Pick a budgeting app that reads your accounts through an RBI-licensed Account Aggregator. If an app asks for your net banking username and password, delete it. That single test rules out most of what goes wrong with this category, and it rests on a rule you can check yourself.
RBI’s Master Direction for Account Aggregators is explicit. An Account Aggregator cannot obtain your authentication credentials. It cannot store the financial information it retrieves. It cannot support transactions. And it cannot run any other business alongside.
How do you judge a budgeting app?
| Test | What to check | Why it matters | Source of the rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it reads your accounts | Account Aggregator consent, not a login | An AA is barred from holding your credentials | RBI NBFC-AA Master Direction |
| Where the data sits | Whether the app stores your statements | An AA may not let your data reside with it | RBI NBFC-AA Master Direction |
| SMS permission | Whether it wants to read your messages | SMS scraping reads every OTP on the phone | App permission list |
| What else it sells | Loans, insurance or investments inside the app | The budget becomes a lead form | The app’s own product pages |
| Consent controls | Whether you can revoke access | Consent-based access must be reversible | RBI NBFC-AA Master Direction |
| Price | The full subscription cost, with GST | Free apps are paid for some other way | The app’s pricing page |
| Export | Whether you can take your data out | Decides whether you are locked in | The app’s help pages |
Why the Account Aggregator rule is the whole test
Before Account Aggregators, apps read your finances two ways. They asked for your net banking credentials and logged in as you. Or they read your SMS inbox and parsed bank alerts.
Both are dangerous, in different ways. Handing over credentials breaks the terms of your bank account and puts a third party inside it. Reading your SMS inbox means the app can see every one-time password your phone receives, from every service you use.
The Account Aggregator framework was built to end that. Consent is explicit, scoped and revocable. The aggregator is a pipe, not a warehouse, and RBI’s direction says the information must not reside with it. An app that still wants your password is choosing not to use the safe route.
What a budgeting app can and cannot do for you
It can show you where money went. Categorised spending over a few months is genuinely useful, because almost nobody guesses their own pattern correctly.
It cannot make you spend less. No app in this category has solved that, and the ones that claim to are selling a feeling. The behaviour change comes from a rule you set, such as moving savings out on payday before the spending starts.
If all you want is the arithmetic, you may not need an app at all. Our budget calculator, net worth calculator and emergency fund calculator do the same sums without connecting to anything. Nothing you type into them leaves your browser.
Why this page names no winner
Because the field changes faster than we can verify it. Pricing on these apps moves, features move behind paywalls, and the list of licensed aggregators an app uses changes without an announcement. A ranked list published today would be wrong within a quarter, and a wrong ranking on an app that reads your bank account is not a small error.
The test above does not go stale. Run it on any app before you connect an account, and re-run it at renewal. If an app fails the credentials test, nothing else about it matters.
What to watch for in the permissions screen
Read the permission list before you tap accept. A budgeting app has no reason to need your contacts. It has no reason to need your call log. It has no reason to need your photo library.
Those permissions turn up in lending apps that collect contact lists to pressure borrowers later. Some budgeting apps sit in the same corporate group as a lender. If the app offers you a loan on the home screen, assume the budget is the acquisition funnel and read our guide to borrower rights before you take it.
If an app has already been given access you regret, revoke the consent at the aggregator, change your net banking password, and remove the SMS permission. Then read our pages on UPI fraud and the digital arrest scam, because the same data feeds both.
Frequently asked questions
Are budgeting apps safe in India?
Those that connect through an RBI-licensed Account Aggregator are on a regulated footing. Those that ask for your net banking password are not. The connection method decides the answer, not the app’s ratings.
Should I give a budgeting app my net banking password?
No. Never. An Account Aggregator is barred by RBI from obtaining your authentication credentials. Any app asking for them is working outside that framework.
Can an Account Aggregator move money from my account?
No. RBI’s direction states that an Account Aggregator shall not support transactions by customers. It carries data with your consent and nothing else.
Does an Account Aggregator store my bank statements?
It is not allowed to. The direction says no financial information accessed from a provider shall reside with the Account Aggregator.
Is a free budgeting app really free?
Something pays for it. Usually it is a lending, insurance or investment product sold inside the app. That is not automatically bad, but it explains what the app will nudge you towards.
Sources
- Reserve Bank of India, Master Direction – Non-Banking Financial Company – Account Aggregator (Reserve Bank) Directions, updated 6 September 2024. https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_ViewMasDirections.aspx?id=10598
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