Cash Compass vs Buddy — household budget tracking on iPhone

Buddy's strength is shared household budgeting with a clean visual model that works equally on iPhone and Android. Couples or roommates with mixed devices can both contribute to the same monthly budget under a shared Buddy account, and the design prioritizes a simple monthly view over feature sprawl. The pricing is straightforward (a single annual fee, sometimes around $34 to $45 depending on the plan) and the experience is mobile-first. Where Buddy is less differentiated is on the entry side (manual category picking, no voice or receipt scan in the core flow) and on platform integration (Buddy's own cloud account rather than native iCloud or Google sync). If cross-platform shared budgeting is the load-bearing feature, Buddy is reasonable.

Partially. Buddy supports CSV export of transactions. Cash Compass doesn't auto-import Buddy files yet, but the migration is straightforward: open your Buddy export, identify the categories you actually used (most households use 8 to 12), and recreate them as Cash Compass caps in a few minutes. Start fresh from the current month rather than importing a year of history. If you used Buddy's shared household feature with a partner, the Cash Compass version is Apple Family Sharing: each partner installs Cash Compass on their own iPhone, agrees on a category list, and shares Premium under the existing Apple Family group. The cross-platform part is the only constraint — Cash Compass is iPhone, iPad, and Mac only.

Smaller data footprint, yes. Buddy stores your budget data on their cloud servers under a Buddy account, which is industry-standard for cross-platform apps that need to sync between iOS and Android. Their privacy policy is reasonable. Cash Compass syncs through your existing iCloud account, encrypted by Apple, with no Cash Compass user database holding your individual transactions. The trade-off is real: Buddy's cloud account is what enables cross-platform sync between an iPhone partner and an Android partner. Cash Compass's iCloud-only design only works if everyone in the household is on Apple devices. Same-platform households get a smaller data surface; mixed-platform households need a cross-platform tool.

No, not currently. Cash Compass is iPhone, iPad, and Mac native, and uses Apple's iCloud for sync. There's no Android app and no web app, which is the trade-off of building a deeply iOS-native experience. If one partner is on iPhone and the other is on Android, Buddy or Goodbudget is a better fit because both support cross-platform shared accounts. If everyone in the household is on Apple devices, Cash Compass's Family Sharing model is cleaner and cheaper than Buddy. The geometry of your household devices is the main decision factor here, not the feature comparison.