Monarch Money Review: Is It Good for Expats? (2026)

Monarch Money became a lot of people's answer to "what do I use now that Mint is gone." It's a genuinely good all-in-one finance app: accounts, budgets, goals, and net worth in one clean place. Monarch describes itself as "the modern way to manage your money," bringing "all your accounts together into one clear view," with budgets, goals, reports, and partner collaboration "at no extra cost," and "no ads - ever."¹

The question for anyone reading this from Lisbon, London, or Mexico City: does Monarch work outside the US, and can it handle more than one currency? The short answer is no on both counts, and Monarch is refreshingly clear about it in its own help center. Here's what that means before you subscribe.

What Monarch does well

One clear financial picture. Monarch pulls your accounts into a single dashboard and layers budgeting, goals, and reports on top, with what it calls "industry-best data connectivity"² for syncing your accounts, which is deep coverage as long as those institutions are American.

Reliable connections. Monarch works with three data providers rather than one: "Plaid, Finicity, and MX,"³ which gives it more ways to keep a US account connected than apps that rely on a single aggregator.

Built for couples. Collaboration with a partner is included at no extra cost, which makes it a strong pick for households managing money together.¹ And the subscription model means there are no ads and your data isn't the product.

Pricing

Monarch's Core plan is USD 14.99/month or USD 99.99/year.⁴ There's a free trial, which Monarch frames as "your first week is on us," and a higher-priced Plus tier for people who want more.⁵ One detail that quietly signals who Monarch is for: "All subscriptions are billed in USD."⁴

The expat problem: US and Canada only

This is the wall. Monarch's help center states it directly: "Monarch is currently only available in the US and Canada. At this time, we recommend connecting accounts only in USD or CAD currencies."⁶

If your bank is in Spain, the UK, Germany, Australia, or anywhere outside the US and Canada, Monarch can't automatically connect to it. The 13,000+ institutions it supports are North American. For an expat whose whole point is tracking money across countries, that's the ballgame.

How Monarch handles currency

Even the accounts you can connect are treated as if they're all in dollars. Monarch's own documentation is unusually blunt about this: "Monarch currently displays all financial data using the $ symbol (applicable to either USD/US Dollars or CAD/Canadian Dollars), but the app does not differentiate between currencies behind the scenes and does not perform any currency conversion."⁷

The consequences are exactly what you'd fear. In Monarch's own examples, "a transaction of 1,000 JPY/Japanese Yen will appear as '$1,000,'" and if "you have one account with 10,000 CAD and another with 10,000 USD, your total net worth will show as '$20,000,' combining the two amounts as if they are the same currency."⁷ That's not a rounding quibble. Mixing currencies produces numbers that are simply wrong.

And this isn't framed as a soon-to-be-fixed gap. Monarch says plainly: "Currently, Monarch does not have plans to expand currency support in the near future."⁷

The only workaround: manual accounts

Monarch does let you add manual accounts. For "an asset without an online connection," you can "create a manual account to track it," updating the balance "by hand."⁸ So in theory you could add your euro account as a manual balance and update it yourself.

In practice this doesn't solve the problem. A manually tracked euro account still shows in dollars with no conversion, so it distorts your totals the moment you add it. And updating balances by hand is the exact chore a budgeting app is supposed to remove. For an occasional foreign account you rarely touch, fine. For daily life in another currency, it's not tracking, it's homework.

Who Monarch is great for

If you live in the US (or Canada), bank in USD (or CAD), and want one polished app for budgeting, goals, and net worth, especially as a couple, Monarch is one of the best options out there. It's well designed, actively developed, ad-free, and the multi-provider connections are more reliable than most. Post-Mint, it's a deserving default for a US household.

Who should look elsewhere

Monarch isn't the right tool if:

• You have bank accounts outside the US and Canada.
• You hold or spend money in a currency other than USD or CAD.
• You want your balances converted into a single home currency, instead of everything lumped together under a dollar sign.
• You need to see how exchange rate changes affect your spending and net position over time.

There's nothing wrong with Monarch. It's a wealth-and-net-worth-focused all-in-one built for a single-currency, North American user, and it serves that person well. It just wasn't designed for a life that spans currencies.

A day-to-day alternative built for multiple currencies

Where Monarch is a net-worth dashboard for one currency, Borderless Budget is a day-to-day tracker built for several. It connects to banks in the US, Europe, and other countries, keeps each transaction in its original currency, and converts everything to the home currency you choose using daily exchange rates, so a euro account and a dollar account actually add up correctly. It also shows how much of a change in your spending is real versus just the exchange rate moving.

If you've been trying to make Monarch fit a cross-border life, see the side-by-side on our Monarch Money alternative page, or compare the field in our ranking of the best multi-currency budgeting apps. Our guide to multi-currency budgeting covers the approaches that work whichever app you choose.

Related reading:

• Best Multi-Currency Budgeting Apps, Ranked (2026)
• Copilot Money App Review: Good for Expats? (2026)
• YNAB for Expats: Does It Work? (2026 Review)
• The Complete Guide to Multi-Currency Budgeting