Most budgeting apps are retrospective ledgers that tell you where the money went. ClearBudget is forward-looking: it projects solvency for the months ahead and warns about mid-month overdrafts before they happen.

The Solvency view of a sample budget: a green Safe banner naming the balance remaining after all of the month's bills, a health breakdown including what the month sets aside and what it would need to stop running at a loss, then the next two months walked day by day, each stating that it stays afloat, the clearance it keeps at its lowest and where it opens, dips and closes. — The verdict page, on an invented sample budget: this month closes in credit while still running at a loss; the two months after it hold, each naming the clearance it keeps at its lowest and the shape that clearance was read off. A month that could not hold would be priced instead, down to the day the money has to beat. That is the product.

The Safe to Spend page: one amber headline figure with its promise and a shortfall line beneath it.

Safe to Spend Today

One number you can act on: the most you could spend today without knocking over any month ahead that stands on its own.

The month graph in the light theme: a bar per day falling through the early bills and jumping on payday, with the reserve floor drawn as a dashed line low across the month.

See the month coming

Every day as a bar, judged against the overdraft you actually have: red means a payment would bounce. Money being set aside is drawn as a floor, so a day in credit that is spoken for stops reading as free.

A credit card panel with a green OK badge above a six-month projection strip whose first row is red and whose later rows turn green as the balance falls to zero.

Cards, priced forward

Utilisation, interest and a six-month projection per card, coloured by the headroom left.

The Reserves view: a commitments table with a Christmas commitment accruing monthly, what is held and still to find, plus a block pricing where each month lands once its reserve is off its low.

Money already spoken for

An annual bill is not a surprise, it is a bill that has not asked yet. Set it aside a little each month and Safe to Spend stops offering money that is committed.

The Recommendations view: an emergency buffer row, a suggestion to pay the mortgage after payday ticked with its preview panel open showing every month's low lifted and the extra income needed falling to nothing.

What would fix it

Measured suggestions: retime what can move, then what each month still needs to find. Tick one to preview its effect; nothing is ever applied for you.

The Monthly Budget view: bills and income as two plain tables with a self-maintaining balance.

Private and offline

Your months live on your machine, behind a sign-in, with no cloud and no account servers.

What it does not do

Worth knowing before you download. ClearBudget answers one question and leaves the rest alone.

It is not an accounting package

No ledger, no reconciliation against a statement feed, no chart of accounts and no double entry. It says whether the month holds, not where last month's money went.

It never connects to a bank

No bank, no aggregator and no open-banking feed. You enter the balance once and the app maintains it from then on. That is the price of the finances never leaving your machine.

It models a current account

Income, bills and credit cards. Not investments, not assets, not loan amortisation and not net worth.

One machine, not several

There is no cloud, no sync and no multi-device story. Several people can share one computer, each with their own sign-in and their own budgets; the budgets stay on that computer.

The files are not encrypted

The sign-in is an access-control gate for the application rather than protection of the files themselves. Anyone who can read the disk can read the database, so pair it with your operating system's disk encryption if that matters to you.

It never spends your money for you

Every suggestion is a reference figure you act on yourself, in the app or in real life. Nothing is applied, moved or paid on your behalf.

Dig deeper

Everything it does

The full feature list: budgets, backups, bill timing, exports, keyboard, currencies.

Screenshots

Every page of the app, walked through on a sample budget.

Why this exists

The reasoning behind the solvency model and the architecture that keeps it honest.

Download

Native packages for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus the FAQ.

Supporting ClearBudget

ClearBudget is free and stays free. There is no paid tier, no licence key and no feature held back behind a donation. If it has replaced something you were paying for or simply saved you an afternoon, a contribution supports its maintenance and continued development. The same link sits at the foot of the app's own window.

Donate