About DonkeyBucks
DonkeyBucks is a finished, hosted, genuinely cheap personal finance app with a real free tier. It sorts your spending for you and shows what you can actually change. It works from the statement file you download from your bank, so it never touches your bank login.
How it started
Mint shut down in early 2024 and left millions of people without a free budgeting option. The alternatives were either expensive ($10-15/mo), required serious philosophical commitment (YNAB), or upsold wealth management to people who just wanted to know where their money was going.
DonkeyBucks was built out of that frustration: a tool that just tells you what you can actually change about your spending, with none of the guilt and none of the upsell. Built independently, with a bias toward shipping over polishing.
The philosophy
Most budgeting apps lecture. They show you what you spent on restaurants and imply you should feel bad about it. DonkeyBucks does not do that.
Instead, it asks a more useful question: of everything you spent this month, how much was genuinely flexible? Your rent is fixed. Your Netflix is a choice. Your groceries are essential but variable. That one impulse purchase was a one-off. Knowing the difference tells you where you actually have room to maneuver.
Personality in the margins, sobriety in the numbers. The app should have some warmth and humor without obscuring the actual data.
Costs are transparent. The Free tier is genuinely free: CSV import, manual entry, your full picture, a monthly plan. Pro is $2.99/mo (or $29/yr) and adds automatic sorting, alerts when a bill goes up, your own sorting rules, a monthly money story, and plain-English answers about your money. Every new account gets 30 days of Pro free, no credit card required. When the trial ends, you drop to Free and keep all your data. We email before anything ever charges. No surprise billing.
What makes it different
- Locked in or flexible: Not just categories. DonkeyBucks separates the bills you are locked into from the spending you can actually change. You see what you can change, not just what you spent.
- Works from your statements: Every plan runs on the files you upload (CSV statements) or transactions you enter by hand. DonkeyBucks does not offer bank connections and never asks for or stores a bank username or password. Your statements, your upload, your numbers.
- CSV-first: Import from any institution via CSV with full column mapping and date format detection.
- Automatic sorting with real limits: Purchases sort themselves, and statement lines like “SQ *BLUE BTL CO” get a plain name. Daily limits keep it affordable, and we are honest about what it sends where.
Not to be confused with
DonkeyBucks at donkeybucks.com is a personal finance app. It works from statement files you upload or purchases you type in, and it never asks for a bank login. It is not connected to any earlier site that used the donkeybucks.com name, or to any paid-to-click or fake-money scheme.
Where it is now
DonkeyBucks is live and actively developed, built and run by its founder, Sean Wright. It sorts your purchases, spots bills that repeat and bills that went up, keeps money moved between your own accounts out of your totals, and builds a monthly plan from your real numbers. The foundation is solid, and new features ship regularly. If you are an early adopter type, this is a good time to try it.