Introduction
Most personal finance apps hide your data behind a UI. Tiller does the opposite. It pulls your bank and credit card transactions into a Google Sheet or Excel workbook you own, then gets out of the way.
Tiller Money costs $79 a year after a 30-day free trial. That is more than Copilot's basic tier and infinitely more than a spreadsheet you keep by hand. The question is how much you actually want your financial data in a format you can manipulate.
Key Features
Daily bank sync
Tiller pulls transactions once a day from 21,000+ financial institutions in the US and Canada. Coverage is broad and the sync is quiet. Most mornings the previous day's charges are already in your sheet by 9 AM.
AutoCat rules
AutoCat is a rules engine that categorizes transactions based on merchant name or amount. You write a rule like "if description contains STARBUCKS, set category to Coffee" and Tiller applies it on every sync. That saves the manual tagging that eats an hour a month with any other spreadsheet setup.
Templates you can actually edit
The Foundation Template covers budgeting and net worth tracking. The Debt Payoff Planner and Business Dashboard ship in the free library too. Every formula is visible. You can add columns or throw it out and build your own tabs against the raw transaction feed.
Google Sheets and Excel, both native
Tiller supports both with feature parity. The Excel version uses a Microsoft add-in and works on Windows and Mac. Google Sheets gets the newer templates first by a few weeks, so pick that side if you care about being early.
Tiller Investments (beta)
Added in 2024, still labeled beta. It pulls holdings from brokerage accounts into a separate sheet. Coverage is thinner than the transaction side and the templates are basic. Do not buy Tiller for the investment tracking yet.
Pricing Breakdown
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | $0 for 30 days | Full access to bank sync and every template. No card required to start. |
| Annual | $79/year | Daily sync, AutoCat, unlimited templates, both Google Sheets and Excel support. |
There is no monthly option and no free tier. $79 works out to $6.58 a month. That sits below Monarch at $99/year and YNAB at $109/year. Copilot Money is $95/year but iPhone-only.
Pros
- You own the spreadsheet. Export means File then Download. If Tiller shuts down tomorrow, your five years of categorized transactions are still there.
- Every formula is editable. Want to weight your grocery spending against a 3-month rolling average? Write the formula.
- The transaction sync has been reliable for years. When a connection breaks, the support team fixes it in a day or two.
- Support is genuinely responsive. Email replies come from humans who know spreadsheets, not a chatbot.
Cons
- If you dislike spreadsheets, you will hate this tool. The templates are functional, not pretty.
- No native mobile app. You use Google Sheets or Excel on your phone, and both are cramped for financial data.
- $79/year is a real subscription for what is, at the base layer, a scheduled CSV import.
- Charts and visualizations are basic. Monarch and Copilot both look nicer out of the box.
- Investment tracking is early. Do not migrate off a real portfolio tool yet.
Who Is It For
Tiller is for people who already keep spreadsheets. If you have ever built a personal budget in Excel or tracked expenses in a Google Sheet, you are the target user. The daily sync removes the one job you hated.
It also works for small business owners who want business and personal accounts in one workbook without paying for QuickBooks. Finance-adjacent people who want raw data to model against will find it useful too.
Skip it if you want push notifications when a subscription renews or a polished net worth graph on your phone. Monarch and Copilot both do those things well.
Verdict
Tiller Money earns a 6.2/10 for a specific reader: someone who thinks in cells and formulas and wants a clean transaction feed to build against. For that user it is close to the ideal tool. The data is yours and the sync just runs.
For everyone else the polished apps win. Monarch has better dashboards. Copilot has a better iOS app. YNAB has a stronger opinion about how you should spend. Tiller has none of those things, and the $79 sticker asks you to be sure the trade-off is worth it before you commit.
The 30-day trial is generous and includes every feature. Start there. If you have not built at least one custom formula by day 15, cancel.
