Show HN: I built the simple expense tracker I wanted to use

[bitkidd]

Hi HN! I built Spenso because I wanted a simple record of my spending, but never kept up with budgeting apps.

I wanted to type or dictate something like "Starbucks 25" or "Uber Eats 25, Lidl 54.30 yesterday" and call it a day. Spenso understands the message, logs each expense, and automatically categorizes it.

It’s built for iPhone, works offline-first, and uses AI only when an entry can’t be categorized on-device.

I’d love honest feedback from anyone who has tried and abandoned expense trackers before.

[ventana]

As much as I want to support development of useful tools, I cannot see why I would use anyone else's expense tracker and pay for it, when making my own, which does everything I need the way I need it, is so easy now.

Speaking of expense trackers, it's probably something similar to to-do lists: there are tons of them, and they all just don't feel right, so of course I made my own a few years ago (pre-LLM). I was procrastinating for a few years and never made it into a real product, and then Claude and Codex made me stop even thinking about it, because why bother.

[bitkidd]

That’s fair. Spenso probably isn’t for people who can build their own tracker exactly how they want it.

I made it because I wanted something really quick to use, and thought other people might want that too without building it themselves.

What did your own tracker do better than the apps you tried?

[ventana]

I self-host the backend and the database, so I can have a web interface and file expenses from my laptop, not only from my phone.