Money apps that somebody else pays for get closed. This one is paid for by the people who use it, and by nobody else.
Two of Australia’s best-known budgeting apps closed in 2022, each by the company that had bought it.
Closed 5 August 2022
Zip, the buy now, pay later company, bought Pocketbook in 2016. In July 2022 it told about 800,000 users that the app and web service would close on 5 August. They had until 4 August to export their transactions as a CSV file. Pocketbook said it would then delete the personal information it held.
Closed 16 December 2022
Westpac bought MoneyBrilliant from AMP in December 2021. Less than a year later it closed the app and web service and moved its money-management work into the Westpac app. Users were told to export their information before the closing date, because they could not reach it afterwards.
Neither app closed because people stopped using it. Each was owned by a company whose business was something else: lending in one case, banking in the other. Pocketbook cost its users nothing, so when its owner’s priorities changed there was no income from the app itself to argue for keeping it.
An app that looks after your money for years needs an income that depends on you staying. So Clementine charges, in the open, and takes money from nobody else.
Plus is A$9.99 a month and Sole Trader is A$19.99. Three things cost money every month for every person who uses a money app, and the plans exist to cover them.
What is left pays for the work of building it and answering you when something goes wrong.
Free stays free because it uses none of the three: no feeds and no AI. That is why it does not need to end. What is in each plan
Those are the ways a free money app earns its keep, and each one puts somebody else’s interests between you and your own figures. Independent and staying that way
Charging does not make a business immortal. So the thing people lost when those two apps closed is something you already hold: a full export of everything Clementine keeps for you, on every plan including Free, whenever you like. It does not wait for a closing-down notice. How to take your data with you
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