Keep Above
Budgeting apps in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom a budgeting app with Open Banking access must obtain your explicit reconfirmation of consent at least every 90 days — the app asks you, not your bank — and Emma, Snoop and Plum each document that step on their own help pages. Keep Above has no connection to reconfirm, and Fudget, made in England, has none either. The five apps below are ones a UK reader can buy today, described from their own pages.
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 or its UK store listing on 22 September 2026, quoted where a quote exists. The rule is quoted from the regulator's own published guidance. Both Emma and Plum also sell savings and investment products; those are outside what this site states, so this page describes only their budgeting behaviour.
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Last verified 22 September 2026How often must a UK budgeting app reconfirm your consent?
The Financial Conduct Authority's Payment Services and Electronic Money — Our Approach, March 2026 (version 7) states it at paragraph 17.77: where an app accesses your account information without you actively asking for it, it "may only access the account information if the payment service user has confirmed with the AISP within the previous 90 days that the payment service user continues to consent to such access".
Two things follow that are easy to get wrong. The step sits with the app, not with your bank — that changed in March 2022, and before then you re-authenticated with the bank itself. And the European Union's equivalent is a different mechanism at a different length: there the renewal stayed with your bank, on a 180-day cycle. They are not one rule at two numbers, and an app operating in both places says so: Plum's own help centre puts it as "The connection process is valid for 90 calendar days for the UK and for 180 calendar days for the EU."
| What its own pages say about the 90-day step, and what happens if you let it lapse | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Emma | "your connection to your bank through Open Banking lasts 90 days" and "you'll need to renew access every 90 days". On what a lapse costs, the mechanism is a gap rather than a deletion: "if you don't use Emma for 6 months, and then you login in again and renew your access, you may find that you have 3 months of data missing" — nothing was collected while consent was down, so reconnecting cannot fill it in. | help centre |
| Fudget | Nothing to reconfirm. Its pages describe no bank connection at all, and its own paid feature is syncing between your devices rather than to a bank. | site |
| Keep Above | Nothing to reconfirm. There is no connection, no consent and nothing imported. | support |
| Plum | "The connection process is valid for 90 calendar days for the UK and for 180 calendar days for the EU", and "our app will automatically notify you a few days before the connection's expiration". Its article on an expired connection covers what keeps running — the fixed-amount automations are unaffected — rather than what happens to your data, about which it says nothing either way. | help centre |
| Snoop | "You will have to reconnect your accounts every 90 days as part of Open Banking regulations." It describes the step as being passed to your bank to key in your details again, which is Snoop's description of its own flow. Uniquely in this set it pays you to come back: a customer who reconnects an expired account within 14 days of an invitation receives a £5 gift voucher. On removing an account by hand, "all of the previous work done (bills, transaction categories etc) will be lost" — its pages say nothing about a connection that simply sits unrenewed. | help centre |
Do UK budgeting apps forecast your balance?
Read the same five apps for what they say about looking forward, and the table goes quiet. This is the page's honest finding, and it is a fact about what these products are for rather than a judgement on any of them.
| Bills entered once and projected forward | Forecast horizon | Money set aside inside the budget | Pay-cycle budget period | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emma | Its pages describe tracking bills and alerting when one is due. They state nothing about projecting an entered bill forward into a future balance. | No horizon stated. | Nothing stated about a fund tracked inside the budget. | Eight periods, including "Every 4 weeks", "Every 2 weeks" and "every week", from the Plus tier up. |
| Fudget | "'Star' your Entries to repeat from budget to budget (less typing!)" — into the next budget. Nothing about carrying it across future periods into a balance. | None stated. | Nothing stated. Its own nouns are Budgets, Folders and Partials. | "Stay on budget pay-check to pay-check (monthly, bi-weekly or weekly)" — bi-weekly is the vendor's word. |
| Keep Above | Yes. Each bill is entered once and projected forward with the balance. | 30 years, on either tier. | Reserved funds, projected alongside the balance. | Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, twice a month or monthly, laid out payday to payday. |
| Plum | Its plans page names no bills feature at all. | No horizon stated. | Pockets, which its help centre describes as places money is moved into, behaving "as dedicated spaces where your money resides". That is money that actually moves, which is a different thing from a fund tracked in a ledger, and the two are not compared here. | It has a Pay Day automation that moves a fixed amount. Its pages state nothing about a budget period that runs on your pay cycle. |
| Snoop | Documented, and detected rather than entered: "The Bills feature works by analysing your transactions and applying some logic to work out what we think are 'regular' payments." | A bills timeline "showing your bills vs your bank balance for the rest of the month", and looking ahead to the following month or pay cycle. No longer horizon is stated. | Its help centre returns no article for a pot or a goal, and its pages state nothing about money set aside for a bill that comes later. | "Track spending from payday to payday", on the paid tier. Its pages name no frequency — always "your pay cycle" or the date you choose. |
Why are some UK budgeting apps FCA-registered and others not?
Three of the five are United Kingdom firms and each carries its own Financial Conduct Authority registration in its own footer: Emma Technologies Ltd, registered in England and Wales, firm reference 794952; Usnoop Limited, 911638; Plum Fintech Limited, 836158.
The fourth is a sole developer registered at an address in Stockport, and he holds no such permission, because his app connects to nothing. That contrast is the clearest thing on the page: the registration is not a mark of quality or of size. It follows from one design decision, which is whether the app reads your bank.
Keep Above is in the same position as Fudget for the same reason, and is made in New Zealand rather than the United Kingdom.
What happened to Money Dashboard?
Money Dashboard was a United Kingdom budgeting app, and it closed. Its own closure notice, from its site as it stood in December 2023, reads: "On the 31st of October 2023 all Money Dashboard web and mobile applications for Neon and Classic permanently closed. This means all user accounts and associated data have now been deleted. Unfortunately we could not find a sustainable business model for the apps, and are therefore unable to continue supporting the services."
The domain now redirects to a business open-banking service, so the notice is readable only in an archived capture of that page. It is on this page because a country page that lists only what survives tells you less than one that also says what did not.
What this page leaves out on purpose
Both Emma and Plum have moved a long way into savings and investment products — accounts with stated interest rates, funds, ISAs, a pension. This site states facts about budgeting apps and not about financial products, so none of that appears above, and the tier prices here should be read as what the tier costs rather than as a summary of everything it contains.
The same goes for anything to do with credit reports or credit scores, which one of these apps markets. That is outside what any page on this site says, about our own product or anyone else's.
Our comparison, not a review. Every competitor fact here is taken from that app's own pages or its UK store listing on the date shown. 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 often do UK budgeting apps make you reconnect your bank?
At least every 90 days, and the app asks you rather than your bank. The regulator's March 2026 guidance puts it at paragraph 17.77: an app may only access your account information without you actively requesting it if you have confirmed within the previous 90 days that you still consent. Emma, Snoop and Plum each describe the step on their own help pages. The European Union's equivalent is a different mechanism on a 180-day cycle, where the renewal stayed with the bank.
What do you lose if you let a UK bank connection lapse?
It depends on the app, and two of them are specific. Emma describes a gap rather than a deletion: nothing is collected while consent is down, so after six months away you may find three months of data missing, and reconnecting cannot fill it in. Snoop says that removing an account by hand loses the bills and categories attached to it, and separately offers a £5 gift voucher to customers who reconnect an expired account within 14 days of an invitation. Plum says its fixed-amount automations keep running and says nothing either way about your data.
Which UK budgeting apps forecast your balance?
On their own pages, almost none of them do. Snoop documents a bills timeline showing your balance against your bills for the rest of the month, and looking ahead to the following month or pay cycle, with no longer horizon stated. Emma, Plum and Fudget state no forecast horizon at all. Keep Above projects 30 years on either tier. That is the shape of this market: three of the four UK apps in this table document the 90-day step in detail and document almost nothing about looking forward.
Is there a UK budgeting app with no bank connection?
Fudget, made in Stockport, describes no bank connection anywhere on its pages; its paid feature syncs between your own devices rather than to a bank. Keep Above has none either and is made in New Zealand. Emma, Snoop and Plum all start from Open Banking, though Emma's Pro tier adds offline accounts you update yourself and Snoop's paid tier offers offline accounts too.