Cash Book vs Copilot Money (2026): Bank Sync vs Voice and Snap
Quick answer
Copilot: Track & Budget Money is a subscription finance app for US bank accounts: transactions import and categorize themselves, with budgets, recurring charges, investments and net worth on one dashboard across iPhone, iPad, Mac and web, behind an account, for $95 a year or $13 a month. Cash Book is an iPhone expense tracker that never touches a bank: say what you spent, snap the receipt, or let an Apple Pay tap log itself, with no account, for $39.99 a year or $19.99 once after a 7-day trial. Pick Copilot if you bank in the US and want everything imported automatically. Pick Cash Book if you want to log in a sentence and keep your bank out of it.
Copilot connects to US institutions. If your bank is somewhere else, the comparison is over before it starts, and Cash Book wins by default rather than on merit. Worth knowing that in the first ten seconds rather than the tenth paragraph.
For everyone who does bank in the United States: Copilot imports and categorizes your transactions, puts budgets, recurring charges, investments and net worth on one dashboard across iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web, and charges $95 a year or $13 a month behind an account. Cash Book starts from the purchase instead. Say what you spent, snap the receipt, or let an Apple Pay tap log itself, and the record stays on the iPhone with no account and no bank login, for $39.99 a year or $19.99 once.
Every Copilot fact here comes from Copilot's own website, help center, privacy policy and App Store listing data, fetched on 12 September 2026. Anything those pages do not settle is marked as not verified. The exact App Store name is Copilot: Track & Budget Money; this page shortens it to Copilot.
Feature table
| Feature | Copilot | Cash Book |
|---|---|---|
| Voice entry | Not found in Copilot's materials | Tap the mic, say what you spent; the AI logs amount, merchant, tag and date, several purchases per sentence |
| Receipt scan | Not found in Copilot's materials | Camera or photo library; every line on a receipt, bill or screenshot becomes a transaction |
| Apple Pay automation | Not found. Apple Card is covered by a direct bank integration instead | A one-time Shortcuts automation on the Wallet trigger; every card tap logs itself with amount and merchant |
| Bank sync | Yes, and it is the primary path: Plaid, Mastercard, MX and Akoya, plus direct integrations for Apple Card, Venmo and Coinbase. US institutions only | None. Cash Book never connects to a bank |
| Manual entry | Manual accounts with manual transactions, per the help center | Keypad: number, tag chips, optional note, date and account, in about three taps |
| Budgets | Adaptive, customizable budgets with rollovers; recurring-charge tracking; goals and custom alerts | A monthly or weekly allowance shown as what is left, plus per-tag budgets with progress bars; budgets can recur |
| Accounts & net worth | Linked and manual accounts, investments, cash flow and net worth on the dashboard | Cash, card and savings accounts with balances, transfers, and one net-worth number |
| Multi-currency | Not found in the fetched sources | 128 currencies, set in Settings |
| Export | Not found in the fetched sources | CSV and Excel from Settings |
| Sync & account requirement | An account is required, with Sign in with Apple supported. Syncs across web, iPhone, Mac and iPad. Hosting region not stated | No account. Data stays on the iPhone, with optional encrypted sync to your own iCloud |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Mac and web. iOS 15.6 or later, about 300 MB. No Android found | iPhone only. iOS 18.6 or later, 15.5 MB |
| Languages | 1 on the App Store, English | 26 interface languages; voice logging in any major language |
"Not found" means the feature did not appear in the pages we read. It does not mean Copilot lacks it. Auto-categorization gets no row at all, because the two apps are not doing the same job there: Copilot sorts imported bank lines, Cash Book categorizes at the moment of logging, from your own words or the receipt in your hand.
Pricing side by side
All Copilot prices are the in-app purchase names and amounts on the US App Store, in US dollars, on 12 September 2026.
| Plan | Copilot | Cash Book |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None found. A trial, then a subscription | None. A 7-day trial, then a plan |
| Trial | One month | 7 days |
| Monthly | $13 | Not offered |
| Yearly | $95 | $39.99, auto-renewing through Apple, cancel any time |
| Lifetime | Not offered | $19.99 once |
| Where you pay | Apple for the App Store versions; Stripe for subscriptions started on the web or from the Mac website download. Manage it on the device you subscribed on | Apple. Family Sharing may apply per Apple's rules |
About $55 a year separates them, and there is no Copilot equivalent to a $19.99 one-time purchase. Copilot's trial is the more generous of the two at a full month against seven days, which is the fair way to put it. Recent App Store reviews raise the monthly price, the absence of a one-time payment, and the lack of a refund once the trial has ended.
How each one handles your data
Copilot is built on linked accounts, and the account is the first thing it asks for. Name and email at registration, with Sign in with Apple supported. The App Store description says you can "connect to tens of thousands of financial institutions", and the help center explains that most connections run through Plaid, with Mastercard, MX and Akoya as well, and that "we never see or store your login credentials". The privacy policy adds that bank credentials go to partners such as Plaid and Finicity. It also states, "We do not sell your Financial Information", and that the information is never used to influence advertising, although the marketing website does use advertising technology and may share a hashed email address with ad platforms. Data is kept while the account is active and you can delete all of it whenever you want. Where it is hosted, the policy does not say. The developer-declared App Store privacy label lists financial info, coarse location, email, name, user content, user ID, usage data and product interaction as data linked to you.
Cash Book's privacy policy is shorter because there is less of it. Transactions live on your iPhone and, if you switch it on, in your own iCloud account under Apple's encryption. No Cash Book account, no server holding your history. Voice clips and receipt photos go to an AI model through the studio's relay and are not kept. No contacts, no location, no ads, no data selling.
The trade-off is not subtle. Cash Book cannot see your bank, so nothing arrives unless you put it there. That is the whole bet. The detail is on the iCloud sync and privacy page.
Who picks which
Copilot is the better app for a US banking customer who wants the full picture without logging anything, and it is not a close call. Investments, cash flow, recurring charges, goals and net worth land on one dashboard, with alerts when something moves, on a Mac, an iPad and the web as well as the phone, plus home-screen widgets Cash Book does not have. Recent reviews keep singling out the human support inside the app. $95 a year and an account is the price of all that.
Cash Book is for the other set of instincts:
- You would rather say "twelve euros lunch at Beshamel" than link a bank. See voice logging.
- You bank outside the United States, or pay in cash, and want receipt scanning to turn the paper into itemized transactions.
- You pay by phone and want Apple Pay auto-logging to record each tap with no bank login.
- You want no account, no email, and your history on your own phone.
- You want a simple allowance and per-tag budgets rather than a full dashboard.
- You want to pay $39.99 a year or $19.99 once rather than $95 a year.
Choosing a system before an app? The guide to tracking expenses on iPhone covers the habits that survive whichever tracker you end up with, and tracking subscriptions and recurring bills covers by hand the job Copilot's recurring-charge view does on its own.
What we could not verify
- Web and Stripe pricing. The pricing page on copilot.money returned a not-found error, so only the App Store prices are shown.
- Whether any free plan exists. None was found, and the App Store description describes a trial followed by a subscription.
- An Apple Watch app, lock-screen widgets, receipt scanning, voice entry, CSV export, multi-currency support and an Apple Pay or Wallet automation. None appears in Copilot's materials; one recent review asks for Apple Watch support.
- Where Copilot's servers and data are hosted. The privacy policy names neither a region nor a provider.
- The privacy policy's effective date.
If you want to read Copilot on its own terms, without Cash Book standing next to it, the full Copilot Money review does that.
Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.
Frequently asked questions
Is Copilot Money free?
No. Copilot's App Store description says pricing is a monthly or annual subscription with a one-month free trial, and no free plan appears anywhere in its materials. The App Store purchase list shows a yearly subscription at $95 and a monthly subscription at $13. Copilot's website pricing page returned a not-found error when we checked, so web pricing through Stripe is not confirmed here.
Does Copilot work outside the United States?
Not for bank sync. Copilot's App Store description states that it works with US financial institutions only. Manual accounts and manual transactions are supported according to its help center, so the app opens elsewhere, but its primary path, automatic import, needs a US institution. Cash Book has no bank connection in any country and works the same everywhere, with 128 currencies to choose from.
Does Copilot have voice logging or receipt scanning?
Not according to Copilot's materials. The App Store description, homepage and help articles describe bank import, auto-categorization by Copilot Intelligence, and manual entry for accounts you track by hand. Voice entry, receipt scanning and an Apple Pay automation are not mentioned. Those three are Cash Book's primary logging paths, alongside a three-tap keypad.
Which app is cheaper over a year?
Cash Book. Copilot is $95 a year or $13 a month after a one-month trial, with no one-time purchase; Cash Book is $39.99 a year or $19.99 for lifetime after a 7-day trial. Neither has a free tier. Recent App Store reviews of Copilot mention the monthly price, the absence of a one-time payment, and no refund once the trial has ended.
Where is my data stored in each app?
Copilot requires an account, and its privacy policy says information is retained for as long as the account is active, with the option to delete all of your data at any time. Bank credentials go to partners such as Plaid rather than to Copilot. The policy does not name a hosting region or provider. Cash Book keeps transactions on your iPhone, with optional encrypted sync to your own iCloud, and has no account.
Can I move my data between the two?
Cash Book exports CSV and Excel from Settings. On the Copilot side, an export feature is not mentioned in the pages we read, so it is not confirmed either way. In either direction, treat an export as an archive of your history rather than a migration; categories, budgets and tags will need setting up again in the new app.
What this is based on
Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.