Best Budget Application in 2025: Cashew

As new budget applications continue to be introduced each year, it is necessary to re-evaluate the options to determine which application best meets your needs. Key factors to consider include ease of use, ability to import and export data from other budget applications, synchronization across devices/users, cross-device support, and cost. After downloading and evaluating an extensive number of applications from both the Play Store and the App Store and considering all of these factors, one application rose to the top: “Cashew – Expense Budget Tracker.”

Although the application is a relative newcomer to the budget application scene, the capabilities and design are impressive. Additionally, it is supported by both iOS and Android, which is not always the case for applications. Given that each household will likely have members that prefer different devices, this cross-platform compatibility is necessary for applications we recommend to users.

Clean and Simple User Interface

One thing you will notice almost immediately after downloading Cashew is the clean user interface. The highly customizable home screen allows users to include only the items they care about most, whether transactions, budgets, pie charts, or graphs. The application is not riddled with overly complex features that the majority of users will not use or benefit from. This application will allow you to set up your budget and expense tracking in a manner that best suits your needs. Categories are completely customizable to include sub-categories. Additionally, multiple budgets can be created to show spending in different categories or accounts. For example, you can set up an expense budget to track all your spending and an investment/savings budget to track your progress toward meeting financial goals.

Despite the myriad of great features, there are two small items that some users may desire that the application currently does not support. First, when viewing transactions, it is impossible to include the category name in the list view of all transactions (unless the title/description is left blank). If you select easily recognizable icons for each category, this will be a minor inconvenience for most users. Any subcategories will show up in the list view. Second, it can be difficult to establish budgets for a set time period. For instance, if this year’s budget is different than last year’s budget due to lifestyle changes, such as a new job or change in income, increasing your budget amount will increase all the prior budget periods as well.

For example, if you had a monthly budget of $3,000 last year, and that budget increases to $3,500 this year, when you change the budget amount, it will then be applied to all the previous periods as well. While this does not impact any of the data from those periods, it can be misleading when reviewing those periods because it looks like you spent well below your budget. In this example, if you spent $2,800 in August of last year, that would be 93% of your budget for that time period. However, after you increase your budget to $3,500 for the current year, it would apply that change to past periods, making it look like August of last year only utilized 80% of the available budget ($2,800 of the available $3,500). One workaround for this is to create multiple budgets covering different custom time periods. According to the developer, these features were not included in order to provide a budget application that is easy to use and meets the majority of users’ needs. The lack of these two features may not be important to most.

Import/Export Comma Separated Values (CSV) Files

Having the ability to both import and export CSV files is a key feature for budget applications because it enables you to both back up your transaction data and import previous data from other budget applications. This becomes extremely important if you have a budget application that you have used for a long period of time and want to incorporate all those transactions in Cashew to enable a comparison of your historical spending habits. Also, the ability to export to CSV will allow you to transition to another application if needed. This can be especially helpful if you are utilizing a budget application that is no longer supported or receiving updates from the developer. Additionally, having CSV files we enable those files to be viewed, saved, filtered, and analyzed on another device, such as your laptop computer, desktop computer, or any other device that supports the file type. While importing/exporting data from a budget application is not going to be the first thought on your mind on your road to financial independence, you will learn to appreciate this feature if you decide to change applications or the data on the application is deleted and you need to restore a year or more of transaction history.

Synchronization Across Devices and Users

The convenience of synchronization across devices and users should not be overstated. Anyone who is married or needs to capture spending from multiple family members in a single budget will appreciate Cashew’s ability to actively add expenses on the go that all users on the account will see in real-time. When you are trying to determine how much money is left for the month or how much money you have available to go on a date night, you can quickly review the expense categories or budget to see how much has been spent by all users. If you are the only user of the application, you may wonder why it is necessary to have synchronization. In short, you want an application that is “future proof” (i.e. as your lifestyle and needs change, it can still meet your objectives). While you may not have a family now, there may be one in your future. Alternatively, even if you never have additional users, the ability to use the application across your devices, rather than just one device is beneficial.

Different budget applications rely on various methods to synchronize data. Some have a primary user account from which other users are invited to view and edit the application. However, in the case of Cashew, synchronization is accomplished through a shared Google account. To sync the data across devices or users, simply login to the app using the associated Google account. This has both pros and cons. The advantages include ease of setup; access to the many features provided by Google, such as Google Drive; and most users will already have a Google account. In contrast, some potential disadvantages include password sharing among all users (everyone using the application must sign in with the email and password), and not all users will want a Google account. To alleviate sharing account information that may provide users access to more information that you desire, simply set up a new Gmail account with a password you and the other users know. If you only utilize that Google account for Cashew, then your privacy and security will be unchanged.

Overall, the benefits of syncing through a shared Google account outweigh the disadvantages, especially when considering the ability to back up the data to the cloud automatically. Cashew allows users to set up recurring backups that will automatically save the application’s data to your Google Drive. As a result, if you ever lose your device, accidentally wipe the data, or need to restore the data for another reason, you will not have to recreate everything manually. Instead, simply restore the application from the last backup. This is especially important with multiple users because having more individuals logging expenses and making changes creates the potential for additional mistakes.

Cost

Cashew is completely free to use. Having “Cashew Pro” will unlock some additional features, such as allowing the creation of more budgets. As you likely already know from other articles across the site, we generally recommend avoiding subscription services. Fortunately, Cashew offers the ability to purchase a lifetime license for the pro version. There are three options available if you want to upgrade to Cashew Pro – a monthly subscription, a yearly subscription, and a lifetime subscription. The developer graciously offers users the ability to unlock and utilize all the pro features at no cost. As a result, you can try out Cashew Pro to determine if it meets your needs before purchasing. However, to support the developer, who committed multiple years to developing an outstanding budget application and to ensure continued support for future updates, if you love the application, pay for it. If you plan to utilize the application for the foreseeable future, at $19.99, the lifetime license will quickly pay for itself as you employ the tool to help monitor your spending and stay on track for your financial goals. Additionally, buying the pro version will remove the prompt to upgrade.

Conclusion

After downloading and evaluating dozens of budget applications, Cashew stood out as the best budget application in 2025. It is easy to use, can sync across multiple devices and users, automatically backs up data to Google Drive, can import and export CSV files to easily consolidate historical financial data, and it costs nothing (although you should consider supporting the developer if you believe that benefits of the application warrant it). Although Cashew remains our top pick for budget applications, if you try out the application and decide it does not meet all your needs, then you can consider some of the other top budget applications.