Stay Steady

Import your bank statements, categorize expenses with AI, and watch your savings grow. Stay Steady is the privacy-first budget app that helps you build lasting financial habits — free forever, no subscription, no ads, no bank connection needed. Track every account you own — current, savings, pension, investments, credit card, business — together or one at a time. Your transactions stay on your device. Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android.

Current version

2.3 is out now on the App Store, the Mac App Store and Google Play. If you subscribe to a service that passes on your bank transactions, such as Lunch Flow or SimpleFIN Bridge, the app can now fetch them when you tap Fetch now; you sign in to your bank at that service, never in the app. The import preview shows each row’s category and why, and a balance forecast warns before an account drops below zero.

Since 2.1 you count in your own currency: choose dollar, pound, euro or any of 159, one per environment. Nothing is converted, and no total mixes two currencies. Imports read dates written month-first, English column names and Revolut’s export, and Stay Steady is also in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Since 2.0 Stay Steady reminds you before a regular bill is due and lets you add yearly bills yourself, with an optional monthly set-aside. Any transaction can carry a comment or your own name. A new categorisation model, running entirely on your device, suggests categories more accurately and tells you why it chose one. CODA and MT940 imports are checked against the statement’s balances, FIRE lets you mark which spending is essential, and a file that will not import can be reported to us as a masked copy you see first. On iPhone and iPad, Safe to spend comes to the Lock Screen with a new Next bill widget; on the Mac, Insights compares a month with the same month last year and ⌘C copies table rows.

From 2.0 the Mac app comes only from the Mac App Store. The direct download and the Homebrew cask stopped at 1.6.4.

Install on Mac

The Mac app is on the Mac App Store and needs macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. Asking through Apple Intelligence needs macOS 26; Ollama and LM Studio work on both. Turn on iCloud Sync in its Settings and it shares your data with the iPhone and iPad app through your private iCloud. Sign in with Apple is optional, under Settings › Account.

Coming from the direct download or Homebrew? Quit Stay Steady, remove it from Applications (with Homebrew: brew uninstall --cask staysteady), then install it from the Mac App Store. Removing the app does not remove its data: your transactions stay on your Mac and, with iCloud Sync on, in your iCloud.

Features

Financial Environments

Keep your household, your company and your club apart in one app. Every bank account belongs to exactly one environment and no analysis ever mixes them, so a company invoice can no longer distort your personal savings rate. Budgets, goals, category rules and backups follow the environment; a company gets its own Revenue category and a club gets an operating reserve instead of an emergency fund. Switch at the top of the Journal and Insights; a wizard sorts your existing accounts and changes nothing until you confirm.

Your Own Currency

Choose your currency when you start: dollar, pound, euro or any of 159. Each environment can have its own. Nothing is converted, and no total mixes two currencies.

Smart File Import

Import transactions from your bank by uploading a statement file. Drop a CSV, CODA, MT940 or OFX file and watch as the app automatically detects columns, parses dates, and matches your bank’s format. The app never connects to your bank — you stay in control of what gets imported.

Multiple Accounts

Add every account you have and give each one a type — current, savings, pension, investments, credit card or business. The type does real work: money leaving a savings account is a withdrawal by definition, money arriving is a deposit, and the app stops guessing where guessing is unnecessary. Filter any screen to a single account, or see everything together.

Transfers That Count Once

Move €500 from your current account to your savings account, import both statements, and a naive budget app records €500 of spending and €500 of income. Stay Steady recognises the two legs as one movement between accounts you own — so your spending, your income and your savings rate stay honest.

IBAN Validation, On Your Device

Add an account and the IBAN is checked as you type — the ISO 13616 MOD-97 checksum plus the Belgian national check digits — with your bank’s name filled in from the official National Bank of Belgium institution list. No API, no lookup service, no network call: it’s arithmetic against a directory that ships inside the app.

AI-Powered Categorization

Our machine learning model recognizes merchants and automatically categorizes your spending. Correct a category once, and it learns for next time — including every other month of the same recurring charge. It knows Belgian and European merchants best, plus the big US and UK chains; elsewhere your corrections do more of the work. One shop, two kinds of spending? Answer “Only when…” and the rule looks at the text or the amount: fuel at the supermarket’s pump goes to Car, the groceries stay under Groceries.

Receipt Scanning

Snap a photo of your receipt. On-device OCR extracts the merchant, amount, and date. Perfect for cash purchases or quick expense logging.

Savings Goals

Set goals for vacations, emergency funds, or big purchases. Link transactions directly to goals and visualize your progress with animated savings jars.

Smart Nudges

“You spent €50 less on restaurants this month — save it?” Contextual suggestions help you redirect surplus spending into savings automatically.

Budget Limits

Set monthly limits per category. The app alerts you, on screen rather than by notification, when a category reaches 80% of its limit or goes over it.

Recurring Detection

The app automatically identifies recurring bills — rent, subscriptions, utilities — and predicts upcoming expenses so you’re never surprised.

Financial Health Score

Weekly and monthly scores based on savings rate, budget adherence, and spending trends. Celebrate wins and spot areas for improvement.

Spending Insights

Year-over-year comparisons, category breakdowns, merchant analysis, and anomaly detection. Understand where your money actually goes.

Subscriptions Hub

Every recurring charge in one place, normalised to what it actually costs per month and per year. Spot price hikes, see which renewals land this week, and keep an eye on the ones you’ve already stopped. Business and private subscriptions are totalled separately — “what am I paying every month” is two different questions depending on which hat you’re wearing.

Business and Private, Kept Apart

If you’re self-employed, Stay Steady stops mixing the two. Dedicated business categories — accountant, VAT refund, supplier invoices, leasing, device repair, AI tools — and a clean split everywhere the numbers matter.

Net Worth and FIRE

Track assets and liabilities over time. An investment or pension item can hold positions: a name, a quantity and a price. Type the price, or use Refresh prices to fetch it from a price source you set up yourself. Only the symbols go to that source; quantities and values stay on your device. Then let the FIRE calculator work out your Financial Independence number from your real annual expenses and invested net worth. Business accounts are excluded from the expense base, because a company’s costs are not your retirement costs.

What-If Scenarios

“What if you skipped takeout twice a week?” Personalized simulations show how small habit changes accelerate your goals.

Staying Steady Streaks

Track your progress with streaks — consecutive days and weeks you’ve stayed within budget. Build momentum and stay motivated.

iCloud Sync

Optionally sync across iPhone, iPad and Mac with your private iCloud. Disabled by default — you choose when to enable.

Dark Mode

Beautiful light and dark themes that follow your system preference. Designed for comfortable use day and night.

Perfect For

• Budget-conscious households managing monthly finances
• Multi-account jugglers with a current account, a savings account and a pension pot to keep straight
• The self-employed who need business and private kept apart — and club or association treasurers who need a third set of books
• Privacy-conscious users who want data on-device, not in the cloud
• CSV importers tired of apps that only work with US banks
• Goal setters saving for vacations, cars, or emergency funds
• Budget beginners who want guidance without complexity
• Financial trackers who love insights and visualizations

How It Works

1. Import

Export a CSV from your online banking portal and drop it into Stay Steady. The app auto-detects your bank’s format.

2. Categorize

AI categorizes your transactions instantly. Tap to correct any mistakes — the app learns your preferences.

3. Stay Steady

Set goals, track budgets, and follow smart nudges. Watch your savings grow with visual progress indicators.

Technical Details

• Platforms: iPhone, iPad (iOS 26.1+), Mac (macOS 15+), Android 11+
• Languages: English, Dutch, French and German on every platform; Spanish too on iPhone, iPad and Mac
• Free forever — no subscription, no ads, no in-app purchases
• No bank connection needed — you import statements yourself. You can also let the app fetch them from a service you subscribe to. The app never touches a bank API and never sees your bank login.
• Optional sign-in — use the app fully without an account; signing in only helps the categorization model that ships with the app get smarter over time
• Privacy focused — analytics are opt-in, and your transactions stay on your device unless you switch on iCloud sync, which keeps them in your own private iCloud and nowhere else

Supported Features

• Import formats: CSV, OFX and QFX, plus Belgian CODA and SWIFT MT940
• Data storage: On-device (SwiftData on iOS, Room on Android); optional iCloud sync between Apple devices
• Security: Face ID / Touch ID lock on iOS, biometric lock on Android
• AI on-device: one categorisation model bundled with the app on every platform; questions about your spending through Apple Foundation Models on iPhone, iPad and Mac (macOS 26 on the Mac), or through Ollama or LM Studio on the Mac; LiteRT-LM (Gemma 4) on Android
• Accounts: unlimited, each typed (current, savings, pension, investments, credit card, business), with on-device IBAN validation against the NBB institution list
• Widgets: Home-screen widgets on iPhone, iPad and Android
• Shortcuts: iOS Shortcuts integration for quick transaction logging

How Stay Steady compares

Weighing it against a subscription budgeting service? See Stay Steady vs YNAB, Stay Steady vs Monarch Money and Stay Steady vs Copilot Money. Each one says where the other app is the better fit.

Help with the costs

Stay Steady is free and stays free: no subscription, no ads, no in-app purchases. Building and maintaining it does cost us money. If you would like to chip in, you can buy us a coffee. You get nothing extra for it: the app is the same for everyone.

Support

For support, please contact us at apps@dataconsultingservices.net