YNAB costs $109/year. Here's a free way to fix your subscriptions.
YNAB is a real budgeting method — assign every dollar a job — and it's good at that. But if what you actually want is your recurring charges found and cancelled, you don't need a $109/year budgeting subscription to get there. Skycopia audits every subscription for free and hands you the exact cancel steps.
Skycopia vs YNAB
| Skycopia | YNAB | |
|---|---|---|
| Free to use | Yes — full audit, no card | No — 34-day free trial, then $109/yr or $14.99/mo |
| Finds recurring charges from your bank | Yes (Plaid, read-only) — dedicated subscription audit | Syncs transactions, but no dedicated subscription-finder |
| Cancellation guidance | Step-by-step playbook for each service | Not a YNAB feature |
| Re-charge protection | Alerts if a cancelled service bills you again | Not a YNAB feature |
| Budgeting method | Spending view focused on recurring charges | Yes — the full YNAB Method, zero-based envelopes, goal tracking, debt payoff tools |
| Shared household / couples | Yes — attributed decisions (who cancelled what) | Yes — up to 6 people on one plan |
| Pricing | Free audit; Pro from a flat monthly | $109/yr or $14.99/mo after the 34-day trial |
YNAB details reflect its publicly listed plans as of mid-2026 and may change — check ynab.com for current pricing. YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a trademark of its owner; Skycopia is not affiliated with it.
Is YNAB worth it?
If you want to plan every dollar of income before you spend it, YNAB's method is real and it works for a lot of people — that's what the $109/year is buying. But if the actual pain point is "what am I paying for every month, and how do I stop paying for the stuff I don't use", that's a narrower problem, and you don't need a full budgeting subscription to solve it.
That's the gap Skycopia fills: connect your bank read-only, get every recurring charge surfaced with a one-tap cancel playbook, and have each cancellation guarded so a merchant can't quietly re-bill you months later — no trial, no card, no yearly fee.
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FAQ
Is YNAB worth the price?
For people who want full zero-based envelope budgeting — assigning every dollar a job, tracking goals, planning debt payoff — YNAB is a well-regarded, purpose-built tool, and its $109/yr (or $14.99/mo) price reflects that depth. The trade-off: there's no free tier, only a 34-day trial, and it doesn't do anything with your subscriptions beyond syncing the transactions. If subscriptions and recurring charges are your actual problem, you're paying for a lot of budgeting machinery you won't use.
What's a free alternative to YNAB for subscriptions?
Skycopia runs a full subscription audit for free — connect your bank (read-only through Plaid) and it surfaces every recurring charge, forgotten trial, duplicate, and price hike, then gives you the exact cancel steps for each. It's not envelope budgeting — it's focused specifically on finding and killing subscription waste, at no cost.
How is Skycopia different from YNAB?
YNAB is a budgeting method: you categorize every transaction and assign every dollar a job. Skycopia is narrower on purpose — it finds your recurring charges automatically, tells you exactly how to cancel each one, and then watches to make sure a cancelled service doesn't quietly bill you again. No free tier on YNAB; no card required for Skycopia's audit.
Where is YNAB the better choice?
If what you actually want is full envelope-style budgeting — planning every dollar of income before you spend it, tracking savings goals, and working down debt with a structured method — YNAB is a real, mature tool built for exactly that, and Skycopia doesn't replicate it. Skycopia stays focused on subscriptions and recurring spend rather than becoming a full budgeting app.
See what you're paying for — free
Connect your bank read-only and Skycopia finds every subscription, forgotten trial, and price hike, with the cancel steps for each. No card, no yearly fee.
The founder's own audit flagged $19,207/yr — real numbers, July 2026. Yours will vary; that's the point.
Run your free audit