Keep Above vs Monarch

What each one is

What does each forecast get built from?

Monarch's forecast is built from your account data and your spending history, so it can account for what you actually spend rather than what you meant to, and it needs no effort from you once the accounts are connected and the categories are settled.

It also means the forecast inherits whatever the history contains. A quiet three months makes the future look quiet. Keep Above's forecast has the opposite property: it knows nothing about your spending, so it only ever projects the bills and income you entered, and your day-to-day spending shows up only as the balance you update.

So one is a forecast of what your life has looked like, and the other is a forecast of what you have committed to. Both are partial, in different directions.

What does each one ask you to keep doing?

Monarch asks you to review categories as transactions arrive and refine them over time, and its help centre notes that some institutions require re-verification every few months, or more frequently. That is the maintenance that comes with a connection.

Keep Above asks for a balance update and nothing else. There is no connection to re-verify and no category queue, and the cost of that is everything on this page: no history, no automatic capture, no reports.

Is Monarch available in your country?

Monarch covers the United States and Canada, and as at 21 September 2026 it was not available on the New Zealand App Store. For most readers outside North America this page is informational rather than a decision.

Keep Above has no connection to localise and is sold in any country.

Can Monarch plan a trip, split bills or track a home loan?

Monarch's pages describe custom trip tags with a report of a trip's spending, a household that shares one budget, where a split transaction's parts can each have a different owner, and mortgage and loan accounts that hold an interest rate. They state nothing about a shopping list.

Each kind in the table is a budget of its own in Keep Above, with its own screen in the app. The free plan holds a budget you're paid into plus one more of any kind; Premium holds more.

What Monarch does that Keep Above does not

• Captures and categorises transactions automatically from connected accounts.
• Forecasts from real spending history rather than from entered commitments.
• Reports across your spending, and tracks net worth.
• Forecasts to an end date you configure, on its upper tier.
• Detects recurring transactions from what actually arrives.

What Keep Above does that Monarch's pages do not document

• Projects 30 years ahead on the free plan, with no tier required for the horizon.
• Works out the balance you would need today to cover every bill still coming.
• Needs no connection to establish, re-verify or support, so it behaves the same in any country.
• Asks for one number to be kept current, and nothing categorised or approved.
• Plans a trip with its dates, places and the people going, and one big dated day with a deposit and payment schedule for each cost, splitting the costs of either between people; Monarch's pages state nothing about these.
• Works out who owes whom on bills shared with the people you live with, and keeps a list of the days you buy for with a share set aside on each payday before each one; Monarch's pages state nothing about these.
• Shows how long each thing in a regular shop lasts, what each thing you own costs a year, a home loan's portions and when its fixed rate ends, and what loans take in each pay cycle; Monarch's pages state nothing about these.

Where Monarch's own pages state nothing on a point, the tables above say so rather than calling the feature absent.