Rocket Money Review 2022 - Track Bills & Subscriptions Effortlessly
- By Zachary Greene
- |
- Updated on October 11th, 2022
Rocket money is arguably the most user-friendly and comprehensive bill and subscription tracking service currently available — allowing you to easily track not only your budget and spending but also your subscriptions and bills.
Rocket Money is also one of the only apps/services that’ll cancel your subscriptions for you, or negotiate your bills down (internet, cell phone, car insurance, etc) on your behalf, and according to various reddit users, and my personal experience with Rocket Money, you can save up to 50% on your bills.
| 💰 Fees & Pricing | Very Low (+Free Option) |
| 💻 Platform Useability | Simple & Useful |
| 🛠 Support Quality | Above-Average |
| 🥇 Best Features | Subscription Manager |
To be upfront with my thoughts on Rocket Money — it’s a useful app that makes life easier, and their bill negotiation is useful, but personally I wouldn’t pay for their premium service at least for more than a month or two to get my initial bills negotiated on my behalf.
Most useful features Rocket Money offers are free with the exception of the bill negotiation — meaning you can track your expenses, budget, see your recurring monthly expenses, where you shop the most, your biggest expenses, etc, all for free when you sign up and simply choose to pay nothing.
Do note Rocket Money is suitable for bill tracking, expenses, etc, it’s not a good app for tracking your investments (Kubera or Personal Capital are better for this) or managing your debt (Tally is good for this).
Rocket Money is good for personal-finance tracking and helping with managing your budgets, expenses, recurring-payments, etc, not investing or getting out of debt. Use it for it’s strengths.
Table of Contents
Rocket Money Unique Features:
Before we get into Rocket Money’s Unique Features I’d like to clarify that these aren’t all the features or services they offer — these are the features that are unique to Rocket Money that make them stand out amongst their competitors.
If you want a full list of their features I’d recommend going to this page on Rocket Money’s website which has all the features they have to offer — however with that being said lets get into their best features:
Subscription Manager
While there are a few budgeting apps like Mint and Trim that offer this feature as well I think Rocket Money does it best — Mint a close second.
The interface as you can see is very easy to understand, they have a calendar interface as well, and overall they make it very easy to cancel – clicking on the three dot icon opens a menu which can easily allow you to navigate to all the merchant information you may need to cancel the subscription.
They’ll give you the merchants email, phone number, cancellation form, whatever it may be — or if you’re a premium user of Rocket Money they’ll even cancel it for you even if it requires a phone-call.
Bill Negotiation Feature
Rocket Money’s bill negotiating seems to return slightly more than competitors like Mint, however they require you to pay for the privilege to use the service by signing up for a premium account so it’s not as cheap as competitors negotiating services.
Keep in mind Rocket Money only negotiates phone bills, cell phone bills, insurance bills, and other consumer-oriented services. They do not negotiate tax bills, medical bills, or other less common bills.
Advanced Spending Insights
While most budgeting-type apps offer spending insights Rocket Money is my current favorite for how it displays data and lets you go back in time, check specific merchants, transaction numbers, average transaction size, etc.
Unless you are okay with paying $6/mo for Simplifi (the best budget app imo) then Rocket Money is a great app for gaining insights into your spending habbits.
Rocket Money Biggest Pros & Cons:
While we’ve already went over Rocket Money’s features that make them unique there are plenty of other good features that they have as well as other benefits to them.
To start the pros of Rocket Money are:
- Their interface is the easier to understand than competitors
- Their Desktop app is the best (imo)
- Seems to get higher discounts (negotiates better) for cell phone and cable bills
- Free version is more than adequate for most people
- Spending insights & subscription tracking are best-in-industry tied with Mint
- Offers a free trial of premium
- Links seamlessly with any national bank of financial institutional
With that being said there are some downsides and cons with Rocket Money, such as:
- Doesn’t negotiate all types of bills (medical bills for example)
- Isn’t the cheapest solution, even if it’s the easiest solution
- Takes a high amount of negotiated bill savings (40%)
Rocket Money Pricing Structure and Fees:
Rocket Money is 100% free to use as they have a free tier — the free tier is more than adequate in my opinion as it includes most of the actually useful and unique features, with the exception of the bill negotiation feature which requires a paid premium plan.
Overall I’d recommend people try a few months at $5/mo and see how you like the premium option, get your bills negotiated, and then downgrade if you don’t care about the extra features it gives otherwise (like networth tracking and credit score tracking).
With that being said if you do decide to go with the premium plan the above are the cheapest pricing options they have — either $5/mo or $36/year if you pay upfront.
If you don’t want to pay those fees like I said before it’s not necessary — most features are free to use and you can just slide the slider to $0 and pay nothing — but not get networth tracking or credit score tracking.
If you want free Networth tracking I’d recommend Personal Capital which does a much better job at it anyways, and for credit score tracking Credit Karma is 100% free and a good alternative as well.
Of course by not paying you have to use other apps and it makes life more complex — but it’s an option if you want to save money and still get all the features premium offers.
Rocket Money vs Competitors:
Rocket Money is one of the few apps/services that offer subscription tracking and bill negotiation — first we’ll cover the other competitors that offer these services.
Rocket Money vs AskTrim
AskTrim does most of what Rocket Money does — they also will negotiate most bills on your behalf and allow you to track your existing subscriptions.
They’re a bit cheaper than Rocket Money and seem to give a bit more than Rocket Money back on bill negotiations, but they lack a lot of the user-friendliness and metrics that Rocket Money offers.
Ultimately if you don’t want to pay anything and don’t mind a bit of hassle and just want your bills negotiated, then Trim is good enough — however if you plan to use the apps longer term I’d say the free version of Rocket Money is far better for most people.
Rocket Money vs Simplifi
Simplifi and Rocket Money aren’t really comparbale — Rocket Money will negotiate bills on your behalf and track subscriptions, while Simplifi is soley about budgeting.
There’s a little crossover between the two apps, but ultimately they’re different at their core. Simplifi is better for budgeting and tracking spending, networth, etc, but Rocket Money has more features and can help people save more money.
Rocket Money Premium Feature Alternatives
Rocket Money’s free features are basically the best in the industry, tied with Mint, but their premium features, as mentioned before, aren’t really something I’d pay for personally — I don’t mind using many apps rather than having an all-in-one app.
With that being said the alternatives to Rocket Money’s premium features are:
- Networth Tracking (Personal Capital)
- Credit Score Tracking (Credit Karma)
- Budgeting (Mint or Personal Capital)
- Bill Negotiation (AskTrim, but less user-friendly)
- Autopilot Savings (Current Banking)
Using the above apps/services you can pay absolutely nothing and get all the features of Rocket Money premium — it’ll obviously take more time to check everything and set up the accounts, but if you’re on a budget or want a more specialized experience then all the above apps/services are good imo.
Our Experience Using Rocket Money:
I’ve used Rocket Money on and off since before it was Rocket Money — a few years back it used to be called Truebill before it got rebranded as Rocket Money.
Rocket Money has been the only app that offers what it does to work 100% seamlessly for me, as AskTrim didn’t pick up transactions and categorize them quite as well and their desktop interface was very frustrating compared to Rocket Money.
With that being said I never had technical issues or other issues with Rocket Money — I tested their support a couple times just to be able to see how they compared and they were quicker to respond compared to competitors and just as to-the-point (not very) in resolving the made-up problems.
Personally I prefer more complex specific focused apps, like the alternatives I mentioned above, so I don’t use Rocket Money as much anymore as I used to – but that’s not to say it isn’t right for some people, namely people who just want an all-in-one app rather than deal with all sorts of apps.
Rocket Money Review FAQ's:
Below we’ll go over the FAQ’s we’ve been asked, or encountered, or even had asked ourselves about Rocket Money when we first started checking them out and as we used them — If you have other questions feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can — and likely even add our answer down below.
Does Rocket Money sell your data?
No Rocket Money doesn't sell your data to any 3rd-parties. They do however use Rocket Money as a lead-magnet for their primary business - mortgages, loans, and insurance.
How does Rocket Money make money?
They charge a subscription fee for their premium services and generally use the free service to just get their brand (rocket) out there and to get clients for their main business (loans, mortgages, insurance).
Does Rocket Money work in Canada?
While Rocket Money does work in Canada many Canadian banks and financial institutions do not pair with Rocket Money's integration mechanisms. In theory it does work, in practice often times you don't get a full picture of your financial situation if you have Canadian accounts though.
Is Truebill now Rocket Money?
Yes Truebill was acquired by Rocket Money in December 2021 and shortly thereafter rebranded as Rocket Money. They kept all the same features and pricing for the most part and just updated the interface so it's just as good as before.
Is Rocket Money Secure?
Yes Rocket Money uses Plaid's integration mechanism which ensures your data is encrypted and secured just like at your bank or credit card company - the worst leak that can happen with Rocket Money is your email getting leaked - not your transactions or accounts.
Our overall Rocket Money rating
4.7
Bottom Line:
Rocket Money is an overall good app that is a great choice for people looking for a simple app to give them a financial check-up, keep track of subscriptions, and overall get a good view of your spending.
The free portion of Rocket Money is more than adequate for most people in my opinion, but the premium version doesn’t cost much and makes life easier. Most premium features can be found elsewhere for free, as mentioned above in the article – so if you want them for free there are other options (Personal Capital and Credit Karma).