Questions worth asking

An expense tracker that you can type or talk to. You log spending by typing it in, by writing a sentence, or by saying it; Ask answers questions about your own spending from your own ledger; and budgets warn you at 80% and again at 100%. There is a free plan, there are no ads on any plan, and the only revenue is an optional Pro subscription. More on every feature.

Three ways, all of them yours. Type the amount, merchant and category by hand; write a sentence such as “$14 lunch and $40 gas” and let the app create the entries; or hold the microphone and say it. There is no bank connection, no SMS permission and no access to your mail, so nothing arrives that you did not put there. Plain manual entry is free and unlimited on every plan.

Yes. “$14 lunch and $40 gas” becomes two entries, each categorised and dated. A review sheet opens first with one editable row per transaction and a running total, and nothing saves until you confirm it. However many transactions one sentence holds, it counts once against the free plan’s 30 voice or chat entries a month.

Because “fifteen” and “fifty” sound alike, and a wrong amount saved quietly is worse than a missing one. Every voice entry opens a card with the amount, merchant and category editable, and there is no setting that skips it. The recording itself is deleted as soon as it has been turned into text.

Questions about your own spending: “how much did I spend on food last month?”, “what went on travel in August?”. The model turns your question into a query; the app runs that query against your ledger and works out the number itself. Every answer shows its working — a row such as “Food & Dining · 1–30 Sep · 23 transactions” that opens exactly those entries.

No. Ask reports what happened and never says what to do. It will not tell you what to cut, whether you can afford something or whether you are saving enough, and answers those questions with one fixed line: “Ask can tell you what you’ve spent. It doesn’t give financial advice.”

Because the free plan shows this month and last month, and Ask answers over what your plan shows. Ask about an older month and it says so in the same answer, then gives you the figure for the months you can see; it never quietly swaps in a different period. The older entries are not deleted, and Pro shows them again.

The free plan costs nothing. Pro is $3.99 a month or $24.99 a year, which is about 48 cents a week, and every new account starts with 30 days of Pro with no card to enter. The first 1,000 subscribers can lock in a founding rate of $19.99 a year for life. The App Store or Google Play charges it in your local currency. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

$19.99 a year, locked for life, for the first 1,000 subscribers — one count across every country the app launches in. The app shows how many founding places are left, and that number is the real count. When it reaches zero, the offer closes and the standard price applies.

No. The free plan shows this month and last month; everything older stays stored, hidden from view, and comes back the moment you subscribe. The full data download in Settings covers everything you have ever logged, on the free plan too.

Because voice entry, chat entry and Ask each cost us money every time they are used, and a free finance app that charges nobody has to earn from something else: brokerage, fund commissions, loan referrals or your data. Each of those gives the product a reason to sell you something. So writing things down, budgets and alerts are free and unlimited, and the parts that cost per use are where Pro comes in. More on how we make money.

No. Voice entry, chat entry and Ask cost money every time they are used, so a one-off payment would mean either capping them later or losing money on anyone who stays. A subscription is the honest shape for a product with an ongoing cost.

Pro lets you invite one partner into a shared ledger, and they get full Pro on your subscription, their own personal ledger included. The shared ledger is a separate space, not a merge of your two ledgers: you both add and edit, and every entry shows who added it. You both use the same currency. An invitation expires after 7 days, and once someone has joined, the slot can move to a different person after 90 days. There is no splitting or settling up — it is a shared record, not a referee.

You both move to the free plan together. Nothing is deleted, your partner is told directly rather than through you, and their full data download keeps working.

No, and we never will. The app does not connect to any bank, card or account, so there is no login of yours for us to hold or lose.

No. The app has no connection to your accounts of any kind, so there is no route through which money could move, a trade could be placed or an account opened. It is a record you keep, not a key to anything.

Each recording is turned into text and deleted straight away. Only the transaction you confirm on the review card is kept.

For chat entry, the sentence you typed, so it can be turned into transactions you then review. For Ask, your question, your category names and your currency — never your transactions. The app computes every figure from your ledger itself. How this works, step by step, is on the security page.

No. No ad networks, no third-party data brokers, no anonymised-and-resold arrangement. This is easier for us to hold to than for much of the category, for a structural reason rather than a virtuous one: our only revenue is the subscription, so there is no advertising business or distribution arm whose economics depend on knowing what you spend.

Yes. A full download of everything you have logged is in Settings, on every plan, including any history your plan currently hides. To delete your account and everything in it, follow the steps on the delete account page.

Yes. It launches on iPhone and Android together, with the same features on both. Nothing in the app depends on reading text messages, which iOS has never allowed, so the iPhone version is not a reduced one.

Because nothing in the app needs it: everything in your ledger is something you typed or said. The SMS permission would grant an app your entire message inbox, including every one-time passcode and every personal message, and there is no way to limit it to your bank’s alerts.

Not at the moment. TLDR Money is an iPhone and Android app. The full data download in Settings works on every plan, so your transactions open in a spreadsheet on any computer you like.

No. TLDR Money is not an investment adviser, broker, lender, bank or insurer in any country, and holds no licence to act as one. It is a record-keeping tool. It does not recommend securities and does not tell you what to buy, sell or hold, and Ask reports what you spent without advising on it.

TLDR Money is operated by Sonal Systems Private Limited, incorporated on 28 June 2026 and registered in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, with CIN U62099GJ2026PTC179785. The company does no lending, no insurance distribution and takes no commission on any financial product — its only revenue line is the Pro subscription. More on the about page.

It launches in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, in English, with more countries to follow. India has its own site, tldrmoney.in, with the same app and Indian prices.

The app launches on iPhone and Android, and the date is not set yet. Join the list on the home page and we will email you the day it opens. Every new account starts with 30 days of Pro. There is no charge to join, and we will not pass your address on or send you spam.