus Mint is that Monarch is a paid subscription with no free tier. Forbidden Finance offers a different trade: a free-forever manual tier, cheaper paid tiers, and a stated no-data-sales, no-ads model at every level.
Ready to Take Control?
Join thousands who've stopped guessing and started growing.