Personal finance · checked 2026-10-19

Can I vibecode Copilot Money?

KINDA· weekend project

The budgeting half is a modest app: transactions in SQLite, a categorizer that tries your rules first and an LLM second, monthly budgets with rollover, recurring-charge detection and a net-worth chart. An agent can write that in a sitting. The weekend goes on the bank connection. Copilot reaches banks through Plaid and Mastercard Data Connect, and Plaid's free developer tier caps live calls at 200 per product, so the practical routes are SimpleFIN Bridge (about $15 a year, North American banks) or monthly CSV imports. Both sync less often and cover fewer banks, and investments and the native Apple apps are a further step.

$13/moprice

$156you'd save a year

weekendbuild time

—people replaced it

Before you start

What you need on hand.

DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.

TimeA weekend; getting bank data in is the slow part

Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
Node.js 22better-sqlite3 compiles a native module, so build tools must be installed.
SimpleFIN Bridge or bank CSV exportsSimpleFIN costs about $15 a year and covers North American banks; CSV works with any bank.
An LLM API keyOnly for categorizing. Rules alone work without one.

Before you buildCopilot has no free plan, but Actual Budget is free and local-first, and may be enough if you don't need automatic categorizing or Apple apps.

1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.

The prompt

Build me a personal budgeting app to replace Copilot Money. Requirements:

- Node.js 22 + TypeScript: a Fastify API and a React UI built with Vite. `npm start` serves
http://localhost:4810.
- Storage: better-sqlite3 in ./data/money.db: accounts, transactions (date, merchant, amount in
cents, pending flag, category, notes, excluded flag), categories with a parent, monthly
budgets, categorizing rules and daily balance snapshots per account.
- Import: a CSV importer with a column-mapping screen that remembers one profile per account,
skips duplicates on (account, date, amount, merchant) and flags transfers between own accounts.
Optional SimpleFIN Bridge sync with SIMPLEFIN_ACCESS_URL in .env, run by `npm run sync`.
- Categorizing: your rules first (merchant contains, amount range), then an OpenAI-compatible
model from .env that sees only merchant names and amounts, 50 per request. Cache the answer
per merchant; correcting one transaction offers to save a rule.
- Budgets: a monthly target per category with optional rollover of the unspent remainder. The
month view shows spent, left and a bar per category, and the sum of targets against income.
- Recurring: find merchants that repeat at the same interval for three periods with an amount
within 10%, list the next expected date and flag a price change.
- Net worth: balance snapshots plus manual accounts for property and holdings; a monthly line
chart (`recharts`) and a chart of income against spending.
- Single user. No accounts, no telemetry, local-first: only the LLM call and SimpleFIN leave the
machine, and the README says exactly what each one sends.
- Out of scope: Plaid or other bank aggregators, mobile apps, shared budgets, live investment
prices, tax reports.
- Done when: importing the same CSV twice adds zero rows, and a seeded set of 5,000 transactions
loads the month view in under 2 seconds. README: exporting CSVs from a bank and getting a
SimpleFIN token (it covers North American banks only).

Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.

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Then keep going

Next prompts, same folder.

The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Copilot Money.

Add a Copilot Money importer to the budgeting app in this folder. Requirements:

- A command `npm run import-copilot -- <file.csv>` for the CSV from Settings > Account > Export your transactions.
- Map the columns date, name, amount, status, category, parent category, excluded, type, account, account mask, notes and recurring to the existing tables.
- Create missing accounts and categories, keep the excluded flag, and treat Copilot's category as already confirmed so the LLM never overwrites it.
- Print a summary of rows read, added, skipped as duplicates and unmapped before writing; support a --dry-run flag.
- Update the README with the export steps.

Make the categorizer in this folder learn from corrections. Requirements:

- When I change a transaction's category, store the merchant and new category as a rule candidate; after the same correction twice, create a rule automatically.
- Show a Rules page listing each rule with how many transactions it matched, and a toggle to disable it.
- Re-run all rules over uncategorized and LLM-categorized transactions, never over ones I confirmed by hand.
- Add tests with 20 sample merchants covering rule order and conflicts.
- Update the README.

Add a weekly summary email to the budgeting app in this folder. Requirements:

- `npm run digest` sends a plain-text and HTML email through nodemailer SMTP settings in .env.
- Contents: spending by category against budget this month, the five biggest transactions of the week, upcoming recurring charges in the next 14 days and the net-worth change.
- Never include account numbers; show only the account name.
- A --preview flag prints the email to the terminal instead of sending it.
- Update the README with an example cron line.

Add manual investment holdings to the budgeting app in this folder. Requirements:

- A holdings table (account, ticker, quantity, cost basis) editable in the UI and importable from CSV.
- Daily prices fetched with a key from .env for one provider you choose and document; cache them in SQLite and never call the API more than once per ticker per day.
- Net worth uses the latest cached price; show allocation by ticker and gain or loss against cost basis.
- If prices can't be fetched, fall back to the last cached value and show the date.
- Update the README with the provider's free-tier limits.

What you lose

Automatic sync with thousands of banks and cards through Plaid and Mastercard Data Connect
Native iPhone, iPad and Mac apps
Investment performance and allocation, and real estate values from a listing URL
Categorization that has been tuned on a large user base instead of your own rules
Someone fixing the connection when a bank changes its login

Why people still pay

The pitch is a finished product: accounts stay linked, new transactions arrive already categorized, and the app feels native on an iPhone. Reviews rate the design and the automatic categorization above the budgeting depth. A self-built tool matches the ledger quickly and struggles with the one thing that quietly breaks: keeping bank connections alive.

Moatintegrations execution polish

Do the math

Copilot Money or your own copy?

Over

Your usage

Count my time12h ×$/h

Copilot Money, 1 yr$156

Your own copy, 1 yr$28running + build session

You keep$128pays for itself in the first month

Estimate · Runs on your machine. SimpleFIN Bridge is about $1.50 a month and categorizing a few thousand merchants costs cents in LLM tokens. The build is token usage on your agent plan.

Leaving Copilot Money

Take your data, then cancel.

1 · Take your data out of Copilot Money

1iPhone: open Settings, scroll to Account and tap Export your transactions. Copilot opens a CSV; use the share button to save it to Files.
2iPad and Mac: filter or search in the Transactions tab first to export only those rows. On the web, filter the Transactions tab and download all of it or the filtered subset.
3The CSV holds date, name, amount, pending or posted status, category and parent category, the excluded flag, type, account and account mask, notes and associated recurring items.
4The help article covers transactions only. It doesn't say budgets, category settings, rules or investment data can be exported, so screenshot or write those down.

2 · Cancel Copilot Money

1Cancel on the same device or store where you subscribed, and do it before deleting the account.
2App Store subscribers: open Subscriptions in your Apple ID settings, choose Copilot and select Cancel Subscription.
3Web or Mac-download (Stripe) subscribers: open Settings > Subscription > Manage your subscription in Copilot.
4Cancelling turns off auto-renewal; you keep access until the end of the paid period.

Deleting the account is a separate step: it disconnects your banks and erases budgets and data. Stripe subscriptions are cancelled automatically on deletion, App Store ones aren't.
Stripe purchases are generally nonrefundable. A full refund applies if you bought directly, cancelled within a month of purchase and emailed support within five days of cancelling; App Store refunds go through Apple.
A lapsed subscription loses legacy pricing, so don't cancel and resubscribe casually if you have an older rate.
Import the CSV into your replacement and compare the last two months' totals per category before you cancel.

Checked 2026-10-19 against Copilot Money's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These are already free.

Actual BudgetOpen sourceMIT-licensed local-first budgeting with envelope budgets, CSV import and optional SimpleFIN or GoCardless bank sync (GoCardless no longer takes new accounts).★ 30k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗Firefly IIIOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 personal finance manager with budgets, rules, recurring transactions and an API; needs a PHP and database setup or Docker.★ 25k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗SureOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 personal finance app for budgeting, net worth and spending that you host yourself.★ 11k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗

All 5 free alternatives to Copilot Money ›

The numbers

Copilot Money pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	What you get
Copilot	$13	$7.92	Web, iPhone, iPad and Mac apps. Bank, card, loan, investment and crypto accounts, budgets with rollovers, cash flow, subscription spotting, net worth, investment performance and real estate tracking.

Free tier: The test drive runs before any account is connected; the trial is the only way to try live bank data.
Billing: Monthly or yearly. Subscribe through the App Store (Apple bills you) or directly on the web or Mac download (Stripe bills you), and manage it on the same device where you subscribed. Cancelling stops renewal and access runs to the end of the paid period. Subscribers with an uninterrupted subscription may keep legacy pricing; a lapsed one doesn't qualify.
Hidden costs: None listed: the pricing section says no ads and no hidden fees. Android isn't mentioned on the official pages we read.
Source: copilot.money

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Questions

Copilot Money, briefly

Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.

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No free plan: a free trial (the page text mentions one month) and a test drive with sample data before you connect any account.

Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Automatic sync with thousands of banks and cards through Plaid and Mastercard Data Connect, Native iPhone, iPad and Mac apps.

About $13 a month on the Copilot plan, $156 a year (checked 2026-10-19).

Automatic sync with thousands of banks and cards through Plaid and Mastercard Data Connect; Native iPhone, iPad and Mac apps; Investment performance and allocation, and real estate values from a listing URL; Categorization that has been tuned on a large user base instead of your own rules; Someone fixing the connection when a bank changes its login. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.