Short answer: PocketGuard shines if you want an app to read your linked accounts and tell you a daily “In My Pocket” figure without typing. Monthly gets to the same kind of answer, your real free money, from numbers you enter yourself, so it fits people who would rather not link accounts or pay a subscription.
If you searched “PocketGuard alternative,” you probably liked one idea: a single number that says what you can spend. Most budgeting apps bury that number under charts. PocketGuard puts it up front, and Monthly does too. The difference is where the number comes from, and what you hand over to get it.
How we compared them
Monthly is our product, so treat this as a vendor comparison. PocketGuard’s own website blocked our automated reader, so we relied on its App Store listing, which carries the company’s description, FAQ and in-app purchase list, and on The Penny Hoarder’s 2026 PocketGuard review for how In My Pocket is calculated. We checked both in October 2026. Where sources conflicted, we say so. We did not use PocketGuard long term.
What “In My Pocket” actually is
The Penny Hoarder describes it this way: PocketGuard adds your monthly income, subtracts recurring bills and savings goals you set, then divides the remainder across the days left in your budget period. As the review’s example, $4,500 of income, $2,800 of bills and $400 of savings leaves roughly $65 per day, and the figure updates as you spend.
Two things make that number work. The bills have to be known, which the app tries to do by detecting recurring payments in linked accounts. The spending has to be known, which comes from the transaction feed. The App Store description says: “Connect your bank and PocketGuard automatically identifies bills, subscriptions, and recurring payments.”
What Monthly’s version is
Monthly’s real free money is income minus fixed expenses minus a weekend reserve. You type the income, you list the fixed expenses, and you pick the weekend reserve. If you log daily expenses, the number drops. The app does not divide the result by days, and it does not look at your bank.
The reserve is Monthly’s own twist on the idea: money you deliberately set aside for going out, delivery and other weekend spending, so it is not counted as free. Instead of discovering that you spent the free money on Friday night, you decide the Friday-night budget first.
Side by side
| Criterion | Monthly | PocketGuard |
|---|---|---|
| Headline number | Real free money for the month | In My Pocket, spread across remaining days (per Penny Hoarder) |
| Source of data | What you type | Linked accounts through data providers; manual and cash accounts also possible, per its FAQ |
| Bills | You list fixed expenses | Detected from linked accounts |
| Reserve for going out | Built in as the weekend reserve | Savings goals you set, per the review |
| Price | Core workflow free | Plus listed at $12.99 a month or $74.99 a year, 7-day trial, per the App Store |
| Credentials | Never requested | Read-only access via named providers; credentials not stored, per its FAQ |
| Where | Mobile-first web app, any browser | Mobile apps; see its store listings |
Price: what the number costs
Apple’s listing shows PocketGuard Plus at $12.99 a month or $74.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial mentioned in the description. The listing includes several other subscription amounts, so the figure you see in the app may differ from the headline. The Penny Hoarder reports a free tier limited to two linked accounts and two budget categories, while another 2026 pricing roundup says the free tier is no longer available. We could not settle that from PocketGuard’s own site, so check the app before assuming.
Monthly’s free-money calculation is part of the free core workflow. There is no trial clock and no cap on bills.
Privacy: the trade you are actually making
PocketGuard’s FAQ says it connects through Plaid, Finicity, Salt Edge and Apple Wallet, that credentials are not stored and that access is read-only. That is a fairly standard description for the category, and many people are comfortable with it. The Penny Hoarder also notes that connection to several institutions, including American Express, HSBC, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Synchrony Bank and PayPal, is limited or broken, and that those need manual entry or workaround imports.
Monthly sidesteps the whole question: it never asks for bank credentials, so there is no connector to approve or revoke. It stores what you enter in cloud services so the data is available on each device; the privacy policy lists the details.
A worked example
Take someone with $3,900 monthly take-home pay, using invented numbers. Rent is $1,420, utilities and internet $210, car insurance $140, phone $65, a credit-card minimum payment of $120, a gym at $40 and streaming at $30. Fixed total: $2,025. Savings goal set at $300. Weekend reserve: $320.
In Monthly: $3,900 - $2,025 - $320 = $1,555 of real free money. They treat the $300 savings as part of their own plan, either as another fixed line or from the free figure. After a $85 grocery trip, free money reads $1,470.
In PocketGuard, per the description above: $3,900 income minus $2,025 of bills and $300 of savings leaves $1,575, divided by 20 days remaining is about $79 per day. After the same grocery trip posts in the linked account, the daily number drops accordingly.
Both give a believable answer. The PocketGuard one is automatic once the accounts are connected, and tells you roughly what a normal day can cost. The Monthly one is a monthly total that you adjust yourself, and it accounts for a weekend plan explicitly.
If you are mid-trial and curious, type your take-home, your fixed bills and one weekend amount into Monthly, then set the result next to PocketGuard’s In My Pocket for the same day →
Upkeep in week three
With linked accounts, week three is where convenience pays off: transactions have kept flowing and the daily number reflects reality without you doing anything. The cost is occasional re-linking when a bank connection breaks, which the review documents for several institutions.
With Monthly, week three is where discipline matters. The number is only as current as your last entry. If you do not log a purchase, the app does not know about it. That is the central trade, and it is not subtle: PocketGuard asks for access to your data, Monthly asks for your attention.
Monthly number or daily number?
A per-day figure and a per-month figure answer different worries. “I have $79 a day” is reassuring on a Tuesday and misleading on a payday weekend, because a dinner for four does not fit a daily slice. A monthly remainder with a weekend reserve already carved out is easier to spend in lumps: the reserve covers Friday and Saturday, and what is left covers everything else. If your spending is steady day to day (commuting, lunch, coffee), a daily number maps well. If it is lumpy (weekend plans, a trip, a gift), a monthly total plus a reserve tends to match how the money actually leaves.
Switching in an afternoon
Moving from PocketGuard to Monthly does not need an export. Open the recurring-bills view in PocketGuard, copy the amounts into Monthly as fixed-expense lines, add your take-home pay, decide on a weekend number you can live with and compare the result with what In My Pocket showed on the day you left. If the two figures are within a few dollars, the typing was worth skipping the subscription. If Monthly’s figure is much higher, you probably forgot a bill that PocketGuard had detected, and finding it is the useful part of the exercise.
Who should choose PocketGuard
- You want a daily spending figure that updates by itself.
- You are comfortable linking accounts through the providers it names.
- You want recurring bills detected for you rather than typed.
- You do not mind a subscription once the trial ends, or you intend to test the free tier.
Who should choose Monthly
- You want the spendable-money idea without a bank link at all.
- You think in months, not in days, and want a weekend reserve.
- You prefer typing ten numbers to approving a data connection.
- You want to stay free. The budgeting apps with no bank connection roundup shows other manual options.
What you give up with Monthly
No automatic transaction feed, no detection of bills or subscriptions you forgot you had, no alerts when a charge looks unusual and no per-day figure. If a charge you did not know about is a recurring problem, linked accounts catch it and a manual app will not. How Monthly works explains what it does cover.
How to try both
- Use PocketGuard’s trial only if you are comfortable linking accounts. Note the In My Pocket number on a given day.
- Build the same month in Monthly with your real take-home and fixed expenses. The five-minute monthly planning guide lists what belongs in each line.
- Compare the two numbers. If they are close, the cheaper and lighter tool does the job.
When the PocketGuard trial is about to renew at $74.99 for a number you could type in a few minutes, rebuild it in Monthly first. This comparison is informational and not personalized financial advice.