There are plenty of tools available to help you keep track of your finances and save money, such as Mint, YNAB, EveryDollar, PocketGuard, Clarity Money, Personal Capital and more. It is difficult to select the best budgeting apps from them.

This YNAB vs. Quicken article will help you to select between YNAB and quicken. The key difference is that YNAB is designed for making a budget and acting on it, and Quicken is designed primarily as a tracking tool.

If you’re looking to make the most of your money, consider your situation and read this comparison of YNAB and Quicken to get an idea of which app is more likely to work best in your circumstances.

Note: This post is part of our roundup of the best budgeting software. Here are 2 more articles to see how YNAB compare with other budgeting apps:

YNAB vs EveryDollar: Similarities, Differences, Pros & Cons

Mint vs. YNAB 2020 | Is YNAB or Mint Better for Budgeting

YNAB vs. Quicken: Features and Tool

YNAB

For the core part, YNAB tools are basic and focus on budgeting. It uses a zero based budgeting system, which means budgeting every dollar of income that you receive.

YNAB is great for setting budgets, tracking expenses, setting goals, and understanding where your money goes, but it is not designed for advanced money management like tracking investments, managing small business expenses, or detailing your rental property information

• Four Rules: These rules are the basis of YNAB’s whole system. The budget software tracks your finances, helps you create financial goals and enables you to track credit cards. After you set it up, YNAB will put all of your purchases in a budget category. Keeping everything organized gives you the financial edge that YNAB is designed for.

• Real-time tracking: It’s possible to sync your accounts automatically to see how things stand and make tweaks as needed.

• Goal tracking: Set goals and break them down into actionable monthly budget items. Track your progress and improve your finances.

• Create reports: YNAB can output graphs, line charts, pie charts, spreadsheets, trend reports, and other reports to help you better visualize and understand your financial situation.

Quicken

Quicken is a personal accounting software which allows users to track income, expenses, and cash flow. Furthermore, its users can manage their property-related finances like, rental, handling taxes, creating custom invoices, and tracking investments.

• Income and Expense: This app holds a category system for tracking all expenses and incomes. Users have to put every expense and source of their income i.e. rent, salary or an internet bill. 

• Investment tracking: You can keep track of all your investment accounts with the help of Quicken and see your net worth.

• Documentation, Taxes and Loan Applications: The Documentation, Taxes, and Loan Applications feature of Quicken identifies taxable income and deductible expenses. Meanwhile, by entering the figures into the Tax Planner, it becomes easy to estimate the tax refund or burden.

• Prints Checks: To print checks, only two things are necessary. First of all, users need to go through the check supply information and after that, they need to choose form as per their style. After that, they need to order the form.

YNAB vs. Quicken: How Are Quicken and YNAB the Same?

1. These two tools are similar in that they can help you make a budget and track your spending.
2. They both can link your various financial accounts–bank accounts, loans, credit cards, investment accounts, etc.–and automatically importing transactions. 
3. Both work on multi-devices. You can set up either account on your laptop, but also access it from your smartphone or other device.
4. Both require paid access, although the pricing structures are different.

YNAB vs. Quicken: How Are YNAB and Quicken Different?

1. YNAB is not an entire personal finance management suite – it focuses on budgeting and only budgeting. You won’t get investment tools, retirement planning, or wealth management.
2. Quicken is a more robust money management tool than YNAB. Quicken is designed to track income, expenses, net worth, taxes, investments, business transactions, rental property information, and even pay bills. 
3. Quicken only tracks your budget, YNAB does that AND helps you build a budget that meets the demands of your life and your savings needs.

YNAB vs. Quicken: Annual Fees

YNAB is available in a single price. You can choose to pay $11.99 per month, or you can pay for an annual subscription for $84 per year.

On the other hand, Quicken has four different plans for different price. Standard annual prices are as follows:

• Starter: $34.99
• Deluxe: $44.99
• Premier: $67.49
• Home & Business: $89.99

YNAB vs. Quicken: Customer Service

There is no direct phone or email contact available. Alternatively, you can contact them via email. Also, they do offer FAQ pages and Help Docs, as well as a community forum, that will help to answer the most basic questions.

Quicken provides live chat and phone support. Like YNAB, Quicken has a FAQ page, Common Help Topics, and the Quicken Community, to help you answer basic questions, as well as share problems and solutions with other users. Additionally, if you pay for the Premier or Home & Business version, you get access to special priority customer service.

YNAB vs. Quicken: Security

Both of these tools offer bank-level encryption to keep your data as safe as possible.

Quicken protects your information with the following processes:

• 256-bit encryption.
• Integrity checks to ensure that a message received has not been altered after it leaves the sender.
• Firewall-protected servers in the Quicken data center.
• Password issued by your financial institution that you must enter each time you connect to the Internet.
• Option to password protect your data files.
• Information is transmitted using encrypted, secure socket layer (SSL) technology.

YNAB has a security page that details their security practices – which is a good sign. YNAB’s infrastructure is built on Heroku, which is the same technology used by the CIA. Key security measures include:

• Staff members do not have access to customer data unless requested by the customer or required by law.
• Passwords are one-way salted and hashed, using multiple iterations of a key derivative function for passwords, making it nearly impossible for a hacker to determine the exact sequence.
• Data is encrypted, so it can’t be read even if the hard drives were stolen.
• When you terminate your account, your data is wiped clean from the database.

YNAB vs. Quicken: Which is Right for You

Quicken and YNAB are very different tools, so it depends on your needs. 

If you want help putting together a basic budget and tracking your progress, YNAB is a good choice. It will help you get better control of what you do with your money, and enable you to focus on paying off debt and saving money for specific goals.

If you have specialized needs such as tracking your investments – including cost basis, asset allocation, forecasting, etc., or want to track a home business, rental property, or specialized medical care, then I would recommend using Quicken.