Looking for a YNAB alternative?

Let's start by being fair to it. YNAB taught a generation of people that you budget the money you have rather than the money you expect, and that every dollar should have a job. Paqid uses that same method. If you've used YNAB, you already know how to use this.

So this isn't a page about how they got it wrong. It's for people who like the method and have a specific objection to something else — usually one of two things.

Objection one: you're tired of the subscription growing

Paqid is $45 a year, or $4.50 a month. One tier. That's the price, it's on the front page, and there's nothing to upgrade to. There's a 45-day free trial with no card up front — deliberately long enough to run a complete month, including a reconcile, before you decide anything.

It's built and maintained by one person who got tired of paying more each year for features he didn't ask for. Keeping it cheap isn't an introductory offer. It's the reason the thing exists.

Objection two: you don't want to connect your bank

Fairness again: YNAB can import your transactions by connecting to your bank accounts, and plenty of people love that — but you can also leave it switched off and enter everything by hand. If manual entry is all you're after, YNAB does that perfectly well.

The difference is architectural rather than optional. Paqid has no bank connection at all — not disabled by default, not built. There is nothing to opt out of, and no aggregator holding a credential on your behalf. Whether that distinction is worth anything to you is a fair question, and we've written at length about why we think the trade is worth making, including the part where the tedium turns out to be doing something useful.

What's the same

• Give every dollar you currently have a job.
• Categories hold money; spending draws it down; unused amounts roll forward.
• Overspending is surfaced, not hidden, and you cover it by moving money between categories.
• Credit cards are handled as real accounts, with a payment category.
• Reconcile against your statement, split transactions, transfers, recurring items, reports.
• Works on your phone — installable to the home screen, with a purpose-built phone interface rather than a shrunken desktop one.

What you'd be giving up

This is the section most comparison pages leave out, so here it is plainly.

• No automatic import. Every transaction is entered by hand. If that sounds miserable to you, believe yourself — it's the single biggest difference in daily use.
• No years of accumulated polish. YNAB has a large team and a long history. Paqid is younger and smaller, and it shows in the corners.
• No community, courses, or workshops. There's a help page. That's the extent of it.
• One developer. Fixes can be quick, but there's no support department behind them.

Moving over

There's no import tool, and given that there's no bank connection, that's not an accident. The practical approach is the one that works best anyway: enter today's account balances, create your categories, and assign the money you're holding right now. Your history stays where it is; your budget starts fresh, today.

Most people find this takes half an hour and is oddly clarifying — you rebuild the categories you actually use rather than the ones that accumulated over three years.

The trial is 45 days precisely so you can do this without committing to anything. Run a real month. If it doesn't suit you, you've lost nothing.