Cash Book vs Money Manager (2026): Speak It vs Type It
Quick answer
Money Manager and Cash Book both track spending by hand on an iPhone, and they disagree about almost everything after that. Money Manager is a free, ad-supported ledger from Realbyte that has been on the App Store since 2012: double-entry bookkeeping, sub-categories, weekly to annual budgets, a calendar view, Android and iPad versions, and a paid sync service. Cash Book is a paid iPhone tracker built around how fast an entry can be: say what you spent, snap the receipt, or let Apple Pay taps log themselves, with the data on your phone and no account. Pick Money Manager for a free, thorough ledger across devices. Pick Cash Book if logging should take seconds and your data should stay yours.
Money Manager costs nothing, or $5.99 once to remove the ads. Cash Book costs $19.99 once and there is no free version at all. Start there, because for a lot of people that is the end of it.
Money Manager is the bigger and older product. Double-entry bookkeeping, main and sub-categories, weekly to annual budgets, a calendar view, accounts in several currencies, a passcode lock, an Android version, and a PC view over Wi-Fi. Free with ads, an average of 4.8 from about 19,000 US ratings, fourteen years on the App Store. That is a serious record and Cash Book has nothing like it.
The costs are structural rather than sloppy: ads and a 10-account cap in the free app, a subscription for sync, and every entry typed. Cash Book is the smaller product with one idea, which is that an entry should cost a sentence, a photo or nothing at all, and your money should stay on your phone. No Android, iPad or web version. No free tier once the 7-day trial ends.
Every Money Manager fact here comes from Realbyte's App Store listing, website, help center or privacy policy, fetched on 12 September 2026. Where their materials do not settle a question, it says unverified.
Feature table
| Feature | Money Manager | Cash Book |
|---|---|---|
| Voice entry | Not mentioned in the App Store description, website or help center | Tap the mic, say what you spent, in any major language; one sentence can become several transactions |
| Receipt scan | Photo Save attaches a receipt photo to an entry; no reading of the receipt is described | Snap a receipt, bill or screenshot and every line becomes a transaction |
| Apple Pay automation | Not mentioned. The privacy policy describes automatic entry from received SMS messages instead | One-time Shortcuts automation on the Transaction trigger; after that every card tap logs itself |
| Bank sync | Not mentioned anywhere in the fetched sources; unverified but likely absent | None, by design. Cash Book never connects to a bank |
| Manual entry | Yes, with a calculator, search, payment profiles for frequent expenses and automatic transfers | Keypad with tag chips, an optional note, date and account; three taps for a typical entry |
| Budgets | Weekly, monthly and annual budgets; a monthly budget per category | A monthly or weekly allowance on Home, plus per-tag budgets with progress bars; budgets can recur |
| Accounts and net worth | Multiple accounts, 10 in the free app and unlimited in the paid one; double-entry bookkeeping; card payment dates with outstanding balances | Cash, cards and savings with one net-worth number over the account cards; transfers between accounts |
| Multi-currency | Entries in multiple currencies; each account totals in a currency of your choice | 128 currencies, set in Settings |
| Export | Backup and restore via email, iTunes and iCloud. CSV or Excel export is reported by a user, not confirmed officially | CSV and Excel (XLSX) from Settings |
| Sync and account | Data is local. Syncing needs a membership (email, password and nickname, or a Google or Apple ID) and the paid Data Sync Service | No account. Optional encrypted sync to your own iCloud |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision and Android; PC access through a browser over Wi-Fi | iPhone only, iOS 18.6 or later |
| Languages | 19 language codes on the App Store | 26 interface languages |
The accounting row is the one Cash Book cannot answer. Double-entry bookkeeping, sub-categories under main categories, card payment dates with outstanding balances: that is a ledger built by people who take ledgers seriously. Cash Book has tags and a net-worth number and stops there. If you want your money app to behave like accounting software, this comparison is already settled.
Pricing side by side
All Money Manager prices are the in-app purchase amounts on the US App Store page and the free app's own description, in US dollars, on 12 September 2026.
| Plan | Money Manager | Cash Book |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free, with ads and up to 10 accounts | None after the trial |
| Monthly | $2.49 a month for the Data Sync Service | Not offered |
| Yearly | $19.99 a year for the Data Sync Service | $39.99 a year, auto-renews through Apple, cancel any time |
| Lifetime | $5.99 once for Money Manager (Remove Ads): no ads, unlimited accounts, the PC manager. Sync stays a subscription | $19.99 once |
| Trial | Not stated for the sync subscription | 7 days, then a plan is required |
One entry, one device, ads tolerated: Money Manager can cost nothing for years. That is a real answer and no feature list beats free.
Want it on a second device and the shape changes. Sync is a subscription that the $5.99 purchase does not cover, at $19.99 a year, which is the same number as Cash Book's entire lifetime price with iCloud sync included. The free tier stops you at ten accounts and puts ads in front of you; the $5.99 lifts both of those and leaves sync where it was.
How each one handles your data
Money Manager keeps your ledger on the device. Its privacy policy says, "Data may also be stored locally on the devices user uses to access the service." Sync is optional and paid, and it requires registration: "Information collected through membership registration (obligatory): email, password, nickname", or a Google or Apple ID. Server storage is outsourced to Google Cloud Platform, and the policy states that "The Company may store, process, and transmit personal information in the Republic of Korea or other locations outside the European Economic Area." Twilio, Zendesk, Google Firebase and Google Analytics are named as processors.
The free app is ad-supported, and the policy does not hide it. It lists "Marketing and Advertising: provision of customized advertisements" among its purposes and advertisement identifiers among the data collected. Apple's privacy card, declared by the developer and not verified by Apple, puts Usage Data under Data Used to Track You, and lists Device ID, Usage Data, Advertising Data and Diagnostics as data not linked to you. The policy also describes received SMS content being used for automatic entry and, for members, sent to the server for synchronization. Read that sentence twice if SMS is where your bank alerts land.
Cash Book's privacy approach is shorter because there is less of it. Transactions are stored on your iPhone, with an optional sync to your own iCloud account that the app describes as encrypted and accessible only to you. No Cash Book account, no server holding your history. Voice clips and receipt photos go to an AI model through the studio's relay for parsing and are not kept. No ads, no data selling, no contacts or location access, and a Face ID lock in Settings.
Who should pick Money Manager
- You want a free app and can live with ads, or would rather pay $5.99 once than anything yearly. Hard to argue with.
- You use Android, an iPad or a PC and want the same ledger on more than one device, at $19.99 a year for sync.
- You think in double-entry terms and want main categories, sub-categories and card payment dates handled properly.
- You prefer typing every entry. Many of its reviewers clearly do, and the app has never once asked them for a bank login.
Who should pick Cash Book
- You would rather say "twelve euros lunch" than tap through a form, in your own language. See voice logging.
- You want a receipt or a screenshot to become transactions on its own. See receipt scanning.
- You pay with Apple Pay and want those taps logged without opening anything. See Apple Pay auto-logging.
- No ads, no account, no server holding your spending.
- You want one net-worth number over your accounts, an allowance that says "€120 left", and insights that show where the month changed.
- You would rather pay $19.99 once than keep a subscription running just to sync.
Choosing a method before an app? How to track expenses on iPhone sets out what to log and how often.
What we could not verify
- CSV or Excel export from Money Manager. Only a user review mentions it.
- What the Data Sync Service does in detail; the help article could not be fetched.
- Bank sync. No source mentions it, but nothing rules it out.
- Voice entry, receipt reading, iOS widgets, an Apple Watch app and Apple Pay or Shortcuts automation.
- A trial period for the sync subscription.
- What the $5.99 app includes beyond ad removal, unlimited accounts and the PC manager.
The bottom line
Give it a week of real entries. If you finish the week enjoying the ledger and barely noticing the ads, Money Manager has won and it deserves to; fourteen years and 19,000 ratings are not an accident. If you finish it having logged four days out of seven and wishing the app had done the typing, that is the problem Cash Book was built for, and no amount of double-entry rigour fixes a log you do not keep. Money Manager on its own terms is in the full Money Manager review.
Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.
Frequently asked questions
Is Money Manager really free?
Yes, with conditions set out in its own App Store description. The free app shows ads and allows up to 10 accounts. A separate one-time app, Money Manager (Remove Ads), costs $5.99 and removes the ads, lifts the account limit and adds the PC manager. Syncing between devices is a further subscription: $2.49 a month or $19.99 a year for the Data Sync Service.
Does Money Manager have voice entry or receipt scanning?
Not according to its materials. The App Store description describes manual entry with a calculator, search, payment profiles for frequent expenses and automatic transfers. The website lists Photo Save, which attaches a receipt photo to an entry rather than reading it. Neither voice input nor receipt reading appears in the description, the website or the help center home page. Cash Book's mic and camera circles are its primary logging paths.
Does Money Manager connect to my bank?
Bank sync is not mentioned anywhere in Money Manager's App Store description, website or privacy policy, so it is unverified but very likely absent. The privacy policy does describe automatic entry from received SMS messages, and recent App Store reviews praise the app precisely for manual entry over bank linking. Cash Book never connects to a bank either; its automation comes from Apple Pay taps through the Shortcuts app.
Do I need an account for either app?
Money Manager works without one; the data sits on the device. Its privacy policy describes membership registration, by email, password and nickname or a Google or Apple ID, as the route to the paid Data Sync Service. Cash Book has no accounts at all. Transactions live on the iPhone, with an optional iCloud sync to your own Apple account that you switch on in Settings.
Which one costs less over a year?
If ads and 10 accounts are acceptable, Money Manager costs nothing. Removing ads is $5.99 once; syncing between devices is $19.99 a year on top. Cash Book has no free tier after its 7-day trial: $39.99 a year, or $19.99 once for lifetime access. Over three years, Money Manager with sync comes to about $66; Cash Book lifetime stays at $19.99.
Can I export my data from each app?
Money Manager's description says you can back up and restore via email, iTunes and iCloud. CSV or Excel export is mentioned in a user review but not on an official page, so it is unverified here. Cash Book exports CSV and Excel files from Settings, under Data Export, and the file is yours to open in any spreadsheet.
What this is based on
Get Cash Book on the App StoreFree for 7 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.