I've been using a free budgeting app for four months, linked through one of the bank connection services, and there are no ads and no upsell I can find. I'm not paranoid enough to think it's malicious, but nothing is free, and I'd like to understand the actual business model before I connect a second account. Has anyone worked out how the free ones make money, and does paying change what happens to the data?
Two separate parties here and it's worth keeping them apart in your head: the app, and the connection service that talks to your bank.
The connection layer has its own portal — you can log in there, see every app you've connected, and cut any of them off without touching the app itself. I do that review twice a year and I've disconnected four things I'd completely forgotten about, including a mortgage calculator from 2022.
That's the concrete action, whatever you conclude about the business model. Know where the connections live and know how to revoke them.
The connection portal review is worth doing even if you conclude the app is fine. I found three dead connections from services I'd forgotten and one from a company that no longer exists, all still authorised.
Politely disagreeing with the implied "paid equals private." Paying changes the incentive, it doesn't change the policy, and the policy is the only thing that binds them.
Read the section about aggregated or de-identified data specifically. Plenty of paid products still reserve the right to sell anonymised spending trends, which is a real market. If a paid app's policy is silent on that, that's the same silence a free one gives you, just more expensively.
If you want the paranoid-but-workable version: CSV import only. Most banks let you download statements, most decent apps will accept a file, and nothing is ever connected to anything.
Costs me ten minutes a month across three accounts. In exchange no third party holds credentials or a live token, and I have never once had a broken connection to re-authorise, which used to happen every six weeks.
Free apps sell you products. Paid apps sell you the app. Either way, read what the policy says about anonymised data and know where to pull the plug on the bank connection.
I actually read the policy on the free one I was using, which took about forty minutes and a coffee. It permitted sharing de-identified transaction data with unspecified partners for analytics, and there was no way to opt out and keep using the app.
I cancelled, moved to something I pay for, and revoked the connection at the aggregator. I don't think I was in danger. I just decided that if my grocery patterns are a product, I'd rather be the customer than the inventory.
@cold_storage_kim · 5mo ago · 3 replies
Referrals, mostly. The free ones make money when you take a product they suggest — a credit card, a savings account, a loan refinance, sometimes an insurance quote. That's why the free apps are so keen to tell you your credit score and so keen to show you a card with a better rate.
It's not sinister on its own, but it does shape the product. An app funded by card referrals will never say "you don't need another card." That's the thing I'd actually weigh, more than the data question.
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@notetaking_ivo · 5mo ago
That does explain the tone of the app, actually. It's shown me the same card offer four times this month and it's never once suggested I have too many subscriptions.
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@boring_portfolio · 5mo ago
Watch what it never says. That's the fastest read on how any free product pays for itself.
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