Keep Above
Budgeting apps in Australia
In Australia a consumer consent to share bank data may run for at most 12 months, so an app that reads your bank asks you to renew at least yearly. Three of the apps below document that renewal, and only two of those say what it costs you. Three more are sold in Australia with no consent to renew at all, for three different reasons. This page is about the market rather than the rule, which has its own page.
Written and maintained by Manandai Ltd, the company that makes Keep Above. This is our comparison, not an independent review. No app here is scored, rated or ranked. How we compare.
Every competitor cell is taken from that app's own pages on 22 September 2026, quoted where a quote exists. The consent rule is quoted from the regulator's published guidance rather than from the rules themselves, because the legislation register serves the rule text only through a viewer that a reader cannot cite. Store availability is from Apple's storefront-scoped lookup. Where a vendor names its bank-connection provider inside a quoted sentence, that part is reported generically.
Spotted something out of date? Email support@keepabove.com and we correct or remove it within five business days.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by any app or organisation named here. Product names are trademarks of their owners.
Last verified 22 September 2026How long does a bank connection last in Australia?
The regulator's Privacy Safeguard Guidelines put it in its key points: "consent is time limited – a CDR consumer can only give consent for a maximum period of 12 months (or 7 years for certain consents given by CDR business consumers)." The same guidance says an accredited person "cannot ask a CDR consumer to extend the duration of an existing consent for longer than 12 months", and attributes that to subrule 4.12(1) and paragraph 4.14(1)(c) of the rules.
Two words matter. It is a consumer consent — a business consumer can go to seven years, which is irrelevant to a household budget but makes an unqualified sentence wrong. And twelve months is a ceiling, not a term: the regulator's plain-words page for providers says you get to "choose how long they'd like the data to be shared for, up to the maximum of 12 months", and the vendors' own wording follows suit — "usually 12 months", "typically lasts for up to 12 months".
Nothing moved in 2025 or 2026 that changes this. The rules were amended in 2025, the resulting compilation is the one in force, it still carries both rules, and the register records no unincorporated amendments as at 22 September 2026.
Does the 12-month consent cover every kind of bank connection?
This is the fact that does not appear anywhere else on this hub, and it complicates the tidy picture every other country page paints.
Frollo's help centre says its consents cover two different mechanisms: "Consents allow you to control which accounts and data are shared with Frollo through either CDR (Consumer Data Right) or screen-scraping connections." It describes "2 major methods to link your accounts, both through a consent flow", and says it uses the Consumer Data Right "where available".
Screen scraping is not the Consumer Data Right and does not carry the Consumer Data Right's twelve-month ceiling. So on an app that runs both, the answer to "how often do I renew" depends on which route your particular bank went down. We are not going to pretend that resolves into one number, and no vendor page we found resolves it either.
| What its own pages say about renewing, and what a lapse costs | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| BudgetBuddie | Its pages document a read-only connection through an open-banking service, and state nothing about a consent interval or about what a lapsed connection costs. | site |
| Frollo | "Expiry: CDR consents are time-limited (usually 12 months). You'll need to renew your consents BEFORE they expire if you want to continue sharing data." On a lapse it is unusually specific: "Any personalisation and customisation to this data will be deleted forever" — its own list is bills, goals, budgets, categories, tags and notes — and "Your data is permanently removed from our system." | help centre |
| Goodbudget | Not applicable in Australia. Its plan table states "Automatic bank sync (US banks only)", so there is no Australian connection to consent to on any tier. | plans |
| Harbourline | Not applicable. "Harbourline does not connect to your bank, collect bank credentials or move money." | site |
| Keep Above | Not applicable. There is no connection, no consent and nothing imported. | support |
| PocketSmith | "Permissions typically last up to 12 months, after which they must be renewed", and "consent isn't enduring under CDR open banking". Its engineers have written that "extending consent does not work", so it chose "to fall back to a defensive position — allowing consent for data access to expire after a year and guiding the user through re-authorizing these expired feeds". On what a lapse costs its own stored data, its pages say nothing. | open banking |
| WeMoney | It states no renewal length of its own, only the symptom: "If you're seeing a 'Consent Expired' error … you'll need to renew your data-sharing consent." On a lapse: "the connected account will be removed and WeMoney does not retain your financial data", and "any previously manually assigned transaction categorisations are lost, including baseline budget assumptions". Its CDR policy promises deletion within 30 days of receiving a withdrawal request; where a consent simply expires, the same policy says data is deleted but names no interval. | CDR policy |
What happens when an Australian bank consent expires?
Set those rows beside each other and an asymmetry appears that is worth naming. Frollo and WeMoney both tell you, in advance and in their own words, what a lapsed consent takes with it — the categories you assigned, the budgets built on them. PocketSmith documents the renewal carefully, including why it does not try to extend a consent, and says nothing at all about what happens to the data it holds.
None of that ranks the apps, and this page does not try to. It is a fact about documentation, and it is the fact a person deciding whether to let a consent lapse over Christmas would actually want.
Which budgeting apps are sold in Australia?
A storefront check turns up three surprises, and the first is the one most likely to catch a reader out.
- BudgetBuddie titles its own site "NZ & AU" and its FAQ says it is built for both countries, but on an Australian App Store lookup it returns nothing. It is on the New Zealand storefront. Its published prices are in New Zealand dollars and it names no Australian price.
- PocketSmith's only Australian App Store listing is Sidekick, a companion app rather than the product. Its plans page serves New Zealand dollars with no currency selector, so this page does not state an Australian price for it.
- Harbourline is on neither store — it is a web plan with a published introductory household price of A$2.50 a week, and it is the only app here that publishes an Australian dollar figure on its own site.
- Frollo, WeMoney, Goodbudget and Keep Above are all on the Australian App Store.
Which budgeting apps in Australia have no consent to renew?
Three of the seven ask nothing of you yearly, and they arrive there by three different routes, which is worth separating because only one of them is a design decision about Australia.
By geography. Goodbudget's sync covers United States banks only, so an Australian user is on manual entry regardless of tier. The twelve-month clock never touches them, but not because anyone chose that for them.
By design, locally. Harbourline states it plainly: no bank connection, no credentials, no money moved. It is built in Australia for Australian pay cycles — "weekly, every two weeks, monthly or yearly" — with a stated plan horizon of 13 weeks.
By design, everywhere. Keep Above has no connection in any country, projects 30 years on either tier, and runs the whole budget on your pay cycle. The consent column simply does not apply to it, here or anywhere.
| Forward projection, and how far ahead | Pay-cycle budget period | Price, as the vendor publishes it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BudgetBuddie | It names a forecasted cashflow per month. No horizon in months or years appears on its pages. | "Set weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or custom budgets." | Published in New Zealand dollars only: free tier, then NZ$9.50 to NZ$13.80 a month, with a first-year promotion. No Australian price is published. |
| Frollo | Its Cashflow help describes every view as running up to today — "Past month (and other past periods) gives you the view of your finances from today counting backward". No forward horizon is stated. | Its own articles are in tension and this page does not resolve them: one says you "choose a cycle: monthly, weekly, or fortnightly independent of your pay cycle", another says "It is important to set your payday cycle to activate your budget period." | "Completely free – (no ads)". |
| Goodbudget | In the vendor's own words, "Goodbudget currently doesn't support future forecasting". | Its pages name a budget period; which periods are offered was not checked in this pass. | US$10 a month or US$80 a year on its own site. Its Australian store listing sells a differently named plan at several Australian dollar tiers, so the two do not line up. |
| Harbourline | 13 weeks, stated as a plan horizon: "Look ahead before bills become urgent." | "Choose weekly, every two weeks, monthly or yearly rhythms", for households "paid weekly, every two weeks, monthly or yearly when bills land on different schedules". | A free payday plan with no payment card required, then an introductory household plan at A$2.50 a week. |
| Keep Above | 30 years, on the free tier and the paid one alike, with the money set aside for later bills projected alongside the balance. | Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, twice a month or monthly, laid out payday to payday. | Free tier including the projection. Premium from US$6.99 a month; local store pricing varies. |
| PocketSmith | By tier: 6 months, 10 years, 30 years and 60 years. "Repeating budgets are a handy way to automatically project your future earnings and spending." | Not checked in this pass. | Its plans page serves New Zealand dollars with no currency selector, so no Australian price is stated here. |
| WeMoney | Not documented today. Its paid tier lists "Projected net worth (Coming in 2027)", so a forward view is named as a future feature rather than a current one. | It has a feature called Payday, which sets a countdown from your pay cycle rather than running the budget on it. | Free tier. Its help centre and its store listing give two different annual figures, so neither is stated here as the price. |
Which Australian budgeting apps have closed?
Two well-known Australian budgeting apps are no longer listed on the Australian App Store. Neither has a closure announcement we could reach — one of the domains now serves an unrelated site entirely — so this page states the absence and nothing more. No date, no reason, no source we cannot show you.
It is on the page because a country page that lists only what survives tells you less than one that also says what did not.
Our comparison, not a review. Every competitor fact here is taken from that app's own pages on the date shown, and the consent rule from the regulator's own guidance. Projections described here are conditional on the figures a person enters and on nothing changing. This page takes no account of your circumstances. Nothing here is financial advice.
Keep Above
Enter each bill and your income once, and keep your balance current now and then. Keep Above works out the balance you would need to cover everything coming, and projects your balance and your sinking funds — which it calls reserved funds — forward. No bank connection.
Common questions
How long does a bank connection last in an Australian budgeting app?
At most 12 months for a consumer, and often less if you choose less. The regulator's guidance says a CDR consumer "can only give consent for a maximum period of 12 months", and that an accredited person cannot ask you to extend an existing consent beyond that. Twelve months is a ceiling rather than a fixed term: the regulator's own page for providers tells them to let you choose how long, up to that maximum. Frollo's wording is "usually 12 months" and PocketSmith's is "typically lasts up to 12 months".
What do you lose when an Australian consent expires?
It depends on the app, and only two of the three that document the renewal say. Frollo says that when a consent expires it deletes everything attached to it, listing bills, goals, budgets, categories, tags and notes, and that "Any personalisation and customisation to this data will be deleted forever". WeMoney says the connected account is removed, that it does not retain your financial data, and that "any previously manually assigned transaction categorisations are lost, including baseline budget assumptions". PocketSmith documents the renewal but says nothing about what happens to the data it holds.
Which budgeting apps are actually sold in Australia?
On the Australian App Store: Frollo, WeMoney, Goodbudget and Keep Above. PocketSmith's only Australian listing is a companion app called Sidekick rather than the product itself. Harbourline is on neither store and is used in a browser. BudgetBuddie describes itself as built for New Zealand and Australia but does not come back on an Australian App Store lookup; it is on the New Zealand storefront.
Can you use a budgeting app in Australia without a bank connection?
Yes, and three of the apps here have no consent to renew for three different reasons. Goodbudget's sync covers United States banks only, so an Australian user enters everything by hand whatever the tier. Harbourline is built in Australia and states it does not connect to your bank, collect credentials or move money. Keep Above has no connection in any country. Only the last two are a design decision rather than a side effect of geography.