I’ve been a budgeter for years. I’ve tried everything — Mint (RIP), YNAB, Monarch, spreadsheets, the notes app on my phone, scribbling on napkins. Okay, maybe not the napkins. But close.
For a while, YNAB was the answer. The envelope method clicked with my brain. Giving every dollar a job? That made sense to me. I finally felt in control of my money.
Then they raised the price to $100 a year.
$100 a year. For a budgeting app.
I’m a budgeter. I literally track every dollar I spend. And I couldn’t justify spending $100 on the tool I use to track every dollar I spend. The irony was not lost on me.
The Spreadsheet Phase
So I went back to Google Sheets. It’s free. It’s flexible. I can build whatever formulas I want. I can share it with my partner without paying a “couples fee.” The data is mine forever.
But budgeting on a phone-sized spreadsheet? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Tiny cells, misclicks, zooming in and out constantly. I loved spreadsheets for planning, but I hated them for daily tracking.
I needed a mobile UI on top of my spreadsheet.
So I Built One
That’s Okane. It’s an envelope budgeting app where Google Sheets is the source of truth. You get a clean mobile interface for daily tracking — logging transactions, checking envelope balances, moving money around. But behind the scenes, everything lives in a Google Sheet on your Drive.
You can open that sheet right now. Add a column. Write a formula. Share it with your partner. Export it as a CSV. It’s your data, in your spreadsheet, forever. Cancel the app? Your budget is still there.
What Actually Makes It Different
I’m not going to pretend Okane is better than YNAB at everything. YNAB has been around for years and has a massive team. I’m one developer.
But here’s what Okane does differently:
1. It’s actually affordable. The free tier is a real, full budgeting app — not a crippled trial with a countdown timer. Premium is $5/month ($60/year) if you want bank sync and AI categorization. That’s $40 less than YNAB, and the free version might be all you need.
2. You own your data. Not metaphorically. Literally. Your budget is a Google Sheet. I can’t lock you out of it. I can’t delete it if you cancel. It’s yours.
3. Couples budget together for free. Share the Google Sheet. Done. No partner plan. No extra charge. Both of you track in the app, both of you see the same data.
4. AI that respects your privacy. The transaction categorization AI runs entirely on your phone. Nothing gets sent to a server. It learns from your corrections and gets smarter over time, all locally.
Who Okane Is For
Honestly? It’s for people like me:
- YNAB users who think $100/yr is too much — you want envelope budgeting without the premium price
- Spreadsheet lovers — you want the power of Google Sheets with a mobile UI that doesn’t make you want to throw your phone
- Couples — you want to budget together without paying for two seats
- Privacy-conscious budgeters — you want to know exactly where your data lives and who can access it
What’s Next
Okane is live on Android now, and iOS is coming very soon. I’m a solo developer building this because I genuinely use it every day. It’s the app I wished existed when I canceled my YNAB subscription.
If any of this resonates with you, give it a try. It’s free, it takes about 2 minutes to set up, and the worst case scenario is you have a nicely formatted Google Sheet with your budget in it.
Mike is the solo developer and founder of Okane. He built it because he’s cheap and likes spreadsheets. You can find him on Twitter at @okanebudget.