An API lets apps share data. Lunch Money has one, which means your budgeting data isn’t locked inside our app– a concept we support called data portability.
You can use it to bring in transactions from banks we don’t connect to, see your budget on a home-screen widget or an e-ink display, ask an AI assistant about your spending, or connect Lunch Money to thousands of other apps through Zapier. Often, you can do these things without writing any code yourself.
Here’s what’s possible today, and how to get started safely.
What is an API, anyway?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. In plain terms, it’s a set of requests one program can send to another, like “give me last month’s transactions” or “add this expense to Groceries.”
The Lunch Money API lets other tools access and update your data. To connect a community-built tool or create your own, you will need an access token in Lunch Money. Think of that token as a key to your budget: whoever holds it can get in, so you decide who gets one.
What you can do with it today
The Lunch Money community has built many tools that are listed in our developer directory. They’re independent projects and setup requirements vary, so read each one’s instructions before you get started.
Bring in transactions from banks we don’t connect to
Lunch Money users live all over the world, and community importers help fill gaps in bank coverage.
In Canada, there are tools for RBC and TD accounts, plus lunchsimple for Wealthsimple activity. For UK and EU accounts, options include LunchFlow and Synci– both require separate paid subscriptions.
Synci’s Bank Connections screen, with a Morrow Bank credit card linked to a Lunch Money account.
Further afield, assorted-to-lunchmoney imports from Japanese banks via Money Forward, lunchmoney-fintoc-sync works with Chilean banks through Fintoc, and seb-lunchmoney-sync connects European banks through Enable Banking. The latter has been tested with SEB in Sweden.
See your budget at a glance
The TRMNL plugin shows your budget on TRMNL, an e-ink display you can keep on a desk or shelf.
The Lunch Money plugin on a TRMNL e-ink display, with spending by category.
On your phone, lunchwidget for Android and Leftover Lunch Money for iOS offer home-screen widgets that show what’s left in your budget. There’s also lunch-buddy, a web app for tracking budget progress.
Ask an AI assistant about your money
MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is a standard that lets AI assistants like Claude work with outside tools.
With a community-built Lunch Money MCP server, you can ask questions such as “How much did I spend on restaurants last month?” or “Show me my largest uncategorized transactions,” without building a traditional app from scratch.
Claude, via a community Lunch Money MCP server, answering a question about last month’s coffee spending.
Connect other apps without code
Our official Zapier integration connects Lunch Money to more than 8,000 apps. You could log new transactions in Google Sheets, get a Slack or email alert for large purchases, or use our pre-built Zap to categorize unreviewed transactions with AI.
Lunch Money actions in Zapier: create a transaction, create a tag, or update an existing transaction.
Some workflows require a paid Zapier plan. Here’s how to get started.
Tidy up and categorize automatically
Community tools can also help with transaction cleanup. lunchmoney-amazon categorizes Amazon purchases and adds order numbers, while email-to-lunch-money uses email receipts from places like Amazon and Lyft to update your transactions.
How email-to-lunch-money turns tagged Gmail receipts from Amazon, Lyft, and Apple into Lunch Money updates.
If you track shared expenses in Splitwise, lunchable-splitlunch can bring them into Lunch Money.
Explore different ways to view your data
Bento Cash is an alternative interface that brings together spending trends, category drill-downs, account balances, and investments.
lunch-sankey turns your transactions into a Sankey diagram, a visual showing how money flows from income into spending categories.
A lunch-sankey diagram of income flowing into spending categories such as Food, Shopping, and Restaurants.
And if you like working in a terminal, lunchtui lets you manage your Lunch Money data from the command line.
Do I need to be a developer?
No, though the amount of setup depends on the tool. For instance, Zapier doesn’t require any code while some services have their own websites and several community projects can run in your browser.
For projects without a dedicated UI or requiring self-hosting, AI coding assistants help you get set up. You can point one at our v2 API documentation and describe what you want, like “a script that lists my uncategorized transactions” or “a chart of monthly spending by category”. Because it’s working from public docs, the assistant doesn’t need to see your financial data.
Whatever you try, start somewhere safe. The mock server lets you try API requests against sample data, with no token and no risk to your budget. When you’re ready to test with an account, we recommend starting off with a budget with demo data. Changes made through the API are permanent, so we recommend this approach before pointing anything at your real data.
If you do write code, there’s an official TypeScript SDK to help you get started.
Using the API safely
Here are some quick tips on how to use the Lunch Money API safely:
- Treat your access token like a password. Any tool or service you share it with can access and modify that budget’s data.
- One token per tool. Give each app or service its own token with a descriptive name. That way, you can cut one off without affecting the rest.
- Keep tokens out of chats and public content. That includes AI chat windows, Discord, screenshots, and public code. MCP servers and scripts can read your token from a config file or environment variable instead.
- Revoke tokens you no longer use. You can revoke any token from the Developers page in Lunch Money. This stops future access, though it can’t unsend data that’s already been shared.
Where to go next
- Browse the community project directory to see a list of existing tools, including mobile apps, browser extensions and bots.
- Visit the Lunch Money Developer Portal for the v2 API docs, a guide to getting started, and the mock server.
- Join our Discord and ask questions in the #developers channel, or see what people are making in #show-and-tell.
- Sign up for Building with Lunch Money, our newsletter about community projects, API updates, and practical ways to use your data beyond our app.
- Our guide to using the API with AI explores ways to leverage AI to help build your own custom tools.
Have you built something with the Lunch Money API, or is there a tool you wish existed? Share it on Discord or add your project to the directory. We’d love to see what you make!
