Era is the first personal finance product built for the world where you talk to an AI about your money. Instead of another dashboard with charts you ignore, Era exposes your real financial data through a personal MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and any other MCP client can read balances, categorize transactions, and set rules. Your money context follows you across whichever AI you happen to use that week.
What Era Actually Is
Three pieces, one product.
- Context is the MCP server. It connects to your banks and cards and brokerages and serves that data to AI agents on demand. Read and write. An agent can check a balance, tag a transaction, or set a rule, not just look.
- Agency is the native app. It watches your accounts in real time, surfaces anomalies, and lets you build rules by typing instead of dragging.
- Thesis is the investing tool. Quantitative portfolio analysis and backtesting, the kind of thing that used to live behind a Bloomberg terminal.
Why MCP Matters Here
Every other finance app assumes you live inside its UI. Era assumes you live inside an AI assistant. That single bet changes everything downstream. Your transactions, categories, and rules are no longer trapped behind one vendor's screen. They show up in Claude when you ask it to plan a budget. They show up in ChatGPT when you ask why your card balance is so high this month. They show up in Cursor if that is where you happen to be when the thought hits you.
If you believe most software interaction is moving inside AI assistants, Era is positioned exactly where it should be. If you do not believe that, Era is still a clean Mint-style aggregator with a good app.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0/mo | 2 accounts, 100 MCP calls, kicking the tires |
| Organize | $8.99/mo | 15 accounts, 1,000 MCP calls, 15 rules |
| Automate | $22.49/mo | 100 accounts, 10,000 MCP calls, 100 rules, priority support |
| Optimize | TBA | Waitlist, advanced features coming |
Paid plans get a 14-day free trial and no card up front. The free tier is real, not a teaser, but 100 MCP calls per month gets used up fast if you ask Claude about your money more than a couple times a week.
What Works
- Cross-agent memory. Set a rule in Claude on Monday, query it from ChatGPT on Wednesday, and it is there. This is the whole reason MCP exists and Era is one of the few consumer products treating it as a feature instead of a buzzword.
- Write access. Most finance integrations are read-only. Era lets agents act. That is the difference between an assistant that tells you something is wrong and one that fixes it.
- Thesis is unusual. Backtesting in a consumer app is not common. If you actually trade, it is worth a look.
- No lock-in. You are not stuck in one company's screen. Your context travels.
What to Know Before You Sign Up
- You need an AI assistant already. If you do not use Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, you are paying for an aggregator with a fancy backend you cannot see.
- Free tier is light. Two accounts and 100 calls per month is a demo, not a daily driver.
- Write access is a trust call. Letting an LLM move money for you, even with safeguards, is a posture some people are not ready for. That is fine. Read-only still gets you most of the value.
- Optimize plan is vapor for now. The waitlist could be anything.
Who Should Use Era
Use it if: you already live in an AI assistant, you have more than a couple of accounts, you want your AI to actually do things with your money instead of just reading your screenshot.
Skip it if: you do not use AI assistants regularly, you only have one or two accounts and a working budget app, or the idea of an agent with write access to your bank gives you pause.
Bottom Line
Era is one of the cleanest examples of an MCP-native product I have seen. The bet is straightforward: finance is moving inside the assistant, and the company that exposes your money as context wins that surface. Whether the bet pays off depends on whether you and everyone else really do start asking Claude about your spending instead of opening a finance app. If you already do, Era is the obvious thing to plug in.
Rating: 8.8/10. Strong execution on a thesis most fintechs have not even noticed yet.