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Envelope Budget vs Goodbudget
Goodbudget and Envelope Budget are both envelope apps built around manual entry, so neither wins on method. Goodbudget runs on iOS, Android and the web and lets household members share one budget across their own devices. Envelope Budget is iPhone-only with no sharing, and adds a home-screen widget, savings goals with a vision board, six themes and a one-time purchase option.
This one is genuinely close
We make Envelope Budget, so read this knowing we have a side. But we cannot run the usual comparison play here, because Goodbudget is an envelope app too. It is built on the envelope method, it expects you to enter spending yourself, and it has been doing that for a long time. Nobody needs to be converted. So the honest comparison is not about philosophy at all, it is about three practical questions: what devices you and your household use, whether two people need to see the same budget from two phones, and whether you would rather pay on a recurring plan or once. On the first two, they win outright. On the third and on a few iPhone-specific details, we have something to offer.
Pick Goodbudget if you need any of this
Pick Goodbudget if you are on Android, or if anyone in your household is. Pick it if you want to sit at a computer and do the monthly assign on a real keyboard, because it has a web version and we do not. Most importantly, pick it if two people need to share one budget from their own phones and see each other's spending as it lands. That is a core part of what it does and it is a straight gap on our side: we have no account, no sync and no shared budget, so two phones cannot hold one envelope set. If that sentence describes your situation, stop reading this page and go download theirs. We are the wrong tool and there is no version of this where we are not.
Pick us if you are iPhone-only
If you are budgeting alone on an iPhone, the comparison narrows to details, and the details are where we spent our effort. The envelope balance goes on your home screen and lock screen as a widget, and a Live Activity can keep it in front of you while you are out, so the number is visible at the moment you are deciding rather than after you open an app. Savings goals sit alongside the spending envelopes with a vision board, because for a lot of people the reason to hold the line on takeout is a concrete thing they can picture. There are six themes, which sounds trivial until you use a finance app that hurts to look at every day.
On free tiers and what we will not claim
Goodbudget has a free tier with limits and a paid tier, and the specific caps have changed over the years, so we will not print numbers here that could be wrong by the time you read this. Check their current pricing page directly. Current Plus pricing lives on our comparison page rather than here, so it cannot go stale in a page nobody remembers to update; the App Store listing is always authoritative. The one structural difference worth naming is that lifetime option. If you expect to be budgeting in five years and dislike open-ended subscriptions, paying once changes the math. If you would rather keep the option to walk away every month, a subscription is the safer commitment.
Moving over without retyping your life
There is no import path between the two apps, so the migration is manual. That sounds worse than it is. Open your existing envelope list, and copy over only the envelopes that actually held and released money in the last three months. Almost everyone finds that half their envelopes were aspirational and never got funded. Retype the survivors, set this month's amount on each one from your real take-home pay rather than from last year's plan, and leave the rest empty. Then log your first week of purchases before you touch the amounts again. The migration is not the hard part; continuing to log after week three is the hard part, and no amount of setup work fixes that.
Common questions
Can my partner and I share a budget in Envelope Budget?
Not from two phones. There is no account system, no cloud sync and no shared budget, so both of you cannot edit the same envelopes independently. What some couples do is run the household budget on one phone and hold a short review together each week, which works if one person is willing to be the one who logs. If you need both partners live in the same budget from their own devices, Goodbudget supports that and we do not. That is a real gap, not a roadmap hint.
Do either of these apps connect to my bank?
Envelope Budget does not, at all. There is no connection, no aggregator and no credentials, so nothing gets imported and you log every purchase yourself. Goodbudget's approach has changed over time and you should check their current description rather than trust a comparison page. What matters for your decision is the trade-off, which is the same in either direction: manual entry costs a few seconds per purchase and buys you awareness while you are still standing at the register, and it stops working entirely the week you stop logging.
Which is better for cash stuffing?
Both work, because both mirror the same physical idea. The digital version fixes the two failure points of real cash: you can pay online out of a Groceries envelope, and you cannot lose the envelope. What it cannot reproduce is the friction of handing over your last twenty. If you have already tried apps and still overspend, physical cash is worth one honest attempt before either of these, and if it works, keep doing it.
Run this budget on your phone
Envelope Budget puts these envelopes in your pocket. Assign every amount, log spending as it happens, and see what is actually left.
Get Envelope BudgetiPhone · manual entry, no bank connection · 7-day free trial