Leaving YNAB?
The YNAB alternative you keep on your desktop.
YNAB is a great budgeting method — but the price keeps climbing, it’s subscription-only, and the day you stop paying you lose access to your own setup. GlidePath Money is the other model: buy a desktop license, keep your local data, and get a full retirement planner alongside the budgeting.
Why people go looking for a YNAB alternative.
Usually one of three reasons: the ~$109/year subscription adds up and keeps rising; if you ever cancel, your budget goes read-only and you’re locked out of years of your own work; and YNAB is only a budget — it doesn’t answer “am I on track to retire?”
The question budgeting apps skip — “will my money last?” — answered with a 1,000-path Monte Carlo and a plain-English verdict, right alongside the day-to-day budgeting.
A full retirement planner is included — not a separate subscription, and not something YNAB does at all.
Three things that are different here.
Keep the version you bought
$129 desktop license vs YNAB’s ~$109 every year. Over five years that’s about $285 vs $545 (YNAB pricing surveyed June 2026; prices change) — and if maintenance lapses, your installed version keeps working. Stop paying YNAB and you’re locked out of your own budget.
A planning tool, not just a budget
Retirement Monte Carlo, your Tax Valley + Roth window, Social Security claim-age math, 0% balance-transfer countdowns. YNAB has none of this — it’s budgeting software. GlidePath budgets and plans the next 30 years.
Local-first, no Plaid
Your financial file lives on your computer, not a cloud server. And there’s no aggregator login — capture transactions with the browser extension or a CSV, so your bank credentials never leave your browser.
The honest part.
If you love YNAB’s method, we’re not a clone of it.
YNAB is built around one specific philosophy — zero-based, give-every-dollar-a-job, envelope budgeting — and it’s genuinely the best tool there is for that method. GlidePath is a planning tool with budgeting attached, not an envelope-budgeting system. So if the YNAB method is the thing you’re attached to, switching will feel different. But if you’re leaving over the price, the subscription lock-in, or the fact that it stops at budgeting and never looks at retirement — that’s exactly the gap GlidePath fills.
Bring your YNAB history.
You don’t have to start over.
Export your register from YNAB as a CSV, drop it onto GlidePath’s Import page, and format auto-detect brings your transactions across. Then point the planner at where you actually are — no judgment about how you got here.
Ready for budgeting that also plans ahead?
$129 for Personal, $199 for Personal + Business. First year included, then $39/yr keeps eligible updates current; cancel any time and the version you have keeps working.
GlidePath shows you the math — for your specific situation, talk to a fiduciary advisor or CPA.