The short version
Monarch is a tracking and planning dashboard; Rocket Money is a bill negotiation and subscription tool with budgeting bolted on. If you want long-range projections, neither is built for it.
Why people compare them
Both are marketed as all-in-one money apps, but they solve very different problems, so the comparison gets searched a lot.
Price and fit, side by side
| Feature | Monarch Money | Rocket Money |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Monarch Money$99.99 per year | Rocket MoneyFree tier, then $7 to $14 per month |
| Free tier | Monarch MoneyNo | Rocket MoneyYes |
| Billed in pounds | Monarch MoneyNo | Rocket MoneyNo |
| Best for | Monarch MoneyUS couples who want one shared view of budgets and net worth | Rocket MoneyUS users who want forgotten subscriptions found and cancelled for them |
Where Monarch Money wins
- Genuinely good for couples and shared household finances
- Clean interface with strong net worth and investment tracking
- Subscription funded rather than advertising funded, and says it does not sell data
Where Rocket Money wins
- A genuinely useful free tier that includes subscription tracking and bill negotiation access
- Letting people choose their own premium price is unusually honest, and every payer gets the same features
- 4.5 from around 372,000 US App Store ratings, which is a serious body of feedback
Where both fall short
- Neither applies UK tax rules to what it shows you.
- Both are built US-first, so UK users pay in dollars and work around US assumptions.
If neither is quite right
If what you actually want is the retirement answer rather than a better dashboard, that is the gap Delphina was built for: UK pensions, ISAs and tax, projected to the age you want to stop. It does not do the job Monarch Money does for us couples who want one shared view of budgets and net worth, so if that is the real problem, Monarch Money is still the better buy. Free plan is £0, no card.
Monarch Money vs Rocket Money: common questions
Monarch Money is $99.99 per year and Rocket Money is $7 to $14 per month. Compare the billing period before the number: an annual price and a monthly price are not the same thing.
You can, and some people do, because they solve different halves of the problem. It does mean paying for both, so add the two annual figures together before deciding.
Judge it on billing currency, Open Banking coverage and whether ISAs and pensions are handled. Check each one against those three points, because a tool that scores well elsewhere can still be a poor fit in the UK.
Monarch Money suits us couples who want one shared view of budgets and net worth. Rocket Money suits us users who want forgotten subscriptions found and cancelled for them. The one that matches how you already think about money will take less setting up.
Monarch Money scores 2.1/5 on Trustpilot from 24 reviews, on an unclaimed profile. Rocket Money scores 4.5/5 on Apple App Store (US) from 372,000 ratings. Weigh the volume as well as the score.
Delphina covers the gap both leave, which is UK pensions, ISAs and tax projected forward to retirement. The trade-off is that it does not do the job Monarch Money does for us couples who want one shared view of budgets and net worth, so if that is the real need, pick one of these two.