Open banking is a set of rules that lets you give a licensed app read-only access to your bank transactions, so that the app can show them to you in a different way. That is all it is. The app cannot move your money unless you separately authorise a payment, and you can revoke the access in your bank’s settings at any time. Once you understand that, most of the fear around budgeting apps goes away, and the real questions start: what does the app do with the data, what does it cost, and does it actually change your behaviour?

App Ledger reviews and explains financial technology for people in the UK: budgeting and money management apps, open banking aggregators, robo-advisers, savings marketplaces, investment apps and the tools that promise to round up, automate or optimise. Each review teaches before it judges. What the category of tool does, from first principles. One worked example of a real user’s month. A table of fees and features. A summary box with the verdict.

Every review is scored against a published methodology so that the judgements are consistent and open to challenge. The site takes no referral fees from any app or platform, and says so on every page.

App Ledger is edited by Zoe Kaminski, who has taught digital skills to adults for many years and started reviewing money apps when learners kept asking which to trust. It is an independent UK publication and does not give personal financial advice.