MEANS Get Means

For people who quit budgeting apps

Know what's safe to spend.

Means reads your bank, works out your real income and your fixed bills, sets aside what's already owed, and gives you one number for today. It updates on its own. That is the whole app.

Get Means for iPhone See how the number is built

Free to start. Bank connections are part of Plus, which has a seven-day free trial.

Safe to spend today

$46

spent $44 of $90

You're fine.

  1. Rest of this week7 days$586 of $630
  2. Rest of this month9 days$766 of $810
  3. Rolls over tonightto tomorrow$46
Show the five purchases behind $44 Hide the purchases

Today · 5 items

Spent today44.00

Allowance90.00

Untick a purchase to send it back. The number above moves as you do it — that is exactly what happens when a refund lands.

Safe to spend today, forty-six dollars. You're fine.

01 — The premise

You know your balance. That was never the question.

The question is how much of it is already promised — rent, the car, the thing that only comes once a year — and how much is genuinely yours between now and payday. You don't need thirty budgets to work that out. You need one number.

You have tried the app with the envelopes and the little pie charts. You set it up on a Sunday and stopped opening it by Thursday. That wasn't a discipline problem. You were asked to do bookkeeping in exchange for advice you already knew.

Means asks nothing of you. It reads what already happened in your account and tells you what today can hold.

02 — How the number is built

Nothing here is a guess.

Every figure comes from a transaction that actually happened. These are made-up figures, so you can watch the arithmetic.

  1. What came in Means reads a few months of your account and finds the money that actually arrives: two paydays, rent from the tenant, the invoice that lands whenever it lands. You don't have to tell it what you make, and you don't have to be paid on a schedule. $6,038 a month
  2. What's already owed Rent, the car, insurance, the phone bill, and the four subscriptions you'd forgotten about. Fifteen things that repeat. Means takes them off the table before you can spend them. −$2,603 a month
  3. What you set aside Tax on the rental income. The renewals that land in March. The card, so it stops growing. Money that is yours, but isn't yours to spend yet. −$735 a month
  4. What's left Across the thirty days of the month. That is the number on your home screen, before today's spending comes off it. $2,700 → $90 a day

Buy lunch and get a haircut for $44 and the number becomes $46. Nothing to log, nothing to categorise. That's the app.

03 — It does the setup

It finds your income and your bills. You file nothing.

Means reads a few months of your account and works out what is income and what is a bill — including the awkward ones. Rent from a tenant. Two jobs. Pay that lands on no particular schedule. Irregular pay doesn't break it; it's the case Means was built for. If it gets something wrong, you correct it once and it stays corrected.

  1. Paychecktwice a month$1,914.03
  2. Rent receivedmonthly, the 3rd$1,850.00
  3. Side workirregularabout $360

04 — The fine print, up front

Your money data is not the product.

  1. ConnectionRead-only, by design. Means can see transactions and balances. It cannot move a cent.
  2. Your bank loginMeans never sees it. The connection is handled by Plaid — the same service most banking apps use for this — and your bank hands back a token, not a password.
  3. EncryptionEncrypted in transit and at rest.
  4. AdvertisingNone. There is nothing to sell you inside the app.
  5. Data saleNone. We are paid by subscriptions, and that is the only way we are paid.
  6. DeletionDelete your account and your data goes with it. Two taps, no email to anyone.

05 — Traceable

Tap a number, see the receipts.

You've been doing it on this page. It works the same in the app: every figure is a door, and behind it is the plain list of what made it — dates, names, amounts. If something looks wrong, you can check it in about four seconds, and then you can stop checking. A number you can't check is just a number someone told you.

Show the fifteen bills behind $2,603 Hide the bills

Repeats every month · 15 items

Every month2,603.06

Means found these by reading the account — you didn't enter any of them. Anything that isn't really a bill, you untick once.

06 — Rollover

A quiet day pays for a loud one.

Whatever you don't spend today is added to tomorrow. Stay in on Tuesday and Friday simply has more room in it. There is no streak to break and no starting over on the first of the month.

Mon

$90

Tue

$180

Wed

$122

Thu

$96

Fri

$186

Sat

$74

Sun

$118

Tuesday's unspent $90 became Wednesday's headroom

And when you go over: tomorrow's number is smaller. That's it. No red banner, no message about discipline. You spent it, so it isn't there — the same arithmetic, running the other way.

07 — Ask

Ask it about your own money.

Not general advice about lattes. Your accounts, your months, your patterns. It answers from your actual transactions, and it shows you which ones.

Why is this month tighter than last month?

Your car insurance renewed on the 3rd — $612, once a year. Take that out and you're $58 ahead of where you were last month.

Answers are built from your own transactions

08 — What it won't know

Things it will get wrong.

  1. CashIf you take out $60 and spend it over a week, Means sees the withdrawal and nothing after it — so you add cash by hand, which takes about four seconds.
  2. Your first two weeksIt needs a couple of months of history before it trusts a pattern. Early on the number is an estimate, and it tells you so on the screen rather than pretending.
  3. A bank that's downConnections drop. When yours does, the number freezes and says it's stale, instead of quietly going stale.
  4. A life that just changedNew job, new baby, new rent — it takes a few weeks to catch up on its own. You can tell it sooner and it will use that straight away.

09 — Pricing

Pay for the automation, not for the budgeting.

The budgeting is free and always will be. If you'd rather your spending appeared on its own instead of being typed in, that's Plus.

  1. Free The whole budgeting toolkit. The daily number, rollover, set-asides, every figure traceable to the transaction behind it. You add spending by hand. 10 questions a month. $0 forever Start free →
  2. Plus Everything above, and your banks connect — so spending shows up on its own, every morning, without you touching it. Up to 10 banks. 200 questions a month. $7.99 /mo · or $59.99 a year Start seven days free
  3. Pro Everything in Plus, with the most room to ask. Up to 20 banks. 1,000 questions a month. $14.99 /mo · or $99.99 a year Choose Pro →

Seven days free on Plus and Pro. Cancel from the App Store in two taps, any time, without talking to anyone. If you stop paying, nothing is deleted and nothing is held hostage — your bank connections stop refreshing and you go back to adding spending by hand.

10 — Questions

Straight answers.

Is it safe to connect my bank?
The connection is read-only, by design. Means can see transactions and balances, and that is all it can do — it cannot move a cent, to your account or anyone else's. Your bank login is handled by Plaid, the same service most banking apps use for this, so Means never sees your password. Disconnect a bank whenever you like and the connection is gone.
Do you sell my data?
No. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. There are no ads in Means and there is no version of this where you are the product. We are paid by subscriptions, and that is the only way we are paid — which is also why the free tier has real limits rather than a hidden cost.
What if my pay is irregular?
That is most of the reason Means exists. It works from what actually landed in your account, not from a salary you told it about. Paid every other Friday, twice a month, or whenever the client gets round to it — Means finds the pattern from real deposits and checks it again every week. It counts rental income and side work the same as a paycheck.
Do I have to categorise everything?
No. There are no categories to set up, no envelopes to fill, and nothing breaks if you never touch one. You can add limits later if you want them; most people don't. The number on the home screen doesn't need them.
Can I cancel any time?
Yes, from the App Store, in about two taps, without emailing anyone. If you cancel, nothing is deleted and nothing is held hostage — your bank connections stop refreshing, you keep the app and everything in it, and you go back to adding spending by hand.
Which banks work?
Means connects through Plaid, which covers most US banks and credit unions — the big ones and a lot of small ones. Search for yours on the connect screen. If it isn't there, you can still use Means for free and add spending by hand, and you can tell us which bank you wanted.
Is the free version really free?
Yes, and it isn't a trial. Free gets the whole budgeting toolkit: the daily number, rollover, set-asides, and every figure traceable to the transactions behind it. The one thing it doesn't do is connect to your bank, so you type in what you spend. Plus is the same app with that typing removed.
How is this different from YNAB or Mint?
Those ask you to build the answer — categories, envelopes, a weekly review — and then show you a dashboard. Means works the answer out and shows you one number. There is no setup on a Sunday and nothing to keep up with. And every figure opens: tap it and you see the exact transactions it came from, so you never have to take the app's word for anything.

$46

You're fine.

Open it, read one number, get on with your day.

Get Means for iPhone

Free to start. Seven days free on Plus.

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