KeaBudget
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Budget like a kea.

The free budget app built for Kiwi life.

The budget app that already knows what KiwiSaver, rego, WOF and school donations are, so you can see where your money goes and plan for the bills that always sneak up.

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No credit card. Free forever, set up in a couple of minutes.

  • Free forever
  • Encrypted
  • Data in Australasia
  • Never sold
KeaBudget's lumpy bills: contents insurance $70 a fortnight with 3 pays to go, car rego and WOF $31.67 a fortnight with 6 to go, and Christmas $92.50 a fortnight with 8 to go.
24 features shippedBuilt in the open, in AucklandNo ads. No data brokers.Shaped by your ideas

The why

Budgeting apps in Aotearoa are a mess.

We've used them all. Here's the stuff that keeps grinding Kiwis down, and exactly what KeaBudget is being built to fix.

  1. Forced into American templates

    Most apps assume USD, quarterly taxes and 401(k)s, with categories that never heard of rego, rates, or a Warehouse run. Our rates, our week, our life are just never the shape.

    Localisation

  2. Paywalls in the way of the basics

    $10 to $15 a month just to split transactions properly or see a useful chart. Budgeting shouldn’t come with a subscription tax on top of the one you’re trying to reduce.

    Pricing

  3. Your data sitting on overseas servers

    Your transactions, your balances, your salary: held in a data centre you’ll never see, subject to laws from somewhere you don’t live. That’s not fine. It’s just normalised.

    Privacy

None of these are unfixable. They're just ignored, because the NZ market is too small to bother for the big players. So we're doing it ourselves.

What you get

A budget app that finally feels like home.

Built for Kiwi banks, in Kiwi dollars.

Import any NZ bank's CSV in seconds today, with auto-sync to the major banks on the roadmap. NZD throughout, no FX ambiguity, no tax assumptions imported from somewhere else.

Banks supported

  • ASB
  • BNZ
  • Westpac NZ
  • ANZ NZ
  • Kiwibank
  • Co-operative

Free forever

The core app stays free. Track transactions, set categories, see where it all goes. No trial that expires, no upsell halfway through your month.

Budgets that keep up

Set a monthly target on any category and watch live progress on your dashboard. Recurring rent, salary and subs post themselves, so the picture stays current.

Data stays close to home

Encrypted at rest and in transit, hosted in Australasia (Sydney). Never sold, never analysed for advertising, never routed through US or EU data brokers.

Categories that fit

Out of the box: rent, rates, flat bills, council fees, dog rego. Add your own (Coffee, Pak’nSave Friday, anything) without paying for it.

A closer look

The KeaBudget dashboard: safe-to-spend for the month, money in and out, upcoming bills and budgets.
Safe to spend, what is already committed, and where this month actually went.
The Budgets page: set your pay cycle and a spending limit on each category.
Budget by your real pay cycle, and see how long until payday.
The Goals page: savings goals with weekly pace, and sinking funds for lumpy bills.
Save for goals, and set aside a little each pay for lumpy bills like rego and rates.
The Split bills page: who owes you, and a form to split a shared expense.
Split flat bills and track who owes you, without the awkward chase.
The Tax year page: income and spending grouped by category, ready to export.
A tidy tax-year summary to hand to your accountant.
The Compare page: two periods side by side with per-category changes and plain-English insights.
Compare two periods and see exactly what crept up and what you trimmed.
The Ideas board: suggest and upvote features, with statuses like Planned and Shipped.
Vote on what we build next, and watch the ideas ship.

No fine print

What's free, and what's not.

Personal app

Free forever

Transactions, categories, budgets, savings goals, recurring entries, dashboard, CSV import and export. The whole core.

Bank auto-sync

Optional paid add-on

Optional, and you'll never need it to use the app. Each bank connection costs us real money every month. Manual entry and CSV import stay free forever.

KeaBooks (contractors)

$19/month, free while in beta

For sole traders: tax calendar, GST worksheet, invoices, tax-date reminders and an accountant share-link, with bank sync included. The personal app is unaffected.

The personal app never goes behind a paywall. That is the promise.

The honest comparison

Stack us up against the alternatives

Three honest options. Overseas apps shipped polish but never speak Kiwi (and most don't connect to NZ banks at all). Pen and paper is free and private but punishing. KeaBudget tries to land in the middle: free, NZ-built, with the manual- entry pain taken off you.

Overseas apps

The polished ones from US, UK, AU

  • Cost

    $10–25/month

  • NZ bank support

    Patchy or US/AU only

  • Where your data lives

    US/EU servers

  • Categories

    American defaults (Gas, 401k, healthcare co-pay)

  • Setup time

    30–60 minutes

  • Multi-account + transfers

    Built in

  • Budgets + progress

    Often paywalled

  • Phone app

    iOS + Android

Pen & paper / spreadsheet

The classic

  • Cost

    Free

  • NZ bank support

    Manual entry

  • Where your data lives

    On your fridge door

  • Categories

    Yours to define

  • Setup time

    5 minutes

  • Multi-account + transfers

    Painful

  • Budgets + progress

    By spreadsheet

  • Phone app

    No

KeaBudget

Built here, for here

  • Cost

    Free forever (core)

  • NZ bank support

    CSV today, auto-sync coming

  • Where your data lives

    Hosted in Australasia (Sydney)

  • Categories

    Kiwi out of the box (rego, WOF, KiwiSaver, Plunket)

  • Setup time

    Under 5 minutes

  • Multi-account + transfers

    Built in

  • Budgets + progress

    Per category, on the dashboard

  • Phone app

    Installs to your home screen and opens like an app. Not in the app stores

Everything ticked (✓) for KeaBudget is live today. Bank auto-sync (~) is coming as a paid, read-only add-on via Akahu; manual entry and CSV import stay free forever.

Everything ticked is live today.

The whole core is free forever, and you can be set up in a couple of minutes.

Get started, it's free

No credit card · Set up in minutes

Free · No ads · No login · Built for Kiwis

Free tools, no ads, no account needed

Quick NZ money calculators you can use right now, whether or not you sign up for the full app. No ads, no login, no catch, genuinely useful.

NZ Take-home Pay Calculator

Gross to net in seconds. PAYE, ACC, KiwiSaver, and student loan, all in one clean breakdown.

Calculate my take-home

Rent Affordability Calculator

How much rent can you actually afford? Worked out on your take-home pay, weekly, on your own or with a flatmate.

See what I can afford

KiwiSaver Max-Out Calculator

See how much more to contribute before 30 June to claim the full government contribution. Don't leave free money behind.

Claim my free money

Mortgage Repayment Calculator

Weekly, fortnightly or monthly home-loan repayments, plus the total interest over the term. Estimate before you commit.

Estimate my repayments

See all 19 free calculators →

Behind the scenes

Why this exists

Budgeting apps in Aotearoa are broken in ways nobody bothers to fix, because the market is too small for the big players to care. So a single Auckland developer is fixing them, in the open. Every feature, every fix, every false start is documented in the updates log.

One developer, building in the open, shaped by the people who actually use it. Nothing is decided in a boardroom: your feedback genuinely sets what gets built next.

KeaBudget is live now. Come and try it.

Get started, it's free

A complete budget app today

24 features are live right now, enough to run your whole budget, free, with no waiting on the roadmap. Here are the essentials; the full build log is public.

Live today · 24 features

  1. Transactions + categories

    Drop in transactions, set Kiwi categories, see where it all goes.

  2. Multi-account + transfers

    Cash, savings, credit card. Move money between them with paired entries, so totals stay accurate.

  3. Per-category budgets

    Set a monthly target on any outflow. Live progress bars on the dashboard.

  4. Recurring transactions

    Rent, salary, subs. Weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Posts automatically next time you visit.

  5. Dashboard with filters

    Date range, search, type, account. Year-on-year comparison built in.

  6. Savings goals

    Set a target and a date. The dashboard shows progress and the weekly pace you need.

Plus 18 more shipped since, each with its own build-log post. See everything on /updates →

Coming next

  • Up next

    NZ bank auto-sync (Akahu)

    Connect ASB, BNZ, Westpac, ANZ, Kiwibank or Co-op, read-only. A paid add-on; manual entry and CSV stay free forever.

  • Later

    AI Money Story

    A monthly, plain-English narrative of your spending.

  • Later

    Share with your partner or flat

    Budget together, read-only or full edit per person.

  • Later

    Contractor tier

    GST set-aside, provisional tax reminders, accountant share-link. Paid; the personal app stays free.

Built in the open. Each step ships with a build-log post on /updates.

You decide what we build next

Suggest a feature, a free calculator, an improvement or a bug fix, and upvote the ones you want most. No login. The most-wanted ideas help shape the roadmap, and we mark them off as they ship.

Visit the ideas board

Are you a contractor or freelancer? This bit is for you. Everyone else: the free app above is the whole story.

A sharper tool for tax-time admin.

Receipts, invoices and a read-only accountant share-link at year end, built on the same KeaBudget foundation. The personal app stays free forever.

See the contractor tier
24 features shippedBuilt in the open, in AucklandNo ads. No data brokers.Shaped by your ideas

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Not seeing yours? Email hello@keabudget.co.nz. We reply to every note.

Is KeaBudget really free?
Yes. The personal app (tracking transactions, setting categories, budgets, savings goals, recurring entries, and CSV import) stays free forever. Two optional extras are paid: automatic bank sync when it lands, since each connection carries a real monthly cost, and a separate tier for contractors and freelancers who need receipts, invoices, and accountant share-links. Both have their own clearly-stated pricing. The personal app itself never goes behind a paywall.
What's the contractor tier and how much will it cost?
KeaBooks is the contractor side of KeaBudget, built for sole traders and freelancers who currently email spreadsheets to their accountant at year-end. It gives you every GST, provisional and terminal tax date, a GST worksheet, invoices your clients pay from a link, receipts kept with each expense, tax-date reminders, and a single read-only link for your accountant. It is free while in beta; when it leaves beta it will be $19 a month or $190 a year with bank sync included and a 30-day free trial, which comes in under Hnry's percentage and Xero's subscription. Visit the contractor page (keabudget.co.nz/contractor) for the details.
Which NZ banks will be supported?
Auto-sync via Akahu is coming next, covering ASB, BNZ, Westpac, ANZ, Kiwibank, and Co-operative Bank. The connection is read-only by design and runs through New Zealand's open-banking framework. It'll be an optional paid add-on, since each bank connection carries a real monthly cost, while manual entry and CSV import stay free forever. Until then, every NZ bank lets you download statements as CSV and KeaBudget imports those in seconds, so you're not stuck typing transactions manually while you wait.
How do I get transactions in right now?
Three ways. CSV import: every major NZ bank lets you download statements as CSV (ASB, BNZ, Westpac, ANZ, Kiwibank, Co-op all do) and the import flow handles them in seconds. Recurring transactions: set up rent, salary, subscriptions once and they auto-post next time you visit. Manual entry: for day-to-day cash spend or anything that doesn't fit the other two.
Is my financial data safe?
Yes. Your data is stored in Australasia (currently Sydney), encrypted at rest and in transit, and is never sold, shared with advertisers, or routed through US or EU data brokers. We only collect what's needed to run the app. When AWS Auckland is generally available we'll evaluate moving to a NZ-based region.
How is this different from other budget apps?
Three things. First, it's built for Kiwi bank accounts, Kiwi categories (rates, rego, KiwiSaver, school donations) and Kiwi dollars, not forced into American defaults. Second, the core is free forever: no trial wall after 30 days, no surprise paywalls. Third, the roadmap is shaped by user feedback and the ideas board, not a boardroom, so the features Kiwis actually need get built first.
Who's building this?
An Auckland-based developer building in the open. Every feature ships with a build-log post on /updates, and every email gets a reply if you want to share feedback or ideas.
Can I help test it?
It's live now, so there's nothing to wait for. Sign up free at app.keabudget.co.nz and dive in. Early users genuinely shape the roadmap, so if you hit a bug or wish a feature existed, reply to any update email or drop a line to hello@keabudget.co.nz.

Know where every Kiwi dollar goes.

Free forever. Your data stays in Australasia, and you can export or delete it any time.

Get started, it's free

No credit card · Set up in minutes