Guide
How to track expenses in India — what actually works in 2026
There's no shortage of ways to track expenses. The hard part is picking the one you'll still be using in three months. Here's an honest map of the four common approaches.
Free tier · 20 messages and 2 questions per day
How do I track my expenses? is the first question almost everyone asks when they decide to take their personal finances seriously. The answers online tend to fall into one of two extremes: just use a spreadsheet or here's a list of 30 apps you should download.
Both miss the real question, which is: which of these will I still be doing in three months? Tracking expenses is a habit problem, not a tooling problem. The right tool is the one that survives the laziest version of you.
Method 1 — Spreadsheets
Best for: people who already love spreadsheets, or who only need monthly totals.
Where it breaks: daily entries on mobile. Opening a sheet, finding the right row, typing four columns, saving — that's 30+ seconds per expense, and you'll skip it within a fortnight.
Verdict: excellent for analysis, terrible for capture. If you go this route, you'll probably need a separate capture tool that exports to CSV.
Method 2 — SMS-based tracker apps
Examples: the original Walnut, Money Manager, similar.
Best for: people who pay almost everything digitally and accept some inaccuracy in exchange for zero manual effort.
Where it breaks: SMS templates change, marketing messages get parsed as expenses, refunds appear as new charges, and Google has tightened SMS-permission rules. Many users report 70-80% accuracy in 2026.
Verdict: still works for some, but accuracy has degraded over time. Cash transactions are invisible.
Method 3 — Full-stack PFM apps
Examples: ETMoney, Money View (in lending mode now), INDmoney.
Best for: people who want one app for tracking + investing + bills + credit-score + insurance.
Where it breaks: the surface area is huge, the upsells can be loud, and the daily-tracking habit can get lost inside a product trying to sell you mutual funds.
Verdict: fits if you want the bundle. If you only want the tracker, you're dragging around features you don't use.
Method 4 — A Telegram bot
Example: Hisaab.
Best for: people who keep falling off the tracker wagon, share finances with a partner, or want privacy/transparency.
Where it breaks: requires manual entry. If automatic logging is a hard requirement, this is the wrong tool.
Verdict: the lowest-friction manual tracker available — texting takes 3 seconds. Pairs naturally with a partner's account.
Which one should you pick?
- If you're analytical and disciplined → spreadsheet + a capture method.
- If you pay digitally and accept inaccuracy → SMS-based, with regular cleanup.
- If you want one app for everything → full-stack PFM (ETMoney is best in class).
- If you keep abandoning trackers, share finances with a partner, or want privacy → a Telegram bot like Hisaab.
The unspoken rule
Whichever you pick, the only metric that matters is whether you're still logging in week 12. Pick the tool that maps to your laziest behaviour. It's better to log 80% of expenses for 12 months than 100% for 4 weeks.