Your money is in two currencies.
Most budgeting apps assume it isn’t.
If you earn in one country and spend in another, you have probably already found the limit: the app shows one total, in one currency, and treats every number as if it were the same money.
Each of those apps says so in their own documentation.
What the three biggest apps say about currencies
“the app does not differentiate between currencies behind the scenes and does not perform any currency conversion”
“You can select the currency you want to use in YNAB, but you can’t use multiple currencies together in a single spending plan”
“If you have an account that requires currency conversion, please note that Copilot only supports USD”
What IlliAi does instead
IlliAi was built for the case those three exclude. It converts between any pair of currencies, so a total that mixes US dollars and Brazilian reais is a real number rather than two numbers added together. And it connects banks on both sides: Plaid in the United States and Pluggy in Brazil, live, in the same account.
It speaks 8 languages, including the legal pages, and you can enter an expense by talking to it. That is unlimited on the free plan.
And when a transaction lands in the wrong category, you fix it once. The app does categorize automatically what your bank could not classify, and marks those for you to review. Once you decide where a merchant belongs, nothing changes it back.
Honest comparison
All competitor data from their own public pages, as of October 2, 2026. IlliAi is our product, so we are not a neutral reviewer.
| IlliAi | Monarch | YNAB | Copilot | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Converts between currencies | ✓ any pair | — stated: no conversion | — stated: not in one plan | — stated: USD only |
| US bank connection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Brazil bank connection | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Android | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Interface languages | 8 | not published | not published | not published |
| Free plan | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Price | see plans | not shown before sign-up | $109/yr or $14.99/mo | $95/yr |
Where those apps are better, and we will say it plainly
YNAB teaches a method. Its envelope system has changed how a lot of people handle money, and nothing in IlliAi replaces that discipline. If zero-based budgeting is what you want, YNAB does it better.
Monarch and Copilot are more mature. They have years of polish and far more users than we do. We are new.
We will not promise that bank connections never break. We use Plaid in the US, the same infrastructure they use, and it breaks for us too. What we can tell you is what we do when it happens: in Brazil, disconnecting warns you that reconnecting may need your bank to approve access again, because there it is not instant. We say that up front so you are not finding it out later.
What we charge, in full
The free plan has no bank connections. That is the honest limit of the free plan. Paid plans include live connections, and there is a one-time $4.99 activation fee on the first charge, on every plan.
We are saying it here, before you connect anything, because after you have linked your accounts is the worst possible moment to find out.