A Monarch Money alternative for variable income (2026)
If your pay arrives as a bonus, commission or client payments, this is how Monarch Money and RichDue handle it today: price, bank sync, budgets, planning ahead, investments and privacy.
Checked on against Monarch Money’s own pricing and help pages, and reviews where those didn’t say, linked under each answer. Prices and features change; follow the links before you decide. We make RichDue, so weigh our column accordingly.
Monarch Money and RichDue, side by side
| Monarch Money | RichDue | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Core is $99.99 a year or $14.99 a month. Plus is $199 a year, billed annually. A 7-day free trial; no free plan. | Free to start, no card. Pro is $89.99 a year or $12.99 a month; your first statement import adds 14 days of Pro. |
| Bank sync | Connects accounts through Plaid, Mastercard Data Connect (formerly Finicity) and MX. Manual accounts are available for anything that doesn’t connect. | No bank sync today. You add screenshots or bank alerts on iPhone, statements (CSV, Excel, OFX/QFX, QIF, PDF) or a quick log; RichDue reads them, flags rows it already has and asks before saving. |
| Platforms | Web, iPhone, iPad and Android, in the US and Canada. | Web today. The iPhone app is in testing and uses the same account. |
| Budgets | Two modes: Flex, one number for flexible spending (the default), or a budget per category. Rollovers apply to expense categories. | A monthly limit per spending category, paced against an even month and suggested from your last three months. No envelopes. |
| Planning ahead | Forecasting, on Plus and in the web app only, projects net worth and cash flow year by year (to age 90 by default), starting from the average of your last 12 complete months. | A 12-month cash-flow projection with low, base and high cases, built from salary, bonus, RSU, commission and client income, with the dates each one lands. |
| Investments | Holdings from connected or manual accounts, with time-weighted returns next to benchmarks such as the S&P 500. Gains and losses with cost basis are on Plus. | Stocks and funds, crypto, gold, property, savings and loans: allocation and value over time. You log a buy or a sale or import your brokerage’s positions. No benchmarks or advice. |
| Privacy | Its policy says Monarch doesn’t sell your financial data, and that disclosures to advertising partners may count as selling or sharing under some state laws, with a form to opt out. The app has no ads. | No bank credentials. iPhone screenshots are read on your device, statement files are deleted 7 days after upload, and RichDue doesn’t sell your data or share it for advertising. |
What Monarch says about variable income
Monarch’s guide to Flex budgeting says that when your income varies, you recalculate your Flex number each month from the income you expect.
Forecasting’s starting point is the average of your last 12 complete months of income and expenses, and it plans in years.
Files come in as CSV on the web, with date and amount columns (and an account column when you import through + Add Account). An import can’t be undone.
When your pay arrives in lumps
A bonus in March, commission at quarter end, a client who pays 60 days late: an average of the last twelve months spreads each of them evenly over the year. RichDue models every income source on its own schedule, so the projection shows the lean months and the big ones where they fall.
You describe your pay in six questions: base, bonus percentage and month, a commission range, RSU vests, or each client with its schedule and the share you set aside for tax. The 12-month projection has low, base and high cases, and the bonus plan says what the next one does to the year before it lands.
RichDue doesn’t connect to banks today. Money gets in through statements, iPhone screenshots, bank alerts or a quick log, and RichDue asks before saving anything.
Who should stay with Monarch Money
Stay with Monarch if you want accounts that update through bank connections, apps on Android and iPad today, investment returns next to a benchmark, or a forecast that runs to retirement on Plus. If your pay is the same every month, an average of the last twelve months describes it well.
Bringing your history across
Monarch downloads your transactions and balance history as CSV from Settings › Data on the web, for one account or all of them; it suggests about 5,000 transactions per download.
In RichDue, add that file on the web: it reads the columns, flags rows it already has and shows you everything before saving. Your bank’s own export works the same way; the export guides show where each bank keeps it.