Founded in 2007 as a free credit score and monitoring service, Credit Karma became the destination Intuit recommended when it shut down Mint in 2024. The platform now includes spending, cash flow, and net worth insights, but its core experience remains focused on credit health and personalized financial product recommendations.
Why it’s worth considering a Credit Karma alternative
People who relied on Mint to actively manage a budget may find the Credit Karma experience limited. Lunch Money is built for that hands-on work, with category budgets, custom categories, transaction splits, and controls for excluding one-off expenses from monthly totals.
Credit Karma is free and earns commissions when members are approved for recommended financial products. Lunch Money is customer-funded and ad-free, so the product is centered on helping people understand their spending and manage a budget. If you’re looking for a dedicated budgeting app after Mint, Lunch Money may be a better fit.
Meet Lunch Money
The budgeting app ex-Mint users keep telling us they wish they had sooner. Real budgets, unlimited custom categories, transaction splits, multi-currency, and a clean interface that isn't trying to sell you a credit card.
Credit Karma
⚡ Actually build a budget
Set spending limits on any category, and use the budgeting method that fits: zero-based, 50/30/20, envelope-style cash stuffing, or a rolling budget with custom periods.
Categorizes past spending but doesn't let you set a budget or spending limit to follow for the coming month.
⚡ Unlimited custom categories & splits
Create unlimited categories and subcategories, and split a single transaction across as many of them as you need. That Walmart trip really was 60% groceries and 40% home supplies.
Locked to Credit Karma's preset categories with no splits and no custom categories.
⚡ Exclude one-off expenses
Bought a car? Paid a medical bill? Mark those transactions as excluded and they stop distorting your budget and net-worth totals, without hiding them from your history.
Every transaction counts against your monthly totals, whether it's coffee or a down payment.
⚡ Net-worth tracker done right
Break down assets and liabilities over time so you can see exactly what's helping (or hurting) your net worth, not just a single trend line.
Shows a basic assets-vs-debts chart with a flat list of current balances below it.
⚡ Native multicurrency
Spend in multiple currencies? Lunch Money supports 160+ of them across accounts, budgets, transactions, and reports, all rolled up in your primary currency.
USD-only. International accounts and travel spending aren't handled natively.
⚡ Collaboration built in
Invite a partner, family member, or financial coach with their own login. They can categorize transactions, adjust the budget, or run their own alongside yours.
Single-user account. No way to share access with a partner or coach.
⚡ No ads, no data selling
By paying for a subscription, you're supporting an independent team and making sure the product's incentives stay pointed at you, not at a lender.
Free because it makes money on credit-card and loan offers, with ads and upsells throughout the interface.
⚡ Public developer API
Build your own automations, dashboards, and integrations with our developer API, or plug into the growing community-built tools ecosystem.
No public developer API. You get whatever Credit Karma decides to ship.
Ex-Mint users who moved to Lunch Money instead
Plenty of people tried Credit Karma after the Mint shutdown, decided it wasn't a budgeting app, and landed here.
It's so nice to have something like Mint but better and that isn't trying to sell me a credit card or mortgage refinancing or whatever other junk they'd added in there over the years.
I love how Lunch Money allows me to see all my finances in one place, without worrying about having my data sold to the highest bidder.
Lunch Money is what Mint should have been. After just a week of using Lunch Money I eagerly deleted my Mint accounts.
