Best Money-Saving Apps in 2026: Cashback, Coupons, and Price Tracking
The money-saving app market is crowded with mediocre options. Some apps deliver real savings. Most are gimmicks that pay you pennies for significant data privacy tradeoffs. This guide covers the apps actually worth installing in 2026.
Cashback Shopping Apps
Rakuten (formerly Ebates) — Best for online shopping
Rakuten is the most established cashback portal and genuinely delivers. You shop through the Rakuten browser extension or app, and Rakuten gets a referral commission from retailers, which it splits with you.
Typical cashback rates: 1-15% depending on retailer and active promotions. Major retailers (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nike, etc.) are all included. Cashback pays quarterly via PayPal or check.
The browser extension is the key — install it and forget about it. It automatically activates at participating retailers and shows you the cashback percentage before you buy.
Average annual savings for a regular online shopper: $150-$500.
Ibotta — Best for grocery and in-store cashback
Ibotta started as a grocery receipt scanning app and has evolved into a full cashback platform covering groceries, restaurants, and online retailers. You browse offers, buy the product, then scan your receipt or link your loyalty card to earn cashback.
It's most valuable for grocery shopping, where offers on national brands can save $1-$3 per item. The app works at major grocery chains (Walmart, Kroger, Target, Costco, etc.) and online.
Typical annual savings: $100-$300 for regular grocery shoppers who use it consistently.
Fetch Rewards — Simplest receipt scanner
Fetch requires the least effort: scan any grocery receipt and earn points toward gift cards. No need to pre-select offers. The tradeoff is lower value — Fetch points are worth about 0.1 cents each, so a $50 grocery run might earn 1,500 points ($1.50 in gift card value).
Best for: people who want passive savings without thinking about it.
Price Tracking Apps
Honey (browser extension) — Automatic coupon finding
Honey automatically tries thousands of coupon codes at checkout across 30,000+ stores. When you hit checkout, Honey pops up and tests all available codes for you, applying the best one automatically.
The success rate is moderate — Honey finds working codes about 20-30% of the time. But when it works, it works well (5-25% off is common). Free to use.
Honey also has a price tracking feature (Price History) that shows how a product's Amazon price has changed over time — useful for avoiding artificially inflated "sale" prices.
CamelCamelCamel — Amazon price history
For Amazon-specific shopping, CamelCamelCamel tracks the complete price history of every Amazon product. Paste a product URL and see whether today's price is genuinely a deal or the price has been lower before.
Particularly useful around sales events (Prime Day, Black Friday) when retailers inflate "original" prices to make discounts look bigger. Free website and browser extension.
ShopSavvy — Price comparison scanner
Scan any barcode with ShopSavvy to see the price at online retailers and nearby stores instantly. Useful when shopping in-store and wondering if you could get it cheaper online or at a competitor.
Budget and Automatic Savings Apps
Acorns — Micro-investing for beginners
Acorns rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the spare change in a diversified portfolio. A $3.75 coffee becomes a $4 charge, with $0.25 invested.
The appeal: completely automatic, requires zero financial knowledge. The math: $0.25 × 2 purchases/day × 365 days = $182.50 invested per year. At average market returns over 20 years, roughly $680 — plus whatever you add manually.
The catch: Acorns charges $3/month, which exceeds the investment value for many users who don't add manual contributions. Best for people who will also set up recurring deposits (minimum $5/month).
Digit — Automated savings
Digit analyzes your spending patterns and automatically transfers small amounts ($5-$50) to savings when it determines you can afford it. You set savings goals and Digit works toward them in the background.
It's not magic — it saves money you already have. But for people who struggle to save manually, the automatic nature is the point. $5.99/month fee.
YNAB (You Need a Budget) — Best overall budgeting app
YNAB isn't a savings app — it's a full budgeting system. But it reliably helps users find $200-$500/month they didn't realize they were wasting. $14.99/month or $99/year, with a 34-day free trial.
YNAB's zero-based budgeting approach assigns every dollar a job before you spend it. The learning curve is real but the results are consistently the best in the budgeting app category.
Grocery and Food Savings
Flipp — Digital grocery flyers
Flipp aggregates weekly grocery store flyers from every major chain in your area and lets you search by product. Type "chicken breast" and see the best price near you this week. Helps you plan meals around what's on sale.
Free and no signup required. Save the items you want to a shopping list within the app.
GoodRx — Prescription drug savings
GoodRx isn't a traditional money-saving app but deserves a spot here. It finds the lowest prescription prices at pharmacies near you and provides coupons that sometimes undercut insurance copays significantly.
For uninsured or underinsured people, GoodRx can save 70-80% on generic medications. Even with insurance, checking GoodRx before filling a prescription sometimes reveals that paying out of pocket with the coupon is cheaper than your copay.
Free to use.
What to Avoid
Survey and task apps (Swagbucks, InboxDollars): The hourly rate for completing surveys is typically $1-$3/hour. Your time is worth more than this.
Apps that pay to watch ads: Similar issue — extremely low value per hour.
Subscription apps that promise savings: If an app charges you $10/month to save $5/month, that's not savings.
Building Your App Stack
The most effective combination for most people:
- Rakuten browser extension — passive cashback on online shopping
- Ibotta — grocery cashback for regular shoppers
- Honey extension — automatic coupon testing
- YNAB or a free alternative — for actual budgeting
- GoodRx — when prescriptions are needed
This stack costs you nothing (or $99/year if you use YNAB) and can realistically save $300-$700/year for a typical household with minimal ongoing effort after setup. Install them once, use them automatically, collect the savings.