Era

Era is a personal finance platform built for the age of AI agents. Instead of building yet another budgeting app interface, Era connects your actual financial accounts to Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, your AI can read your balances, review your transactions, spot spending patterns, and even move money between your own accounts, all with your explicit approval on every action.

The defining idea is that you already use AI for research, writing, and coding. Why not let your AI assistant handle money too? You tell Claude to review your spending, set up a savings rule, or check whether you have enough for a purchase, and it can see your real accounts and act on your real money.

Three Products, One Core

Era's main offering is Context, a personal MCP server that bridges your bank accounts and AI assistants. Context is free to sign up for. You connect your bank accounts, and then add Context to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, or any other MCP-compatible client. The whole process takes a few minutes.

Once connected, Context is read-write. Your AI can check your account balances, review your transactions, set up categorization rules, and transfer money between your own accounts. The critical detail: every transfer needs your explicit approval. Your AI cannot move money without you confirming the action. This is a deliberate design choice to keep you in control.

Era's second product is Agency, a native companion app that extends Context with proactive automation. While Context is pull-based (your AI acts when you ask), Agency is push-based (it watches your finances and alerts you or takes action without waiting for a prompt). Agency features include automated rules (income detection, savings transfers), net worth monitoring, spending and cash-flow tracking, and model portfolios that Era manages and rebalances automatically. Agency is available as a waitlist-only product, which means you cannot sign up for it immediately; you must join a waiting list and be invited when capacity opens.

The third product is Thesis, an SEC-registered investing tool for individual investors. Thesis is built on the same financial data layer as Context and adds quantitative portfolio analysis and backtesting. It's currently in private beta, which means it's not available to the general public yet. You can request an invite, but access is limited.

How Context Works With Your Money

Context connects to thousands of banks, credit unions, and financial institutions through regulated data aggregators. Coverage spans the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and over 40 countries total. The connections run through OAuth 2.1, and your bank credentials are never stored by Era. Account connections use the same regulated aggregators that power millions of consumer finance apps.

Security is AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Every agent action requires your permission first, and you can revoke access to Context at any time from the app or your account settings.

One key limitation: Context doesn't need its own app. It works through whatever AI assistant you're already using on whatever device you're on. You can access it from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, a CLI tool, ChatGPT on your phone, or Cursor in your editor. This is a feature (you don't have to switch apps or platforms) and a limitation (if you want a native mobile experience with proactive alerts, you need Agency, which is waitlist-only).

What Context Can Do

Context lets you query your finances and trigger actions through your AI. You can ask Claude what your balance is, how much you spent on restaurants last month, which subscriptions are hitting your account, or what your net worth looks like. Claude can read your actual data and answer with specifics.

You can tell Claude to set a rule: "Round up my coffee purchases to the nearest dollar and move the difference into savings." Context passes that through to your accounts, and the rule runs automatically. You can ask ChatGPT to schedule a transfer to your savings account next Friday, and it queues the action for your approval. You decide what the AI is allowed to do.

The site emphasizes that this is different from a read-only analytics tool. Context is not a dashboard where you check your numbers. It's a read-write connection that lets the AI assist you by doing things, not just showing you things.

What Context Does Not Do

The site doesn't publish pricing for Context itself. It's free to sign up and connect your accounts. The FAQ states that "Era offers a free tier and paid plans with additional features," but it doesn't specify what features are free and what requires payment.

The site also doesn't detail exactly which AI clients work with Context beyond the list of "Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Augment, JetBrains IDEs, and GitHub Copilot, plus any MCP-compatible client." If you use a different assistant or one that doesn't support MCP yet, Context won't work.

Agency and Thesis are not generally available yet, so if proactive automation or institutional-grade investing is what you're after, you're either on a waitlist (Agency) or in the private beta (Thesis) with no clear path to public launch.

Data, Money Movement, and Trust

Era doesn't sell your data. The site explicitly states: "Era never sells, shares, or monetizes your personal financial data. Your data exists to serve you, through the agents you choose to connect." This contrasts with many finance apps that monetize anonymized spending insights or sell leads to financial-services companies.

The site specifies that Era is not a bank and is not FDIC-insured. Banking services are provided by partner institutions. If Thesis launches publicly, it will be securities brokerage through a partner (Alpaca Securities LLC, which is a FINRA/SIPC member), and investment products are not insured or guaranteed.

Money movement is available to US and UK residents in private beta. The broader products (Context) work across 40+ countries, but transfers between accounts are US-only for now, with no timeline for expansion.

Who It Suits

Era is built for people who already use Claude or ChatGPT and want to extend those tools into their financial life. If you work in Claude Code or spend your day in ChatGPT, being able to query your finances and set up rules without switching windows is genuinely useful. The read-write model (your AI can move money) appeals to power users who trust their AI and want true automation, not just reporting.

Era is less suited to people who want a polished consumer UI, real-time push notifications on their phone, or a complete budgeting system today. Agency (the native app with automations) is waitlist-only. Thesis (the investing tool) is private beta. If you need those today, you'll wait.

The geographic limitation is also significant: transfers are US-only, even though Context itself works in 40+ countries. If you're managing finances across borders or outside the US, the automation part doesn't work yet.

The Verdict

Era is a bold product: it treats AI as a legitimate money-management interface rather than bolting finance onto an existing consumer app. If you spend your day in Claude or ChatGPT and want to avoid context-switching to check your money, Context solves that. The read-write connection (approve transfers, set rules) is more ambitious than most finance apps attempt.

The catch is that Era's most interesting features (Agency automation, Thesis investing) are either waitlist-only or private beta. For the thing you can sign up for today (Context), the site doesn't publish whether there's a free tier ceiling, what a paid plan costs, or when Agency will be available. Go sign up free, explore Context with your AI assistant, and decide whether it fits your workflow. If proactive automations and professional-grade investing are critical, you're either waiting or bet­ting on a future launch.