Keep Above

Free tools

The everyday money questions — rent or buy, repair or replace, pay monthly or yearly — worked out in the open. Type your own figures and each calculator lays the arithmetic out side by side. Free from the Keep Above app, no sign-up, and nothing you enter leaves the page.

Rent vs buy a home
Two ways to be housed over the same years, each landing on a net cost a year.
Repair it or replace it
Each side counted over its own life — the cost per year is the figure that compares.
New or used
Two ways to own the same thing, cash or on a loan, over the years you'd keep it.
Loan repayments
What a loan would cost by time or by payment, with the interest laid out.
Buy it now or later
Financing now against setting money aside and buying later, side by side.
Own it or hire it
Buy once against pay per use, with the break-even uses a year.
Cheap to buy or cheap to run
Purchase price against running costs, with replacements counted.
Pay yearly or monthly
Both totals over the months you'd use it, with the break-even month.
What the commute costs
Driving, public transport and bike, each totalled over your real travel year.
DIY or take the quote
Materials, tools and your hours against the price on the table.
Compound growth
What steady compounding at a rate you choose would add — an illustration.
What inflation would do
What the same thing would cost, or the same money would buy, years on.
What it costs to run
Two appliances doing the same job, costed at your own price per kWh.
Cook it or buy it
One serving made at home against the same meal bought, over a week and a year.
What a pet costs
Your own figures, each at its own rhythm, added up to a yearly and first-year cost.

Only in the app

These tools run inside Keep Above, on the bills, paydays and balances you've entered — the part a web page can't see. Some are in the free tier, some in Premium.

Runway
How long your money would last if income stopped — walks the bills you've entered forward and names the day they'd start going short.
Daily allowance
What's safe to spend per day on a trip — worked out from your own balance and the bills it still has to cover.
Can I afford this?
What one big purchase would do to your plan — an amount and a date, checked against every bill that follows.
Late payment
What breaks if your income arrives late — which bills land inside the gap, day by day.
While you're away
Bills landing while you're travelling — which pay themselves and which need you.
Trip money
Your daily budget in another country, and what lands at home while you're away.
Hours of work
What your spending costs in hours — your own pay and hours give every expense a price in time.
Cost of owning
What the things you keep cost per year — purchase, repairs and upkeep, and what selling would change.
Holidays & due dates
Which of your due dates land on a weekend or public holiday.
Subscriptions
What your recurring bills really cost a year, annualised from what you've entered.
Money abroad
What your money buys in another country — price levels, not just the exchange rate.
Currency converter
What your money is worth over there, with rates refreshed twice a day.

Get Keep Above

Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. A whole toolkit of them included. No bank connection, no ads on your data.

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play

About Keep Above

What is Keep Above?

Keep Above is a budgeting app for Android and iOS, built by Manandai Ltd in New Zealand. You enter your bills, income and balance; it works out the balance you need to cover everything coming — the safe line — and shows at a glance how far above or below it you sit. There's no logging every purchase, no category budgets to balance, and no grades on your past spending: it's a planning and projection tool, built as an educational aid.

Does Keep Above connect to my bank?

No — never. Keep Above is manual-entry by design. It never asks for a bank login, account numbers or card details, and it doesn't connect to your bank at all. You enter what you want to track, and updating your balance refreshes the whole picture — if you can type a number, you already know how to use it.

Is Keep Above free?

The app is free to download and free to use with one checking account, projections a year ahead, savings goals, the calendar, bill reminders and most of the built-in tools. An optional Premium subscription adds more accounts, savings and credit accounts with interest projections, longer-range projections and the rest of the tools.

How is Keep Above different from other budget apps?

Most budget apps look backward at what you spent; Keep Above plans forward. It uses sinking funds — the classic method of setting aside for irregular expenses ahead of time — so rent due next week and the annual bill five months out are both already accounted for in one number: how far your balance sits from covering it all. Day-to-day spending shows up in your balance on its own, so the whole routine is keeping that one number up to date.