Sumant

Sumant is a personal finance app built in Spain, available in Spanish only, that takes a deliberately offline approach to expense tracking. Instead of asking for your bank credentials or continuous account access, it works with imports and manual entry, then organizes what you record into budgets and savings goals. The key appeal for users wary of app-based banking connections is structural: Sumant never stores your bank login, never syncs live account feeds, and never holds the original bank statement files you import. You download a file from your bank, upload it to Sumant, review what it pulls out, and decide what stays. For anyone managing money across multiple countries or currencies, or simply preferring not to grant financial apps direct bank access, that model has real value.

How Money Comes In

Sumant offers three entry paths. The simplest is manual: tap a transaction, pick a category, done in what the site claims is "a few seconds." The second, and the one most users will prefer for bulk data, is import. You download a statement file from your bank (CSV, Excel, or Norma 43, Spain's standard banking export format) and upload it to Sumant's import screen. The app reads the file in-browser on your device, suggests how to parse each column (date, description, amount), then shows you every transaction before a single one lands in your record. Nothing is saved until you confirm. If Sumant spots duplicates, the same transaction appearing twice, it marks them for you to decide. The third option is the receipt scanner: take a photo of a paper receipt or upload a digital one. Sumant's AI reads every line item on the receipt and breaks it down by category. The free plan allows 5 scans per month; PRO removes that limit. Refresh happens on your schedule; you initiate every upload. This is a trade-off: no automatic daily sync, no overdraft alerts, and if your bank changes something about its export format, you'll need to tell Sumant which column is which. But it's also the reason the app works in 14 currencies and doesn't restrict itself to any single country or banking system.

Organizing and Planning

Once transactions are in the system, Sumant organizes them into budgets and savings goals. Budgets are per-category and monthly: you set a spending limit for groceries, dining, subscriptions, or any of the 38 built-in categories, then watch how much of your allowance you've used. If you go over, Sumant flags it so you know instantly. The free plan shows you budget overages month by month. Savings goals are separate: a "vacation" bucket, an "emergency fund," a "new car down payment," or whatever you're saving toward. You set a target amount and track how close you are. The free plan gives you up to 3 goals; PRO removes the cap. Rules are a timesaver if you import regularly: set a rule once, so a supermarket charge always lands in the Comida (Food) category or a café charge always lands in Café, and it applies to future imports automatically, pre-categorizing transactions so you spend less time reviewing.

The analytics section shows where your money went over your chosen period. The free plan shows the last 3 or 6 months; PRO extends that to 12 months, so you can spot seasonal patterns (heating bills spike in winter, vacation spending peaks in summer). You can also export what you've logged. The free plan exports to JSON, a format useful if you ever want to switch apps. PRO adds CSV and Excel, so you can analyze your own data in a spreadsheet or hand it to an accountant for tax time.

Cost and What You Actually Get

Sumant's free tier is genuinely free. No credit card required, and the site says it directly: no expiration date. You get unlimited manual transaction entry, one bank import file (up to 250 transactions), 5 receipt scans per month, the 27 expense and 11 income categories, monthly budgets, up to 3 savings goals, and export to JSON. Plenty of people will not need anything more. If you do, PRO costs €19.99 as a one-time charge, not a subscription. That's unusual in this space; most apps now charge monthly or yearly. Sumant's model is "buy once, use indefinitely." You get unlimited bank imports, unlimited receipt scans, all 38 categories, the ability to create your own categories, daily and weekly budgets on top of monthly ones, unlimited savings goals, 12-month analytics instead of 6, and export to both CSV and Excel. The trade-off is that this is a Spanish-language app with no English-language version. The interface, the help text, the receipt scanning all work in Spanish. For a Spanish speaker or someone fluent enough to navigate a menu-driven app, that's fine. For English speakers, it's a barrier. There's also a practical limitation: Norma 43 is a Spanish banking standard. If your bank doesn't export to that format and you're not in Spain, you'll fall back on CSV or Excel, formats Sumant handles fine.

Privacy and Data Control

Sumant's privacy model is its core pitch. The app never asks for your bank username and password. It never requests ongoing access to your accounts. When you import a file, it processes that file on your device, not on Sumant's servers, then stores only the transactions you've reviewed and approved. The original statement file is never kept. You can export your data whenever you want, all your accounts, transactions, categories, budgets, goals, and recurring entries come out as a file you own, in a format you can open elsewhere. This is genuinely useful if you ever want to leave: your data doesn't stay locked in Sumant's servers.

Who This Suits and Who It Doesn't

Sumant works well if you want control over what gets imported, prefer not to grant apps bank access, manage money across borders, or value one-time purchases over subscription fees. It's appealing to people who already use spreadsheets and don't mind the extra step of manual oversight. It's less ideal if you want fire-and-forget automation: if you'd rather have the app just pull everything daily, Sumant asks you to be hands-on. And the language barrier is real. If you don't read Spanish well, you'll struggle even with browser translation. Sumant also doesn't offer features some competitors provide, like bill splitting with friends, joint accounts for couples, or investment tracking. For someone wanting pure expense tracking and savings goals without the app touching their bank account, though, Sumant delivers exactly that.