Compared · Lunch Money
A Lunch Money alternative for the day balances stop being enough.
This is the respectful one. Lunch Money is run by a small independent team, its annual plan says Set your own price with the rate locked in for life, and it put crypto balances inside a budgeting app before anyone else. Its own help also draws the ceiling in one sentence: crypto wallet transactions are not supported, balances only. If you've hit that ceiling, this page is the comparison. If you haven't, honestly, stay. Everything below comes from Lunch Money's own pages, read on 29 July 2026.
Lunch Money answers what your crypto is worth. The next question is where it went.
- Budgets
- Both roll budgets over. Lunch Money does custom periods matched to your pay cycle and carries overspending forward too. Orla does weekly to yearly periods, a pace warning naming the day you'll cross, and Copy last month
- Categorisation
- Lunch Money: a rules engine that files by conditions you write, down to amount thresholds. Orla: rules scoped by contact and account, merchant dictionary, repeating series, and an AI pass reviewed before applying
- Banks
- Lunch Money: Plaid sync in 18 countries, the UK not among them. Orla: open banking in the EU, UK and US, on paid plans
- Crypto
- Lunch Money: balance sync for Coinbase, Ethereum and Kraken, 300 plus coins by hand, transactions not supported by their own help. Orla: five exchanges and four chain families, activity lands as categorised transactions
- Mobile
- Lunch Money: companion apps on iOS and Android. Orla: no store listings; it installs from the browser on iPhone and Android, full screen with its own icon
- Price
- Lunch Money: 10 euros a month, or 100 euros a year with Set your own price, locked in for life, 30 day trial. Orla: a free manual ledger; live sync on paid plans, live prices on the pricing page
- Shared access
- Lunch Money: any number of collaborators, only the admin pays. Orla: family, group and business spaces with roles and a who-spent breakdown
The ceiling, in their own words
Their help page is admirably direct: "Lunch Money supports the following cryptocurrency wallets for automatic balance syncing: Coinbase, Ethereum, and Kraken", and "crypto wallet transactions are not currently supported in Lunch Money. You may only track the balance of crypto assets at this time" (support.lunchmoney.app/setup/crypto, re-read 29.07.2026). Everything beyond those three sources is manual tracking across 300 plus coins. A balance tells you what the stack is worth. It doesn't tell you about the trade, the gas, the withdrawal to your own wallet, or the client who paid in USDT, because none of those ever reach a category.
The other side of the ceiling
In Orla, Binance, Bybit, OKX, Kraken and Coinbase connect on a read-only API key, and on Binance, Bybit and OKX a key carrying trade or withdrawal rights is refused outright. Spot trades, deposits and withdrawals import as transactions, with history from 1 January of the previous year. Wallets on BTC, EVM chains, TRON and Solana sync the same way. A withdrawal to your own wallet is matched to its arriving leg by the on-chain hash and stays out of cashflow, a stablecoin invoice books as income at that day's rate, and the year ends with FIFO capital gains by lot, from the same ledger the groceries live in.
Budgets: they win a real point here
Credit where it's due. Lunch Money budgets can reset when it makes sense for you, matched to your pay cycle: their own example is "every 2 week(s), starting on Thursday, Feb 13, 2025" (lunchmoney.app blog, How to Set Custom Budgeting Periods, read 29.07.2026). Orla's periods are calendar ones: week, month, quarter, year. If your whole budget hangs on a biweekly paycheck, theirs fits tighter and this row is theirs. Rollover is rich on both sides: theirs sends leftovers to the same category, to a general pool, or nowhere, and a deficit "can carry forward too" (support.lunchmoney.app, Setting up Your Budget, 29.07.2026), while ours folds the carry into the limit shown everywhere. What their budget guides don't mention is a pace warning or a one-tap copy of last month, and ours has both.
Rules against layers
Lunch Money's rules engine files by conditions you write yourself: their own example sends gas station transactions under 5 dollars to Snacks and anything over to Gas (lunchmoney.app blog, 11 Lunch Money Features, read 29.07.2026). No machine learning is claimed anywhere on their pages, which some people count as a feature. Orla files in layers: rules that can carry a contact and an account as conditions, a merchant dictionary, similar-payee matching, a repeating-series signal for rows whose text says nothing, and an AI pass you review before it applies. Both approaches keep you in charge. Ours just also has to cope with a row that's a bare wallet address, because wallet activity actually arrives here.
Price and the indie question
We cost more, and there's no way to write around it. Lunch Money's pricing page shows 10 euros a month or 100 euros a year, the annual plan says "Set your own price!", both carry "Your price is locked in for life", and the trial runs 30 days (lunchmoney.app/pricing, read 29.07.2026). Only the admin of a shared budget needs a subscription; collaborators join free with their own logins (support.lunchmoney.app, Collaborators, 29.07.2026). Orla's free plan is a real manual ledger with CSV import, but live bank and exchange sync is paid, and paid costs more per year than theirs. You'd switch for the crypto ledger, the tax report, UK and EU banks connected directly rather than through a third-party tool, and four interface languages. You'd stay for the price, the lifetime lock, and the fact that a small team answers the email.
The month, with limits on it
Lunch Money wins the period argument: its budgets can run on a cycle matched to a pay date, and ours cannot. This is what ours does instead, on a month it does cover.
The line under subscriptions appears while the category is still inside its limit, which is the only moment it is any use. The 600 dollars beside the rent limit is last month's unspent, folded in.
Is Orla cheaper than Lunch Money?
No. Their pricing page shows 10 euros a month or 100 euros a year with Set your own price, locked in for life (lunchmoney.app/pricing, 29 July 2026). Our live sync sits on paid plans that cost more. The argument of this page is about what the money buys, not the number.
Does Lunch Money really not track crypto transactions?
Their own help says it plainly: crypto wallet transactions are not currently supported, balances only (support.lunchmoney.app/setup/crypto, re-read 29 July 2026). If that page changes, this one changes with it.
Where is Lunch Money better?
The price and the lifetime price lock, custom budget periods matched to a pay cycle, companion apps in both stores while we have none, a developer API their community builds on, and shared budgets where only the admin pays. All from their own pages, 29 July 2026.
I'm in the UK. Which one connects my bank?
Lunch Money's supported-country list covers 18 countries and the UK isn't on it; for the rest their page points at a third-party tool, CSV or the API (support.lunchmoney.app, Automatic Imports, 29 July 2026). Orla connects UK banks through open banking directly, on the paid plans.
Can my partner keep their own login?
Both apps do this properly. Lunch Money invites any number of collaborators with their own logins onto one budget. Orla's spaces add roles on top: a family space, a group with a shared kitty and expense splits, a business space where an accountant reads everything and moves nothing.
Keep the budget. Add what it couldn't see.
A read-only exchange key, about four minutes, and the trades land in categories.