YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a subscription budgeting app operated by You Need A Budget LLC (d/b/a YNAB), a private company with a UK subsidiary (You Need A Budget UK Ltd) registered in Cheltenham, England. Its privacy policy states the company is a 'consumer-focused subscription business' and explicitly says it does not 'sell' the information users provide, including Financial Data, or 'share/process' it for targeted advertising purposes. YNAB offers optional, consent-based bank-account linking via third-party aggregators (Plaid, MX); it also discloses device-fingerprinting and risk-analysis tools used for fraud prevention, and its Cookie Policy discloses that its marketing website (ynab.com) uses first- and third-party cookies for 'interactive content, advertising, marketing, and analytics' purposes distinct from the in-app product. The security page describes bank-grade TLS in transit and encryption at rest, and notes its infrastructure runs on Heroku/AWS, whose facilities are ISO 27001 and SOC 1/SOC 2 accredited — an infrastructure-provider certification, not an independent audit of YNAB itself. No breach or regulator action was found in this research.
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YNAB's privacy policy states that for account aggregation, users or YNAB (with the user's consent) 'transmit your account credentials to third-party financial data aggregation services, who will use them to link, gather and maintain your account balances, transactions, and holdings used to provide the Services,' naming Plaid and MX as examples of these providers; the policy also discloses collection of transaction photos and location data when used to record transactions.
YNAB's privacy policy identifies the operating entity as 'You Need A Budget LLC (d/b/a YNAB) and its affiliates,' and separately names a UK subsidiary, 'You Need A Budget UK Ltd,' giving its registered address as '4th Fl. St. James House, St. James Square, Cheltenham, England, GL50 3PR,' and describing it as an agent of Plaid Financial Ltd. for UK/EEA account-information services.
YNAB's own About page includes a first-person founder narrative describing the company's 2003 origin: 'Early in 2003... I (Jesse) was a broke college student, newly married to Julie...I built a simple spreadsheet around one guiding principle: give every dollar a job,' naming the founder (by first name) directly on the company's own site.
YNAB's privacy policy states directly: 'we do not under any circumstances "sell" the information you provide through the Product or "share/process" it for targeted advertising purposes, including Financial Data,' addressing the point that some state privacy laws categorize marketing-related data uses as a legal 'sale' or 'share' even without a cash exchange.
YNAB's security page states 'all data sent between your computer and YNAB is bank-grade or better encryption' and that YNAB uses 'industry standard data encryption at rest and in transit'; the same page states YNAB's infrastructure runs on Heroku/AWS, whose facilities 'are accredited under: ISO 27001 SOC 1 and SOC 2/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402...PCI Level 1' -- infrastructure-provider certification rather than an independent audit of YNAB's own application. No breach or regulator action against YNAB was found in this research.
YNAB's privacy policy states that it collects information 'via device-fingerprinting and risk-analysis tools to help protect your account from fraudulent or unauthorized access' -- a purpose-limited security use of device fingerprinting rather than an advertising or cross-app tracking use.
YNAB's Cookie Policy discloses that its website uses first-party and third-party cookies, and that 'we also use these for our interactive content, advertising, marketing, and analytics efforts,' and that 'the parties that set these third-party cookies can recognize your computer both when it visits the website in question and also when it visits certain other websites' -- a disclosed cross-site tracking mechanism on YNAB's own marketing website.