Best Walnut App Alternatives
in India (2026)

If you're searching for a Walnut app alternative, you've come to the right place. Walnut Money was one of India's most beloved personal finance apps — intuitive, India-native, and genuinely useful without requiring you to link bank accounts or hand over your financial identity. When it was acquired by SBI Card and discontinued in 2023, it left a real gap in the Indian personal finance market.

This guide covers the best replacements available today, ranked by how closely they match what made Walnut special.

What Made Walnut Special

Walnut earned its loyal user base by doing a few things exceptionally well — things that most other apps still don't get right:

• Built for India from day one. INR-native, aware of how Indians actually spend: UPI, cash, auto-rickshaw, weekend eating out.
• SMS-based automatic detection. Walnut read your bank and payment SMSes to auto-populate transactions. Opt-in, but magical when it worked.
• Simple and clean. No investment product recommendations stuffed into every screen. Just your expenses, clearly shown.
• Free, with no ads-for-data trade-off. Walnut didn't monetise your transaction data by showing you credit card offers at every turn (at least in its early years).
• Manual entry as a first-class feature. You could also just type your expenses. No bank linking required to get value from the app.

Any good Walnut alternative needs to match at least three of these five qualities. Here's how the available options stack up.

The 5 Best Walnut Alternatives in India (2026)

1. MoneyMind — The Closest Walnut Replacement

MoneyMind is purpose-built to fill the gap Walnut left. It is a free Progressive Web App (no app store download needed) that runs in your browser and installs on your phone's home screen in seconds. It was designed from the ground up for Indian users — INR-native, UPI-aware, and built around the same manual-entry-first philosophy that Walnut users valued.

What MoneyMind gets right compared to Walnut:

• Manual entry first. Add an expense in 3 taps. Amount → Category → Done. The same simplicity Walnut had, without a bank linking requirement.
• India-native. INR display, Indian numbering, categories built for Indian spending (food, transport, groceries, auto, household, EMI).
• UPI-aware. The optional Gmail integration parses payment notification emails from HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis, Kotak, IndusInd, Paytm, PhonePe, and 4 more banks. Opt-in, OAuth-based — no SMS permissions required.
• Offline-capable. Works without internet as a PWA. Syncs when you reconnect. Reliable on India's patchy mobile networks.
• Better privacy than Walnut. AES-256-GCM encrypted storage, row-level database security, fully compliant with India's DPDP Act 2023. No ads, no data selling, no ML training on your transactions.
• CSV export + account deletion. Export everything as CSV at any time. Request permanent deletion and your data is gone within 30 days.

What MoneyMind does differently from Walnut:

• It uses Gmail OAuth rather than SMS parsing. This is actually more private — no SMS inbox access — but requires a one-time Gmail authorisation if you want automatic parsing.
• Investment tracking (mutual funds, stocks) is not currently available. MoneyMind is focused on expenses and budgets.

If you were a Walnut user who cared about the expense-tracking core rather than investment features, MoneyMind will feel like home.

2. ET Money — For Walnut Users Who Tracked Investments

ET Money combines expense tracking with mutual fund investments, insurance, and NPS. If you used Walnut primarily to keep an eye on where your salary went and you also invest in SIPs, ET Money gives you both in one app. The trade-off is significant: it is ad-supported, requires more permissions, and operates with a commercial incentive to recommend financial products. Privacy is secondary.

Best for: Walnut users who want to also track investments in the same app and are comfortable with a less privacy-focused approach.

3. Monefy — For Walnut Users Who Loved the Clean Interface

Monefy is a beautifully designed expense tracker with a donut chart interface and gesture-based entry. It's available on iOS and Android and has a clean, distraction-free design similar in spirit to what Walnut offered. It is not India-specific (no UPI awareness, no INR-specific formatting), but if you primarily used Walnut for the clean visual interface and manual entry, Monefy scratches a similar itch.

Best for: Walnut users who loved the visual simplicity and don't need India-specific bank or UPI parsing.

4. Money Manager — For Power Users

Money Manager offers double-entry bookkeeping, detailed reports, and desktop sync via its PC Edition. It has more features than casual users need but is excellent for Walnut users who wanted more granularity from their tracking. No India-specific features, and the free tier is more limited.

Best for: Former Walnut users who always felt limited by its simplicity and want Excel-level detail.

5. Spendee — For Families and Shared Budgets

Spendee supports shared wallets, making it useful for couples or families who want to track household expenses together. It is not India-specific, has limited UPI support, and the shared wallet feature requires a paid plan. However, if collaborative tracking was something you wanted from Walnut and never got, Spendee is worth evaluating.

Best for: Households where two people want to track shared expenses collaboratively.

Walnut vs MoneyMind — Feature Comparison

How to Switch to MoneyMind from Walnut

If you have old Walnut data (CSV exports you may have saved), the process is straightforward:

1. Open MoneyMind at moneymind.website — no download needed, works in your browser immediately.
2. Create an account with your email. Takes about 30 seconds, no credit card.
3. Set up your category budgets based on your typical monthly Walnut breakdown.
4. Optionally connect Gmail from the app settings for hands-free bank notification parsing. This replaces the SMS parsing Walnut used — same outcome, more private approach.
5. Install as a PWA from your browser for one-tap access, just like a native app.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Walnut app shut down?

Yes. Walnut Money was acquired by SBI Card in 2018. After several years of reduced development, the app was officially discontinued in 2023. It is no longer available for new sign-ups, and existing users can no longer export their data through the app.

Is there a Walnut app for India in 2026?

Walnut itself is no longer available. The closest alternative in 2026 is MoneyMind — it shares Walnut's core philosophy: manual-entry first, India-native, privacy-respecting, and free with no ads. MoneyMind adds a stronger security model and DPDP Act 2023 compliance that Walnut never had.

Which app is most similar to Walnut?

MoneyMind is the most similar to Walnut in its core philosophy. Both are designed for Indian users, both support manual entry as the primary workflow, both have optional automatic transaction detection, and both are free without ad-based monetisation. MoneyMind uses Gmail OAuth instead of SMS parsing, which is more private.

Can I import my Walnut data into another app?

If you have old CSV exports from Walnut, you can reference them to set up your category structure in MoneyMind and manually re-enter any important historical totals. MoneyMind does not currently support direct CSV import from Walnut's format, but future import tools are on the roadmap.