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Simple Balance vs. Monarch
Monarch and Simple Balance are both budget apps, and both let an AI assistant connect through MCP. Monarch costs $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year after a 7-day free trial. Simple Balance is free for three accounts in use at once, with ads, or $3 a month or $30 a year for Premium, and only Simple Balance is open source and free to run yourself. Monarch connects to your bank. Simple Balance has no bank connection today, so you import a CSV file you download from your bank.
Feature comparison.
| Feature | Simple Balance | Monarch |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted for you, and what it costs | Free, or $3 a month or $30 a year for Premium | Core: $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Plus: $199.99 a year[1] |
| A free plan, hosted for you | Yes, with every feature, for three accounts in use at once and with ads | No. A 7-day free trial, with a payment method[1] |
| Run your own copy | Yes, free, on a server you look after, with no plan, no account limit and no ads | No |
| How your transactions get in | You download a CSV file from your bank and import it, or type entries in. There’s no bank connection today. | By connecting to your bank, through Plaid, Finicity or MX[3] |
| Files it imports | CSV | CSV, in the web app[4] |
| How budgets work | A budget for each category or group, which can carry what’s left into the next month | Flex budgeting, or a budget for each category[5] |
| Sharing with a partner | No. Each person who signs up has their own books. | Other members of your household, at no extra cost[2] |
| Open source | Yes, under the AGPL-3.0 license | No |
| AI assistants | An MCP server an assistant can sign in to, to read, to propose entries for you to approve, or to make changes as you allow | An official MCP connector for assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT, read-only unless you allow changes[6] |
| Where you use it | A web browser, on a computer or a phone. There’s no app-store app. | The web, iPhone, iPad and Android, in the US and Canada[1][2] |
When Monarch is the better choice.
- You want transactions to arrive from your bank on their own. Monarch connects to your bank, and Simple Balance doesn’t today.[3]
- You share your money with a household. Monarch adds its members at no extra cost, and Simple Balance gives each person separate books.[2]
- You want an app from an app store, on a phone or an iPad.[1]
When Simple Balance is the better choice.
- You’d rather pay less, or nothing. Simple Balance’s free plan has every feature, and it isn’t a trial.
- You live outside the US and Canada, where Monarch says it isn’t available.[2]
- You want to read the code or run your own copy. Simple Balance is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, and free to run yourself with no limit and no ads.
- You keep money in more than one currency. Each account keeps its own, and nothing is converted at an exchange rate.
- You’d rather check each transaction before it counts. Everything you import waits on Staged until you commit it.
Moving from Monarch.
Monarch exports your transactions as a CSV file from its web app: for one account from that account’s page, or for every account under Settings, then Data.[7]
Simple Balance puts every row of a file into the one account you choose, so a file that holds more than one account needs splitting into one file per account first. Its amounts have to be plain numbers, without a currency sign, and a row that can’t be read waits on Staged for you to fix rather than counting.
Your bank’s own CSV files work as well, and they’re what the import is built for. Budgets don’t come across either way: set them up again on Budgets, and the bills that repeat on Recurring.
Importing a statement, step by step