Buddy Review 2026: Lovely to Use, Shaky on Bank Sync

Buddy is the budget app people describe as the one they actually kept using. The App Store numbers back that up: an average of 4.7 from about 9,500 US ratings, eleven years on the store. This review uses only what Buddy publishes on its App Store listing, website and privacy policy, fetched on 12 September 2026. Buddy's FAQ, Premium and help pages would not load that day, so anything they would have settled is marked unverified. There is more of that than we would like.

What Buddy is

Buddy: Budget Planner App is made by Buddy Budgeting AB in Stockholm and first appeared on the App Store on 14 November 2014. The current build is version 13.46, released 8 September 2026, requiring iOS 18.0 or later, at 159.8 MB. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Macs with Apple silicon and Apple Vision. No Android app.

The pitch in the description is prevention rather than accounting. Buddy "will help you not to overspend", with a budget plan, a partner who can see "who spent what", and imports of "all transactions from your bank account".

Pricing, as listed

The description states that "Buddy offers a $9.99 monthly renewing and a $49.99 yearly renewing subscription to unlock Premium functionality." Straightforward enough. The US in-app purchase list is not: alongside those two it shows Buddy Premium entries at $4.99, $16.99, $24.99 and $34.99, none of them labelled with a period. Reviewers mention a lifetime Premium, and no official page confirms one is sold today.

The free tier is the biggest hole in this review, because none of Buddy's fetched pages define one. Recent App Store reviews contradict each other. Some describe a perfectly usable free version, one of them mentioning ten categories. Others say the app is a 7-day trial and then a subscription, and that this was not made clear before setup. A featured App Store review also refers to a 7-day trial. Until Buddy writes it down somewhere, you find out on your own phone, which is not a great way to learn what an app costs.

What it does well

Bank import is the centrepiece and it is properly built. Transactions come in through Plaid Technologies and Salt Edge, and the privacy policy is explicit that Buddy never asks for or stores your online banking credentials. That is the right architecture and Buddy deserves credit for stating it plainly.

The two-person features are the ones with real thought in them. A shared budget with a partner shows who spent what, and the Split feature "lets you know who paid what, and how to settle up". Recent reviews praise running several independent budgets and bi-weekly budgeting, which is a period most apps ignore and a lot of people are actually paid on.

Then there is how it looks. The description promises "a beautiful & detailed overview of your spendings, income, and savings", and recent reviews call it the most user-friendly budgeting app they have used. Design is easy to dismiss in a money app. It is also the reason people open one twice.

The ordinary things are all present: recurring transactions, notifications, renamable categories, credit cards that show what you owe, all per the release notes. An Apple Watch app, plus iPad, Mac and Apple Vision versions, take it past the phone.

Manual entry deserves its own mention, because Buddy's marketing buries it. Recent reviews describe using the app without linking any account and preferring it that way. Behind the scenes, the privacy policy says AI providers, including Anthropic, may handle categorization, summaries, insights and support.

Where it falls short

Bank sync is the most common complaint, which is awkward for an app built on bank sync. Recent App Store reviews describe connections that stop working, transactions duplicated or re-categorized on resync, and an update that removed the chance to review imports before they land. Several of those reviews add that nobody answered when they asked for help.

The paywall surprises people. Recent reviews say the app should advertise that it costs money, describe a subscription prompt appearing before setup could finish, and object to a 7-day trial that was not obvious going in.

Numbers not adding up comes next: wallets that do not match accounts, rounding to whole dollars, and a credit card balance shown with the wrong sign, which the release notes later addressed. A handful of recent reviews report repeated crashing. One asks why a budget app needs location access, and it is a fair question that nothing in Buddy's materials answers.

The last gap is structural rather than buggy. No voice entry, no receipt scanning, no Apple Pay automation; none appears in the description, release notes or privacy policy. Buddy's automation is the bank, and when the connection breaks, you are typing. There is also no Android app, which quietly undermines the shared-budget pitch the moment your partner is not on an iPhone.

Privacy, in Buddy's own words

"We are established in Sweden and primarily store and process personal data within the EEA. However, some of the third-party service providers we use, including Open Banking service providers such as Plaid Technologies, Inc. and AI service providers such as Anthropic, are established in, or may process personal data in, countries outside the EEA, including the United States." On registration, Buddy collects "names; email addresses; usernames; passwords". On selling: "We do not sell your personal data."

The App Store privacy card, declared by the developer, reads less comfortably. It lists Location, Identifiers and Other Data under Data Used to Track You, and coarse location, user ID, diagnostics, purchases, usage data, financial info, email and name under Data Linked to You, for the developer's advertising or marketing, analytics and app functionality. Whether an account is mandatory to start is not stated on any page we could fetch.

Who Buddy suits

A couple or household that wants one budget with a clear record of who spent what. Someone whose bank works well with Plaid or Salt Edge and would rather import than type. Anyone who wants the budget on a watch, an iPad or a Mac.

It suits you less if your bank connection is flaky, if you want to know the price before setup rather than after, or if you would rather a money app never held your transaction history on a server at all. And if your bank imports cleanly and you budget with a partner, $49.99 a year is not a bad deal for what you get.

How Cash Book differs

Cash Book keeps the bank out of it entirely. Logging happens through voice, where one sentence becomes one or several transactions, and receipt scanning, where every line on a receipt or screenshot is read into an entry. Apple Pay taps can log themselves through a one-time Shortcuts automation, with nothing to reconnect afterwards. No accounts. Transactions stay on the iPhone with optional sync to your own iCloud. The price is stated before you start: a 7-day trial, then $39.99 a year or $19.99 once, with no free tier.

What Cash Book lacks, Buddy has: bank import, shared budgets, a split feature, an Apple Watch app, and iPad and Mac versions. If a shared household budget is the point of the exercise, Buddy is the better app and this is not a close call. The full side-by-side, with feature and pricing tables, is in Cash Book vs Buddy.

Buddy's problems all sit in one place, which is the bank connection that is also its reason to exist. That is the thing to test in your first week, before you pay for a year of it.

Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.

Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.