What is the difference between a budgeting app and a financial planning app?

A budgeting app helps you track and control spending. A financial planning app does that plus models your future — projecting retirement outcomes, running purchase affordability scenarios, tracking progress toward goals, and surfacing insights about your overall financial trajectory. Planning apps operate at a higher level than budgeting alone.

Are financial planning apps safe to use?

Reputable financial planning apps use bank-level 256-bit encryption and connect to your accounts in read-only mode — they can view your data but cannot move money. Look for apps that use established aggregation services (like Plaid) and have clear privacy policies explaining exactly how your data is stored and used.

Is Avenue free to use?

Avenue offers a free plan with core features. Visit gotavenue.com to see current pricing and what's included at each tier.

Best Financial Planning App: What to Look for in 2025

What Is a Financial Planning App?

A financial planning app is software that helps you manage your money with a forward-looking lens. Unlike a basic budgeting app that tells you what you spent last month, a financial planning app helps you understand where you're headed — and what you can do to shape that outcome.

The best financial planning apps do several things simultaneously:

Connect all your financial accounts in one place
Calculate and track your net worth over time
Model future scenarios (retirement projections, purchase affordability, debt payoff timelines)
Surface personalized insights based on your actual numbers
Help you set and track progress toward specific goals

Why This Category Is Growing Fast

The personal finance software market is projected to reach $1.57 billion by 2027, growing at 5.8% CAGR. Source: MarketsandMarkets Personal Finance Software Market Report (2022) — Source

Demand for financial planning apps has surged for a simple reason: people want more control over their finances, and they want it without paying advisor fees. The average financial advisor charges around 1% of assets under management annually — a meaningful sum that puts professional guidance out of reach for many.

Apps have stepped into that gap, and AI-powered tools are raising the quality ceiling significantly.

What to Look for in a Financial Planning App

Complete Account Aggregation

Your financial plan is only as good as the data it's built on. An app that only connects to your checking account is missing your investment portfolio, your 401(k), your mortgage, your credit cards. Look for apps that support broad account connectivity.

Net Worth Tracking

People who track their net worth regularly report higher financial confidence and are more likely to have three months of emergency savings. Source: National Financial Educators Council Financial Literacy Survey (2023) — Source

Net worth is the most important number in your financial life. It's the single metric that reflects whether your plan is working. The best apps track it automatically and show you how it changes over time.

Goal-Based Planning

A category breakdown of last month's spending tells you what happened. A goal-based planning feature tells you whether you're on track for what matters. Look for apps that let you set specific goals — retire at 62 with $1.2M, save $60,000 for a house down payment in four years — and show you exactly what it will take to hit them.

Scenario Modeling

The most powerful feature in a financial planning app is the ability to ask "what if?" — and get an answer based on your actual numbers. What if I put an extra $300/month toward my student loans? What if I buy a $450,000 house instead of a $380,000 house? What if I increase my 401(k) contribution by 2%?

This is where AI-powered apps like Avenue significantly outperform traditional tools.

Actionable Insights — Not Just Data

Data without interpretation is noise. The best apps don't just show you charts — they surface specific observations and recommendations based on patterns in your numbers. "Your subscription spending has increased 34% over the last six months" is more useful than a pie chart you have to interpret yourself.

How Avenue Approaches Financial Planning

Avenue was designed specifically to solve the problem that most finance apps leave unsolved: the gap between tracking what happened and planning what happens next.

Connect your accounts and Avenue builds a complete picture of your financial life — income, spending, debts, savings, investments — and then starts surfacing forward-looking insights. Want to know if your retirement savings are on track? Ask. Want to model what happens if you make extra mortgage payments? Run the scenario. Want to understand the real cost of a car purchase over five years? Avenue shows you the full picture.

The goal is to give everyday people access to the kind of rigorous financial analysis that was previously available only to those who could afford an advisor.

Bottom Line

The right financial planning app should feel less like an accounting tool and more like a knowledgeable co-pilot for your financial life. Prioritize apps that aggregate all your accounts, track net worth, support goal-based planning, and can model future scenarios. AI-powered tools that go beyond passive tracking are the new standard.

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