Track expenses with ChatGPT, without the spreadsheet.

This works on any ChatGPT plan and takes a minute to set up. Start one chat just for spending, and give it the rules first:

You are my expense tracker. When I describe purchases, reply with one table row per purchase: Date | Item | Amount | Currency | Category | Paid with. Use today's date unless I say otherwise. Categories: Food, Transport, Groceries, Bills, Shopping, Subscriptions, Other. End every reply with this month's running total per category.

Then log purchases the way you would say them:

Coffee 12.90 with GX card, Grab to KLCC 23 yesterday, Netflix 54.90 monthly on UOB

At the end of the month, ask for a review:

Summarise this month's spending by category. Show the three biggest purchases and any subscriptions. Suggest one realistic place to cut back. Then give me everything as CSV.

Where it falls short

• The chat is the database. Long conversations get trimmed or forgotten, and running totals drift.
• Files don’t update. A CSV or spreadsheet ChatGPT creates is a snapshot. New expenses never flow into it.
• No accounts or balances. It won’t know your card balance, savings or a bill due next week unless you paste them in every time.
• All-or-nothing privacy. To analyse a statement, you upload the whole file to the chat.

Fint is a private finance app for iPhone with Fint AI built in. Instead of keeping your money in a chat, Fint keeps a real ledger on your iPhone, with accounts, budgets, bills and plans. The AI you connect reads the line you type and writes the entry for you.

1. Connect your AI. Sign in with ChatGPT, or use an API key for OpenAI, Anthropic Claude or Google Gemini. You can also enter any OpenAI-compatible endpoint and model.
2. Type or speak one line, like “Coffee 12.90 with GX card”. Voice uses Apple’s speech recognition, and you see the text before it’s sent.
3. Fint AI writes the entry with the right category and account, and saves it with Undo.
4. Ask about your own money: “How much did I spend on food this month?” Fint sends the ledgers you select, only when you send a message.

Receipts, screenshots and PDFs can go into Collect first, straight from the Share sheet. When you have a moment, ask your AI to organise the whole batch at once.

If automatic bank imports matter most to you, a bank-sync app is the better fit. If you’d rather not hand over a bank login, and you already pay for an AI, connecting that AI to a local ledger is the shortest path.

• Lunch 18.50 from Everyday records a food expense on that account.
• Netflix 54.90 every month on UOB adds a subscription that repeats monthly.
• Grab to KLCC 23 yesterday uses yesterday’s date.
• Move 500 from Maybank to savings records a transfer, not spending.
• How much did I spend on food in October? answers from your own records.

Nothing is sent until you connect a provider and send a message. Then Fint sends your message, the relevant chat history, files you attach and data from the ledgers you selected, directly from your iPhone to that provider. There is no Fint server in between. API keys and sign-in details stay in the iOS Keychain, and the provider handles what it receives under its own terms.

Fint doesn’t connect to banks, and you don’t need a Fint account. Read the full detail in Security & privacy.

Fint AI is free for everyone, including on the Free plan. If you sign in with ChatGPT or use an API key, usage counts against that account and is billed by your provider, not by Fint. Fint Premium ($0.99 a month, $9.99 a year or $19.99 once) raises workspace limits; you don’t need it for Fint AI. See plans and limits.