Buckets

Buckets is a budgeting app built as a one-time $64 purchase for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The price is the entire cost: no monthly subscription, no free trial that converts to a charge, no hidden fees beyond what you pay upfront. You can use a single license across all your own computers and the computers of family members living in your household. The app stores your financial data locally on your device, giving you full control over where your information lives.

At its core, Buckets implements envelope budgeting, the zero-based system where you allocate money you actually have across specific spending and savings categories before you spend it. Once you've funded your envelopes (or "buckets"), the software makes it straightforward to add transactions, categorize them, and watch your available balance in each bucket shrink as you spend. Buckets includes support for split transactions, so a purchase that belongs in 2 buckets can be divided with its own line item per category. Transfers between buckets move available funds without creating phantom income. The app provides an untimed, free trial period, meaning you can download Buckets and use it fully without a time limit or credit card requirement while you decide if it fits your workflow.

Bank connections and transaction entry

Buckets offers 3 methods to add transactions to your budget. The primary bank connection is SimpleFIN Bridge, a privacy-first aggregator that syncs transactions automatically from thousands of banks and credit unions. SimpleFIN is a separate service with its own fee; the Buckets site doesn't publish what that fee is. Alternatively, you can upload transaction files that your bank provides in standard financial formats (OFX or CSV), and the app will import them with duplicate detection so the same transaction isn't imported twice. If neither automatic bank sync nor file upload works for your institution, Buckets supports manual entry: you type in each transaction by hand. The app can also run "macros," which are recording and playback shortcuts that automate repetitive data-entry work if your bank exports are structured consistently.

The untimed trial period is a genuine differentiator here. Most budgeting apps impose a trial that expires to a paywall after a fixed window. Buckets gives you as long as you need to test whether the software works for your habits before committing the $64. The app is designed around simplicity and speed, so unlike some budgeting tools that ask you to configure dozens of categories or rules upfront, Buckets aims to get you in and out quickly with a focused workflow.

The budgeting workflow and features

Once transactions are recorded, Buckets displays your envelope balances and spending history. You can inspect what you've spent in each bucket month by month, compare your actual spending against your planned budget, and adjust allocations as your income or priorities shift. The app supports multiple budgets, so if you want to track a household budget separately from a side business or a savings-goal project, you maintain parallel budgets in the same app. For couples, testimonials mention shared budgets helping partners coordinate on financial decisions together.

The app includes transaction searches and filters so you can find a specific purchase by date, amount, or payee. You can track cleared and pending balances separately, which helps you avoid overspending when a transaction has posted to your bank but not yet hit your account. Account reconciliation is built in: you can compare what Buckets shows against your bank statement and record adjustments if a difference appears. The app also handles linked transfers between accounts, so moving money from checking to savings is recorded on both sides of the transaction.

Reports in Buckets give you a quick view of your spending by category and over time. You can export your data to Excel or other formats if you want to analyze it elsewhere or archive it. The app includes built-in instructional videos to teach the envelope methodology, and Buckets provides live chat support: you can click a chat bubble on the website and ask the team questions directly. The makers (Matt and Christy) run the business themselves, which means you're reaching the actual developers when you need help rather than a support queue.

Pricing and long-term use

Buckets costs $64 once. That's lower than a year of most subscription budgeting apps and a fraction of 2 years. The perpetual license covers you and your household members on as many of your own devices as you want to use. Updates come free; the makers have framed Buckets as a "keep-going" business, not a venture-backed startup planning an exit, which suggests a commitment to maintaining the software long-term rather than abandoning it after a funding round.

Buckets frames its one-time cost squarely against the subscription model common among budgeting apps: a recurring monthly or annual charge that never stops. At $64 once, Buckets asks you to pay a single price and then owe nothing further, no matter how long you keep using it. As the site puts it, you're saving money, not shackling yourself to another monthly service.

Who this fits and what to expect

Buckets works well for budget-conscious users who like the idea of envelope budgeting but want to avoid recurring charges. The local-first storage means your data doesn't live on a company's servers unless you choose to sync via SimpleFIN. The app is available in Dansk, Deutsch, Eesti, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Magyar, Nederlands, Norsk, Polski, Português, Română, Svenska, Türkçe, čeština, Български, Русский, Українська, עִברִית, العربية, and 한국어, so it's accessible globally. The multilingual support makes Buckets appealing for expats or households with multiple languages.

The $64 price point appeals to people who have abandoned budgeting apps because monthly fees accumulate; paying once and owning the app indefinitely changes the value equation for long-term users. Testimonials mention couples using Buckets to align on shared financial goals, parents using it to manage household money, and self-employed people tracking multiple projects or income streams. The simplicity-first design suggests Buckets is built for people who want to budget effectively without wrestling with a complex interface.

One limitation is that Buckets is installable software, not a web app, so you can't access your budget from a web browser on an unfamiliar computer. For bank connections, SimpleFIN is the primary option; if your bank or credit union doesn't integrate with SimpleFIN, you'll fall back to file uploads or manual entry, which means more hands-on work than fully automatic sync. The untimed trial period is generous, but it does mean you'll eventually need to pay the $64 if you want to keep using the app; it's not free-forever, just free-until-you-decide.

The underlying philosophy is simplicity and permanence: Buckets is built to be quick to use and designed to last, with no pressure to upgrade features or change your workflow every year. If you prefer a one-time purchase over a subscription and value local data storage, Buckets delivers that trade-off clearly.