Open any financial planning textbook—including my copy of Personal Financial Planning: Theory and Practice, 10th edition—and you’ll see a recommendation to account for family expenses using zero-based budgeting. Also known as the envelope system, zero-based budgeting requires you to “give every dollar a purpose” so that every corner of your budget is accounted for. Go for a $20 takeout dinner, and you’ll need to allocate that $20 from either your bank account or monthly income.

No apps did a better job at providing that service than Mvelopes and You Need a Budget (YNAB).

Both force you to categorize every nickel to cover spending you’ve made or savings goals you want to fund. In many ways the apps offer rather similar experiences, although there are important differences between them.

Who You Need a Budget is best for

Setting up YNAB looks intimidating, but isn’t too difficult once you decide to take the plunge. Similar to Simplifi or Mint, YNAB connects to your bank accounts and credit cards. If you prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, you can either enter them manually or upload a QFX or OFX file of your transactions from each bank or card you want to add. (Many banks let you do this.)

Then you punch in how much you expect to spend in various categories. (These are just estimates, and you can change the numbers later.) Many categories are already named, but you can delete what’s there and add your own. Whenever you spend any money, YNAB makes you identify the category that bit of spending belongs in (groceries, dining, fun, and so forth) and then subtracts the amount from how much you have “available” in that bucket for the rest of the month.

For instance, if you budget $500 for groceries and buy $100 worth of cold cuts and beer, you’ll code that transaction as “groceries,” after which YNAB will show that you have $400 left to spend.

Savvy budgeters might consult the app before they go to the store to get a good idea of what they’re able to spend. If you happen to overspend in a given category, YNAB will ask you which other category you want to take the money out of (Simplifi, for example, doesn’t do this). There are no free lunches or cold cuts!

Like Simplifi, YNAB offers a chat feature, but it’s not as useful. (Instant chat was largely available throughout my testing, but not all of the time.) But there is a panoply of aids—from help docs to support forums to video courses to 20-minute workshops—to help you get comfortable and confident using the app.

You Need a Budget: Flaws but not dealbreakers

The biggest problem I ran into with YNAB was connecting my checking and savings accounts. I bank with Capital One, which YNAB has been unable to sync with since October 2019. This is a pretty big issue—Cap One is one of the largest credit card issuers, as well as one of the largest deposit institutions in North America.

You can get around this by adding your accounts and inputting your balances manually at first, then uploading your transactions every so often. But that gets pretty tiresome.

There is another potential work-around, but it’ll involve a bit more effort on your end.

You’ll need to let YNAB know you’d like to connect your Capital One bank account (contact the service via help@youneedabudget.com), and it’ll see whether it can do so through a different third-party service (the standard one is Plaid). This doesn’t work for all user accounts, but YNAB said it saw no issues with mine.

You’ll then have to do a series of tasks (reconnect all of your accounts, give them new names, and perhaps even update them to fix duplicate or missing purchases).

Transactions also proved slow to update, which meant that trips to the coffee shop sometimes wouldn’t show up on the respective credit card for a day or two. Although this isn’t the biggest deal, it belies the use of an app to make real-time judgements about how much you’re free to spend. What’s the point of looking at what’s available in your grocery category if YNAB didn’t already include yesterday’s late-night run to the store?

This may seem pedantic, but we were also put off by YNAB’s color scheme. Savings and available spending are highlighted in green, while spending and debt are given an ominous red. Given the personal and conditional nature of your finances, red feels too judgmental and off-putting.

And then there’s the cost. You can pay either $11.99 monthly (the equivalent of $144 per year) or $84 up front for an annual plan, though you have a 34-day free trial to test-drive it. That’s three to four times more expensive than Simplifi, which can connect to Capital One without issue.

Nevertheless, YNAB’s price is worth it if you want a zero-based budgeting system with an intuitive user experience and good customer service.

When you should pick Mvelopes

Mvelopes, whose name is even more ridiculous than Simplifi’s and reminiscent of The Oneders, operates much like YNAB. You sync your accounts to the app, stuff different categories—or in this case, digital envelopes—with how much you expect to spend, then tag transactions by category and try to get through the month without overspending.

The concept comes from the old budgeting technique wherein families would put real cash in an envelope named “groceries” and then parse out that money until the next time someone got paid.

We found transactions slightly easier to deal with in Mvelopes than in YNAB. They pop up automatically in your inbox (both on your desktop and through the mobile app), and you can drag them into their respective envelopes in one satisfying motion. With YNAB, you need to go into your credit card account and click a button to see what you’ve bought.

Another useful Mvelopes feature is the planning tab. Unlike with YNAB, you can easily enter what you expect to earn during the month and budget against that anticipated income. (After all, the point of budgeting is to spend less than you earn in a given period. It’s easier to do that if you account for your actual paycheck.) Mvelopes also lets you set up a budget for future months, which can come in handy if you have something such as a wedding to pay for.

We found transactions slightly easier to deal with in Mvelopes than in YNAB. They pop up automatically in your inbox (both on your desktop and through the mobile app), and you can drag them into their respective envelopes in one satisfying motion.

Transactions tended to post faster in Mvelopes than in YNAB—sometimes I waited an extra day or two for a purchase to show up in the latter. Mvelopes also offers a handy Debt Center that lets you create a debt payoff plan, although you’ll have to pay more for that. You can see how long it’ll take to pay off the credit card with the lowest balance (using the so-called “small victories” or “snowball” method), or the credit card that charges the highest interest rate (called the “avalanche” method, which is preferred by economists).

You’ll also have access to a cadre of videos in Mvelopes’s Learning Center, which features step-by-step how-to videos as well as other educational content on personal finance topics.

Mvelopes: Flaws but not dealbreakers

Although Mvelopes does connect with Capital One, I had some issues getting Ally to sync. And while you can email customer service representatives, there is no immersive chat experience similar to YNAB’s, let alone Simplifi’s.

Moreover, the site’s interface leaves a little to be desired. Mvelopes’s app is more user-friendly, but the desktop version seems a bit dated. The spending and income reports, a standard feature in budgeting apps, are somewhat difficult to read and not terribly illuminating.

You can access most of the site for $6 a month (or $55 a year), and you get 60 days to test-drive the tool for free. If you’re inclined to go the month-by-month route to get a budget gut check, Mvelopes makes more sense than YNAB. The price rises to $9.95 a month (or $99.95 a year) if you want access to the Debt Center and some other features. You’ll be fine with the cheaper version.

If you don’t bank with Capital One, if you want more hand-holding, or if you’re inspired by a more visually appealing site, YNAB might be a better option.