Personal Finance App Development: How to Build an App like Mint

This article will show you how to build a personal finance app like Mint from scratch. We provide practical strategies, discuss the technical aspects, and share our real-life experiences. 

Today, mobile personal finance apps have taken the world by storm and are here to stay.

The global personal finance software market is expected to reach $1,576.86 million by 2027. Building a budgeting app is a promising idea in today's business climate. 

However, to create a budget management app like Mint, it’s crucial to know the rules of the fintech market and the possible challenges.

Let’s start with a brief overview of the Mint concept.

 

What’s Mint?

Mint is a free personal finance app that has a variety of easy-to-use financial planning and tracking tools so that users can automate their budgeting process and save money.

Mint allows its users to connect all of their bank accounts in the financial app and get a clear picture of their financial situation. Users can categorize their transactions into budget categories, set budget goals, and track their spending and savings.

 

Moreover, Mint sends users notifications to remind them to pay their monthly bills. 

 

If you have an idea of creating a personal finance app like Mint, you should start your journey by considering this list of essential features that a modern financial app can't survive without.

 

Read also: Guide on How to Build a Fintech App

 

What are the basic features of a finance app like Mint?

In this section, we present the key features in personal finance apps that are fundamental to this type of app and will help you discover how to build a money management app like Mint.

 

Registration and account creation 

To start using a financial app, users must sign up and enter their personal information.

 

After registering, users can create their bank accounts and start tracking their spending. Pay close attention to authorization and security. You can implement two-factor authentication, fingerprint or voice recognition, and unique code generation.

 

For example, at Onix, we use a third-party SDK to verify the validity of documents and match the user's selfie with the photo in their passport.

 

Synchronization

Users of a financial app will want to synchronize all their bank accounts, including credit and debit cards, investments, loans, and other financial assets.

 

Synchronization enables users to view the financial information and data from all their bank accounts in one personal finance app, allowing them to keep track of their budgets effectively.

 

Budgeting and expense categorization

You should provide a budgeting option for users for cash flow tracking and planning their spending for a week, a month, or several months.

 

Let your users set spending limits, and the financial app will notify them when they approach or exceed their limit. Another notable feature of tracking expenses is the ability to show users exactly where they spend their money.

 

A money management app can provide categories for expenses and automatically categorize users' transactions, allowing them to track their spending effectively.

 

Bills and subscriptions

This feature allows users to keep their bills in one place. A personal finance app can track due dates and notify users of what and when they should pay. Thus, users never miss a payment and always stay in charge.

 

Notifications

This feature is essential for a personal finance app to help users stay on top of low account balances, goal milestones, upcoming bills, late fees, and suspicious transactions, among other essential details.

 

Customer support & consultation

Users may encounter technical issues, so it's essential to provide 24/7 support for effective customer service in your money management app.

 

Analytics and reports

Using this feature, users can keep track of their financial activities to manage and save their money properly. Thanks to well-organized data, users can get daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly reports to see income, expenses by categories, summaries of payees, forecasts, and so on.

 

Gamification

For a personal money management app like Mint, gamification is one of the valuable advanced features. Gamification involves incorporating game-like elements into a personal finance app to enhance user engagement.

 

You can add elements such as a points system, clear goals, rewards, and achievements to keep users involved, allowing them to accomplish their saving objectives better.

 

Investment tracking

This feature enables your users to track where their expenses are allocated and where to invest their money.

 

An investment tracker can help users stay on top of market benchmarks and monitor all their asset allocations directly within the personal finance app, including brokerage accounts, real estate investments, mutual funds, and IRA investments.

Read also: How to Create an Investment App

 

Artificial Intelligence

This technology allows you to significantly personalize your financial app and be ahead of the competition. Using AI, you can provide your customers with AI-driven financial coaching that analyzes users' data to offer suggestions and recommendations and effectively regulate their expenses to reach goals.

 

Furthermore, AI technology can automatically categorize expenses and provide a holistic view of which categories users spent more money on.

 

 

 

What technologies are required to build a personal finance app like Mint?

Now that we've identified the necessary functionality, let's examine the required technologies and tools that will determine the basic cost of developing a personal finance application.

 

Below, you can find a table that provides a tech stack to build a personal finance app, recommended by our experts.

 

How do personal finance apps like Mint make money?

You might be wondering why Mint is doing so well in such a competitive environment. It's mainly due to its effective revenue strategy. Let's dig deeper to see the main ways of monetizing a personal finance app.

 

Freemium

This is a prevalent monetization method that offers a basic set of personal finance application features for free, while advanced features are for sale. For example, you can charge users for personalized guides, money-saving tips, and other relevant content.

 

Credit monitoring service

Mint offers basic credit reporting for free. Still, it provides users with a premium reporting service Mint Credit Monitor for $16.99 per month. Using this feature, individuals can monitor their financial health and receive credit reports from all three major credit reporting agencies, along with an Equifax Risk score.

 

In-app ads

This is the bread and butter of many mobile apps.

 

The primary concept of this monetization method is to generate payments by displaying third-party ads to users based on their transaction history. The ad can be in various formats, such as banners, native ads, full-screen ads, or video. Additionally, users can opt to pay to stop seeing any ads.

 

Subscriptions

Applying this monetization strategy means your users will pay a monthly fee to use all the personal finance app's features.

 

Selling aggregated financial data

You can generate revenue through aggregating financial information relating to consumer trends and then selling it to third parties for promotional, research, and marketing purposes. Many financial apps employ this strategy, including Mint.

 

Paid app

Some popular personal finance apps require a one-time purchase of the financial app, providing users with all its functionality, including advanced features. 

 

Referral fees

You make money when users buy the financial items your finance app promotes. For example, Mint promotes services and products like credit cards, insurance, loans, and many more. Anytime customers take Mint's advice, the app receives a referral payment.

 

How much does it cost to build a personal finance app like Mint?

The cost of personal finance app development is comprised of various factors, such as:

 

• Number of needed features
• The complexity of the project
• The platform you're opting for (iOS, Android)
• Personal finance app development approach (native, web app, hybrid)
• Selected technologies (languages, libraries, frameworks, Blockchain, AI, VR, etc.)
• Mobile app design
• Team size (project manager, UI/UX designer, backend developer, frontend developer, QA engineer, DevOps, and so on), freelance, or in-house team.)

 
However, the most crucial factor that significantly impacts the personal finance app development cost is the company's rate. 

 

Depending on the country where the tech company is located, the rates for finance app development services may vary.

 

Just see the picture below to compare the average rates of IT specialists from different countries.

The approximate time to build an MVP version of a native financial app is 1,620 hours. And, to create a personal finance app, you'll need a development team that consists of the following specialists:

 

• Project manager 1
• Backend developers 2
• Android developers 2
• iOS developers 2
• QA engineers 1
• UI/UX designers 1

 

It's worth mentioning that the team size may vary depending on the project's complexity, the number of features, and the required expertise.

 

Now that we know the underlying factors, we can move on to the development cost of a personal financial app.

 

We use the following formula to roughly calculate personal finance app development cost: app development time X hourly rate.

Note: This is only an approximate example of cost. To calculate the final price of a personal finance management solution, we need to know your project requirements, its complexity, the needed technologies, and many other determinants.

 

If you want to know the exact cost to make your own financial app, discuss your app idea with our experts, and we'll calculate your app development costs.

 

Read also: How to Build a Neobank in 2025

 

Our recommendations for developing a successful personal finance app like Mint

We've considered all the details of personal finance app development. Next, we would like to share some valuable tips that will help you create a successful finance app like Mint, or even better.

 

You will want to bear in mind the following:

 

Verifying product viability

Building a great financial app requires a solid foundation. Before jumping into coding and designing, it's vital to uncover the underlying needs of your users and how your financial management app's functionality will address them. Here is where a discovery phase comes in handy.

 

At Onix, we first conduct a product discovery stage before starting personal finance app development. That allows us to analyze the business idea, gather requirements, define the complexity of the finance app, test market viability, and minimize software development risks.

 

For more information about this stage, please visit the link below.

Security measures and compliance with legal requirements

Although fintech developers carefully think out and implement fintech app security during the development process, we would like to pay particular attention to it.

 

Security is a top priority of any product, especially a finance app. Don't risk compromising app users' private data and your reputation; instead, take reliable protective measures.

 

There are various best practices to ensure a high level of security in online banking. Among them are:

 

• Data encryption to encode sensitive data into code that prevents any frauds
• Session mode to offer short-duration sessions or cut off inactive sessions
• Two-factor authentication via fingerprint, face integration, voice recognition, or a password for one-time use
• Data tokenization to use a random line of symbols that replace sensitive data
• Conducting regular testing to catch all security flaws and vulnerabilities

 

In addition, bear in mind the legal compliance requirements of the country where your custom financial management app will run, and ensure you meet all relevant regulations.

 

The most common compliances you may face are:

 

• anti-money laundering (AML)
• securities and exchange commission (SEC)
• electronic fund transfer act (EFTA)
• electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS)
• fintech action plan (FAP), and many more.

As a mobile app development company, we have extensive experience in the money management app development process, and our experts can ensure a thorough understanding of your local legal compliance requirements.

Focusing on the user experience

A personal finance application contains complex functionality. And here, it's very critical not to make it more complicated.

 

Users of these app types, as a rule, face financial management problems, so they expect to solve them quickly and easily using your app, namely with an intuitive user interface and a convenient experience.

 

Moreover, as the personal finance app market evolves, a kids' finance app with parental controls is becoming increasingly popular for families. When developing such an app, it's crucial to ensure that the user interface is intuitive and engaging for young people while offering comprehensive parental controls for monitoring and managing their child's spending. 

 

Here are some valuable tips from our experts:

 

• Before designing a mobile app, analyze your potential app users' needs and pain points to avoid spending money on something your users don't want.
   
• Try walking in your user's shoes to start thinking as they do and not design something they simply don't understand how to use.
   
• Provide onboarding with valuable tips to educate users on how to use your key features that solve their needs. These clues can significantly enhance your users' experience and involve them from the very first screen.
  Do your best to find a middle ground and include all necessary features on the dashboard while not overwhelming the financial app.
   
• Remember about the golden rule "three taps," which means users should be able to solve their problems / take the desired action in three taps or less.
   
• Replace large blocks of text with visualizations, such as appealing animations; try to avoid presenting hard-to-read information.

 

Onix is your reliable fintech partner

Onix has years of experience designing and building fintech products, including money management apps, cryptocurrency projects, finance apps, micro-investing apps, and more. 

 

To validate your business idea, we can start with an MVP first. We analyze your target audience, gather requirements, conduct business analysis, select reliable technologies for your mobile app, and carefully plan your project.

 

These steps allow us to ensure high product quality and deliver your money management app on time and within budget.

 

So if you're looking for budgeting app developers, look no further! We can form a dedicated software development team to assist you in building a personal financial app and achieving outstanding results.

 
Please don't hesitate to contact us. Together, we can make a personal finance app like Mint, or even better!

 

FAQs

 

How can Onix help me build a personal finance app like Mint?

Onix provides full-cycle development from market research and UX/UI design to backend architecture and API integrations. Our team builds secure, scalable, and user-friendly apps tailored to your goals and target audience.

 

What’s the typical timeline for developing a personal finance app?

The development timeline depends on the app’s complexity. On average, an MVP takes around 3–5 months, while a full-featured app may require 6–9 months. Onix helps speed up delivery through agile processes and early testing.

 

How much does it cost to build a personal finance app?

Costs vary based on features, design, and integrations. A basic MVP usually starts at around $60,000–$90,000. Onix provides accurate estimates after the discovery phase to align with your goals and budget.

 

How does Onix ensure data security and compliance for finance apps?

We implement multi-layered security measures, including data encryption, secure APIs, and compliance with standards like PCI DSS and GDPR. Our team ensures sensitive user data is fully protected at every stage.

 

Can Onix help add AI-based budgeting or spending insights?

Yes. Our experts can integrate AI and machine learning to analyze user spending patterns, predict future expenses, and provide personalized financial advice for a more informed user experience.