A Goodbudget alternative that reads your receipts for you

Goodbudget is a digital version of cash envelopes. You give each envelope a share of your income, then record each purchase against an envelope. On the free plan you type every purchase in; Premium adds automatic bank sync for US banks. Sorayli never connects to a bank. You photograph a receipt and it reads the shop, the date and each item with its price, then files every item in its own category.

Goodbudget's details come from its own website and forum, read on October 6, 2026 and listed at the end. Plans change, so check its pages before you decide. Sorayli is not affiliated with Goodbudget.

01Goodbudget and Sorayli at a glance

02Who should stay with Goodbudget

If the envelope method is what keeps you on track, stay. Goodbudget is built around it: you decide up front what each envelope gets, and you can see at a glance which one is running low. Sorayli has budgets, but they are limits with an alert, and money is never assigned to them.

• You and a partner work from one set of envelopes. Goodbudget syncs one budget across a household's devices; Sorayli Family gives each person a private ledger instead.
• You bank in the US and want transactions to arrive on their own. Goodbudget Premium syncs US banks; Sorayli never connects to a bank.
• You want 20 envelopes free and are happy typing each purchase. Goodbudget's free plan does that with no monthly limit on entries.

03What changes when the receipt does the typing

In Goodbudget, one trip to the drugstore is one transaction: you type the amount, pick a payee and pick an envelope. Goodbudget can suggest the payee and envelope from where you are. Here is a trip that would go in as one $43.11 entry.

Scan it in Sorayli and the six items are saved separately: $8.49 under Healthcare, $17.57 under Personal Care, $4.99 under Gifts & Donations and $10.48 under Food & Dining. You can fix any name, amount or category before you save. Paid in cash makes no difference, because nothing in Sorayli depends on a bank.

You keep the manual control you chose Goodbudget for: nothing arrives in Sorayli unless you scanned or typed it. What goes away is the typing. More on how the receipt scanner reads a receipt.

04Envelopes and budget alerts

A Goodbudget envelope holds money you assigned to it. A Sorayli budget is a monthly limit on one category, such as Food & Dining, or on all your spending. You pick when to be warned, from 50% to 100% of the limit in 5% steps (80% to start), and get an email when spending gets there and again at the limit. Turn on push notifications in the iPhone app and you get a push too.

Free includes 2 budgets; Pro and Family have no limit. On Pro and Family, Insights adds a safe-to-spend figure for each remaining day of the month: your typical income from the last three full months, minus what you have spent and the recurring bills still due, divided by the days left. See how budgets and alerts work and what Insights show.

05Moving your history over

1. 1In Goodbudget on the web, use the Export CSV link above your Transactions list.
2. 2Open the file in a spreadsheet and rename the columns Sorayli reads: Date, Title, Amount and Category. Keep amounts as positive numbers and add a Type column with expense or income; a row without a type comes in as an expense.
3. 3In Sorayli on the web, import the file from the add-transaction window. A category that doesn't match one of yours comes in uncategorized, and Sorayli tells you how many did.
4. 4Set up your budgets by hand. Envelopes and their balances don't carry over.

Sorayli imports only CSV files laid out this way. It cannot read QFX or OFX files. If you would rather not link a bank anywhere, our guide to tracking expenses without linking your bank sets out a weekly routine.

06What each costs

Both have a free plan you can stay on. Goodbudget's limits the number of envelopes, accounts, devices and years of history. Sorayli's limits scans, questions and budgets, and never limits what you type. See Sorayli's plans.