Tiller Money sits in a category of one: it’s the only budgeting tool that automatically pulls your bank transactions into Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. No proprietary app, no walled garden — just your financial data landing in a spreadsheet you fully control. For a specific type of person, that’s exactly the right approach.
Here’s our full review for 2026.
What Is Tiller Money?
Tiller Money is a subscription service that connects to your bank accounts and credit cards, then automatically populates a Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheet with your transactions. Every morning, your latest transactions appear in rows — date, amount, merchant, category, account — ready for you to review, categorize, and analyze.
It’s not a budgeting app in the traditional sense. There’s no mobile interface, no dashboard, no AI-powered insights. Tiller provides the data pipeline; you build the budget however you want using spreadsheet formulas, pivot tables, and templates.
Think of it this way: if YNAB is a structured budgeting system and Lunch Money is a clean web app, Tiller Money is raw financial data delivered to the tool most people already know how to use.
How It Works
Setup takes about 10 minutes:
- Create a Tiller account and connect your bank accounts and credit cards through Plaid (the same provider YNAB and most fintech apps use).
- Choose your platform — Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
- Install the Tiller add-on (a Sheets add-on or Excel add-in).
- Pick a template or start blank. Tiller offers pre-built templates for monthly budgets, net worth tracking, debt payoff, and more.
- Transactions flow automatically. Each day, Tiller pulls new transactions and inserts them into your spreadsheet. Tiller’s AutoCat feature can categorize them automatically based on rules you set.
The key difference from manual spreadsheet budgeting: you never type in a transaction. The data arrives on its own. You spend your time analyzing and categorizing, not doing data entry.
Key Features
Automatic Bank Feeds
Tiller connects to over 21,000 financial institutions. Transactions typically appear within 24 hours of posting to your account. Each transaction includes the date, merchant name, amount, and account. Balances update daily too, so your net worth calculations stay current.
Reliability depends on your bank and Plaid’s connection quality. Major US banks work well. Smaller credit unions and international banks can be hit or miss — the same limitation affecting every Plaid-based service.
Pre-Built Templates
Tiller’s template library is extensive and well-designed:
- Monthly Budget — envelope-style budget with category tracking
- Yearly Budget — 12-month view with income vs. expenses
- Net Worth Tracker — assets minus liabilities over time
- Debt Payoff Planner — snowball or avalanche method tracking
- Category Tracker — spending trends by category across months
- Business Expense Tracker — separate business and personal spending
Templates are just formulas and formatting — fully editable, not locked-down proprietary features.
AutoCat (Automatic Categorization)
AutoCat lets you define rules to automatically categorize transactions. Set a rule like “if merchant contains ‘Whole Foods,’ categorize as Groceries” and every future Whole Foods transaction gets tagged without manual work. After a month of building rules, most of your transactions categorize themselves.
Full Data Ownership
Your data lives in your Google Drive or OneDrive. Tiller never locks it behind a proprietary format. If you cancel Tiller, your spreadsheet with all historical data stays exactly where it is — you just stop getting new transactions. No export needed, no migration headaches.
Pricing
| Plan | Cost |
|---|---|
| Annual | $79/year |
| Free trial | 30 days (full access) |
One plan, one price. Every feature — bank sync, all templates, AutoCat, community solutions — is included. There’s no free tier after the trial ends.
At $79/year, Tiller is cheaper than YNAB ($99/year) and Monarch Money ($99.99/year), and roughly in line with Lunch Money ($100/year). The value proposition is different though: you’re paying for the data pipeline, not the budgeting interface. The interface is whatever you build in your spreadsheet.
Pros
You own and control everything. No proprietary lock-in. Your budget lives in Google Sheets or Excel, tools you already know. Customize layouts, formulas, charts, and reports without limits.
Eliminates the worst part of spreadsheet budgeting. Manual data entry is why most people quit spreadsheet budgets within a few months. Tiller removes that friction while keeping everything else you like about spreadsheets.
Templates get you started fast. You don’t need to build a budget spreadsheet from scratch. Tiller’s templates are well-designed and immediately functional.
AutoCat saves ongoing time. After initial setup, most categorization happens automatically. Weekly budget check-ins can take as little as 10 minutes.
Lower cost than most alternatives. $79/year undercuts the major budgeting apps while arguably offering more flexibility.
Cons
No mobile app. You can open Google Sheets on your phone, but the experience isn’t optimized for quick budget checks. There’s no dedicated Tiller mobile interface.
Spreadsheet skills required. If you’re not comfortable with Google Sheets or Excel, Tiller’s flexibility becomes a liability. The templates help, but customizing them requires spreadsheet knowledge.
Setup takes effort. Between connecting accounts, choosing templates, and configuring AutoCat rules, expect a few hours of initial setup. Traditional budgeting apps handle more of this automatically.
No built-in budgeting methodology. YNAB teaches you envelope budgeting. Tiller gives you data and templates but no philosophy. If you need structure and accountability, you’ll have to build it yourself.
Bank sync delays. Transactions arrive within 24 hours, not in real time. If you want to log a purchase the moment it happens, you’re back to manual entry (or waiting until tomorrow).
Who Should Use Tiller Money?
Spreadsheet enthusiasts. If you already live in Google Sheets or Excel for work or personal projects, Tiller fits naturally into your workflow. You get the data automatically; you build the analysis however you want.
People who quit budgeting apps because they were too rigid. If YNAB’s envelope system felt constraining or Mint’s categories never matched your actual life, Tiller lets you define your own structure entirely.
Data-driven budgeters. If you want pivot tables, custom charts, and formulas that calculate exactly the metrics you care about, no app can match the flexibility of a spreadsheet with live financial data.
Who should look elsewhere: If you want a polished mobile app, a guided budgeting method, or something that works well out of the box with minimal setup, consider YNAB for structured budgeting or Lunch Money for a clean web-based tracker.
The Verdict
Tiller Money solves a real problem: spreadsheet budgeting is powerful but tedious, and the tedium is what kills it. By automating the data entry — the part nobody enjoys — Tiller makes spreadsheet-based budgeting actually sustainable long-term.
It’s not for everyone. You need to be comfortable in spreadsheets, willing to invest time in setup, and self-directed enough to budget without a built-in methodology. But if that describes you, Tiller at $79/year is hard to beat. No other service gives you this level of control over your financial data at this price.
Start with the 30-day free trial. If you’re still using it after two weeks, you’ll probably stick with it.