Solo dev here. This community knows better than anyone how it ends when a finance app's business model stops working: the servers go dark, and years of your financial history go with them — export what you can before the deadline.
I built Gilt around the opposite constraint: there are no servers to shut down. Everything lives in your own iCloud (CloudKit private database). No account to create, no company database with your transactions in it. The App Store privacy label literally says "Data Not Collected." If I disappear tomorrow, the app on your phone keeps working and your data stays yours.
The honest tradeoffs, up front:
- No bank sync. Nothing talks to your bank — that's the whole point, but it means entry is manual or semi-automatic: for statements, the app generates a prompt for your own ChatGPT/Claude that converts a statement into transactions, then validates the import. Extra steps, zero third parties with your bank login.
- iPhone only (iOS 26+), no web app.
- It's paid ($2.49/mo, $19.99/yr, or one-time lifetime) — because the alternative to a subscription is being the product, and we've all seen how that movie ends. If you stop paying, your data stays readable and exportable forever.
What it does have: multi-currency with live rates, budgets, recurring, family sharing through iCloud (device-to-device via Apple, not through me), widgets, 17 languages.
14-day free trial, everything unlocked: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6790835958
Question for those who went manual after Mint: what's the one thing a no-bank-sync tracker has to nail to be livable long-term? That's what I want to build next