A budgeting app for Australian households: 11 tabs, 3 of them free, and what each one tracks

Funance is a budgeting app with 11 tabs. Three of them, Overview, Budget and Debts, are free and need no card. The other eight are part of Pro, at $9.90 a month or $79 a year, and they carry your budget through to the mortgage, super, property and goals.

We build it, so read this as what it is: a tour of our own app. We have tried to keep it useful anyway. Every section says what the tab works out, and near the end there is a plain list of people who would be better off with something else.

If you would rather look than read, the demo is the real app running on sample data. No signup, nothing to install.

What a budgeting app is actually for

Most budgeting apps do one job well: they tell you where the money went. That is worth knowing, but it is the easy half. The harder half is what to do with what is left. Which debt goes first. Whether the loan can take another rate rise. Whether the deposit is two years away or five.

Funance does both, from one set of numbers. You enter your income and spending once, and the same figures feed the debt plan, the net worth projection, the goals and the scenarios. Nothing gets typed in twice, and nothing drifts out of sync between a spreadsheet and an app.

It is built on Australian rules from the start: 2026-27 ATO tax brackets, the Low Income Tax Offset, the Medicare levy, HECS repayment thresholds, super, and stamp duty that depends on your state. If the take-home pay underneath a budget is wrong, every line above it is wrong too.

The free tabs

Overview

One screen with the three numbers that tell you whether things are working: net worth, savings rate and your debt-free date. They recalculate whenever you change anything elsewhere, so the Overview is where you see what a decision does.

Budget

This is where the tracking happens. You put in your gross salary and Funance works out take-home pay on the 2026-27 ATO rates, monthly and fortnightly. For couples, it is calculated for each partner separately, because Australia taxes individuals, not households.

Then every budget line carries two numbers: what you planned and what actually happened. The gap between them is the useful part. Here is an illustrative month for a two-income household:

Line	Planned	Actual
Income	$8,600	$8,600
Mortgage	$2,400	$2,400
Groceries	$1,000	$1,180
Utilities and water	$320	$485
Car rego, annual line	$0	$865
Everything else	$2,100	$1,940
Left over	$2,780	$1,730

Illustrative figures, not real user data.

Two things in that table are deliberate. Rego sits on the month it actually lands, rather than being spread into a monthly average that never matches your bank balance. And each month is kept, so after a few months you are reading your grocery figure instead of guessing it.

There is a phone view for the boring part, ticking off bills, which opens straight to what is still owing and what is overdue. Any month exports to PDF, and the budget exports to CSV. More on the method on the budget planner page.

Debts

Every loan and card in one list, with the payoff order worked out both ways: the avalanche (highest interest first) and the snowball (smallest balance first). You see the debt-free date for each, what extra repayments do to it, and the interest the difference is worth. We went through the maths of the two methods in avalanche vs snowball, and the debt repayment calculator runs it without an account.

The Pro tabs

What-If Scenarios

This is the tab people tend to stay for. Model a rate rise against your actual loan, see what $500 a month extra does on the mortgage compared with in super, test salary sacrifice against take-home pay on real ATO numbers, or try a refinance or a downsize. Each scenario sits beside your current position, so the comparison is in dollars and years rather than in your head. The mortgage scenario calculator is a free taste of it.

Assets & Net Worth

Super, property, shares and vehicles, projected forward over 1, 3, 5 and 10 years. Property growth assumptions are checked against published ABS capital city price index data rather than whatever number feels right, and you can see your usable equity and whether your assets lean too heavily on one thing. Free versions: the net worth calculator, home equity calculator and super projection.

Life Goals

11 goal types, including a new home, a wedding, a holiday, a baby, a car, a renovation, study and retiring early. Each comes with a starter checklist of the costs people forget and a tracker showing when you will hit the target.

The home goal is the one worth singling out. Put in a purchase price and it works out the deposit, stamp duty, lenders mortgage insurance and repayments. Stamp duty uses detailed rates for Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, an approximation for the other states and territories, and first home buyer concessions in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Related reading: how much you actually need for a first home.

Subscriptions

Every streaming service, app, software licence and gym membership in one list, converted to an annual cost, because the yearly number is the one that belongs in a budget. Shared subscriptions can be split with a partner, and annual renewals are visible before they charge. Why this list grows without anyone noticing: the subscription trap.

Credit Card Tracker

20 Australian cards, from Amex to ANZ, CommBank and Citi, with their annual fees and the dollar value of each perk. You tick off the perks you actually use, and the tab shows whether that value is ahead of the fee or behind it. The worked example is our post on whether the $1,450 Amex Platinum fee pays for itself.

Charitable Giving

Log each donation once. Funance estimates the deduction at your marginal rate and keeps a receipts checklist, so tax time is not a hunt through your inbox. It sits nicely next to our tax return checklist.

Recommendations

A health check that runs dozens of checks against your own figures, across debt, super, tax, insurance, property and spending, and ranks what it finds by estimated dollar impact. You can download it as a PDF to read with your partner or take to your accountant. It is general information worked out from the numbers you enter, not personal financial advice.

Guide

Walkthroughs of every tab, plus a small achievement system that unlocks extra themes as you hit milestones. You can also reply to any Funance email and it reaches me directly.

How it tracks spending, and what it does not do

Funance does not connect to your bank. That is a choice, not a missing feature. Nobody hands over a banking login or an Open Banking consent, and nothing breaks when a bank feed goes down.

The cost is that you enter your own figures. You do not code every coffee. You update category totals, and most households do that in a few minutes a week. The Budget tab then does what a transaction feed does not: it holds those totals against a plan and shows you which line moved.

On the free plan your data stays in your own browser. Pro adds cloud sync across devices.

Built for couples who bank in different places

Most budgeting apps treat a couple as one person with a bigger salary. Funance gives each partner their own income and their own tax calculation, and shared expenses can be split between you and shown that way on each line. Because nothing depends on a bank feed, it works the same whether you are both with one bank or each kept your own. We covered why the bank apps cannot do this in CommBank vs ANZ Plus vs NAB vs Westpac.

Free or Pro

	Free	Pro
Price	$0, no card	$9.90 a month or $79 a year
Tabs	Overview, Budget, Debts	All 11
Australian tax estimator	Yes	Yes
Planned vs actual, PDF and CSV export	Yes	Yes
Scenarios, net worth, goals, subscriptions, cards, giving, recommendations	No	Yes
Where your data lives	Your browser	Cloud sync across devices
Trial	Not needed	14 days

Full detail is on the pricing page.

When another app is the better fit

We would rather you end up with the right tool than with ours.

• You want every transaction pulled in automatically. Use an Open Banking app. Frollo is free and good at it.
• Your problem is overspending, not planning. An envelope app like YNAB, where every dollar gets a job before you spend it, is built for exactly that.
• All your money is at one bank and your questions are simple. Try your bank's own app for a month first. It may be enough.

The full comparison of Australian finance apps goes through each of these properly, with prices.

If your questions are the planning ones, about the mortgage, super, HECS, a deposit or two incomes, that is the job Funance was built for. The quickest way to judge it is to open the demo and change a few numbers, or read more on the budgeting app page.

Funance provides general information and planning tools only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not financial product advice. Prices checked October 2026.