Banktivity is great for Apple. Not built for UK pensions, ISAs or forward planning. These 5 tools are.
Banktivity is one of the most polished Mac and iOS budgeting apps. The catch is the word Mac. Built in the US for US accounts, with no native understanding of UK pensions, ISAs or HMRC rules. I tested every option I could find that handles UK finances properly. Here are the five I would actually recommend to a UK household.
| Tool | Best For | Pricing | Free Tier | UK-Specific | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delphina | Forward-looking financial clarity for UK users | Free tier / From £9.99/mo | ✓ | ✓ | ★★★★★ |
| Moneyhub | Open banking data aggregation. But shutting down | Free / Plus tiers | ✓ | ✓ | ★★★★★ |
| Emma | Budget tracking and subscription management | Free / Pro £9.99/mo | ✓ | ✓ | ★★★★★ |
| PocketSmith | Cash flow forecasting over multiple years | Free / Premium from $9.95/mo | ✓ | ✗ | ★★★★★ |
| PensionBee | Pension consolidation and retirement tracking | 0.5% to 0.95% AUM | ✗ | ✓ | ★★★★★ |
See your full UK picture: pensions, ISAs, mortgages, lifetime projections. Built for the UK, not bolted on. Works on any device, not just Apple.
Banktivity does one thing very well. Detailed budgeting on the Mac. If you are a UK user looking for something similar that also handles UK pensions, ISAs and forward planning, here is what to look for.
Know where you are. Change where you are going.
Delphina is built for UK users who want to understand their complete financial picture and where it is heading. It brings together all your UK accounts, workplace pensions, SIPPs, ISAs and property to project your wealth forward over 10 to 30 years. Unlike Banktivity, which is US-built and looks backwards at your transactions, Delphina shows you whether your current trajectory will deliver the retirement you want and what changes would have the biggest impact.
Banktivity records what has happened. Delphina projects what will happen across your UK pensions, ISAs and mortgages over the next 30 years.
See my UK projectionBuild for real life (closing 14 August 2026)
Moneyhub is a UK fintech platform that provides open banking-powered financial data aggregation. It connects to banks, pensions and investments to give you a comprehensive view of your finances. Note: Moneyhub shuts down 14 August 2026. See our migration guide if you are a current user.
Take control of your money
Emma is a UK-based financial management app that connects to your bank accounts to track spending, categorise transactions and identify subscription renewals. It provides a clear view of where your money is going each month and helps you spot wasteful spending. Emma is strong for day-to-day budget management and keeping tabs on regular outgoings, but does not project forward over 30 years.
See your financial future
PocketSmith is a personal finance app that focuses on cash flow forecasting. It can project your bank balances forward up to 30 years based on recurring income and outgoings. Strong for forecasting, weaker on UK pension integration and ISA allowance tracking. Originally New Zealand built, with UK bank connectivity through third party aggregators.
Be retirement confident
PensionBee focuses specifically on helping UK users manage and consolidate their pension pots. It tracks your projected retirement income, shows you what your pensions are worth and makes it easy to combine old workplace pensions into a single manageable plan. If your primary concern is understanding your retirement savings, PensionBee provides clear, focused tools for that.
Most UK financial tools, including Banktivity when used in the UK, are retrospective. They show you what you have spent, what your pension is worth today and how your accounts have changed. This historical view is useful, but it does not answer the question that matters most for your future.
The question that actually matters is: will my wealth support the life I want?
Retrospective tools tell you where you have been. They track transactions, show current balances and compare against past performance. They do not tell you whether your current trajectory will deliver the retirement you want, whether you are saving enough or what your financial future actually looks like.
Delphina is prospective. It takes your complete financial position across all your UK accounts, workplace pensions, SIPPs, ISAs and property and shows you where you are headed over the next 10, 20 and 30 years. It answers whether you are on track for the future you want and what changes would make the biggest difference to your financial security.
Delphina is not a dedicated Mac budgeting app. If your primary need is envelope-style budgeting on macOS with deep sub-categories and detailed transaction reports, Banktivity still does that very well. You may end up using both, Banktivity for the daily money view, Delphina for the forward view.
Delphina is not a daily transaction tracker. If you need to see every transaction in your current account, manage your weekly cash flow or track daily spending by category, tools like Emma or YNAB are better suited to that purpose.
Delphina is not an FCA-regulated financial advice service. It provides tools and projections to help you understand your financial position, but it does not provide personalised financial advice that considers your specific circumstances.
If you want to understand whether your wealth will last through retirement, whether your current ISA use is efficient, and what your financial future actually looks like across all your UK accounts and assets, that is what Delphina is for.
Banktivity is one of the best looking budgeting apps on the Mac. It is also a US product for US accounts, and no amount of manual data entry turns a US pension model into a UK one. UK personal finance has unique considerations: pension freedoms, ISA allowances, Lifetime ISA bonuses and a very different property market. The tools that work best for UK users are the ones built with these differences in mind.
If you want to track daily spending, manage budgets and see where your money goes each month, Emma and YNAB are strong UK choices with proven track records. If you want to consolidate and track pensions, PensionBee is focused specifically on that challenge. If you want long-horizon cash flow forecasting, PocketSmith does that well, even though it is not UK-built.
If you want to understand whether you are on track for the life you want, whether your current trajectory will deliver the retirement you are hoping for, and what specific changes would have the biggest impact on your future, Delphina is the tool built for exactly that question. It is the only UK-focused tool that shows you where you are going, not just where you have been.
"I loved Banktivity on my MacBook, then realised it had no idea what a SIPP was. Switched to Delphina for the UK pension projection and never looked back. Open it on my work PC now too."
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