Mint vs SoFi Coach℠: Budgeting Comparison Guide

What Is SoFi Coach?

SoFi Coach is a tool within the SoFi app that provides personalized, real-time financial insights, budget planning, and more, with an AI-driven Coach Chat to answer questions and perform simple tasks. It’s available to SoFi members.

You can ask SoFi Coach questions anytime and get judgment-free answers based on your data, courtesy of an AI tool trained on the playbook used by SoFi’s own financial planners. Ask questions about:

•   Credit scores

•   Travel budgets

•   Debt management

•   Investing strategies

To get started, SoFi members can securely connect their checking, savings, investment, and other accounts from more than 12,000 financial institutions. This allows SoFi Coach to deliver support based on the user’s complete financial picture (not just SoFi accounts).

Benefits of SoFi Coach

Members can use SoFi Coach to get help with making more informed money moves as they:

•   Master your spending: Visualize where your money goes and where you want it to go. Drill down on specific spending categories: Ask, “How much did I spend on my wardrobe last year?”

•   Learn about different budgeting methods: And utilize the Coach Chat function to determine your ideal plan.

•   Take control of debt: Craft a payoff plan, evaluate debt consolidation options, and discover how to balance debt payments with savings goals.

•   Monitor your credit score: Get alerts when your score changes — and learn why.

•   Plan for major life goals: Thinking about buying a home, growing a family, or planning for retirement? SoFi Coach can help you take action. In early testing, SoFi Coach helped members take tens of thousands of financial actions, with nearly 70% of engaged test members taking meaningful steps to improve their finances, from paying down high-interest debt to moving money into higher-yield accounts.

Something to watch for: SoFi expects its new AI platform to keep evolving so members can enjoy even more seamless connectivity.

What Was Mint?

When Mint became available in 2006, it was one of the first apps that allowed users to manage their entire budget in one place for free.

Once you linked your various financial accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, etc.) to the app, you could create your own spending and savings plan with categories customized to your needs vs. wants. There was also a premium version of Mint, which offered additional features.

Mint’s parent company, Intuit, shut down the app in 2024, then shifted some of the app’s features to its Credit Karma money management and credit score service. But many of Mint’s popular budgeting features didn’t transfer over.

Benefits of Mint

Mint was a user-friendly, budget-focused financial app that helped individuals manage their money with:

•   Automatic spending categories: Mint pulled transaction records from a user’s financial institutions and sorted that data into basic budgeting categories. Users also could create their own categories to tailor their budget to their needs.

•   Custom reminders and alerts: Mint helped users monitor their upcoming bills so they wouldn’t accidentally miss a payment. It could also alert you if you had unusual spending on an account, or if a recurring fee increased.

•   Easy to access credit score information: If you provided your Social Security number, the Mint app would display your credit score on your dashboard and provide regular credit report summaries.

Recommended: Common Budgeting Mistakes

SoFi Coach vs Mint for Budgeting

How do SoFi Coach and the old Mint app compare when you stack up their features side by side? Here’s a quick breakdown of Mint vs. SoFi Coach:

Feature	SoFi Coach	Mint
Monthly fee	Free	No longer available. Was free, with paid upgrades
Connectivity	Connects to 12,000+ financial institutions	Connected to 17,000+ financial institutions
Spending and Saving	Tracks multiple financial categories in real time	Monitored and sent reminders to pay bills on time
Budgeting and Insights	Get a big-picture view with graphics or drill down on specifics by asking questions	Helped track progress with colorful, easy-to-read graphics
AI Chat	AI trained on the same playbook used by SoFi’s team of financial planners	No
Credit-Score Monitoring	Yes	Yes
Ease of Use	Reliable, intuitive, and fun-to-use interface	User-friendly interface, but many ads and some glitchiness
Planned updates	Expected to develop even more capability within the app	Some but not all features moved to Credit Karma app

Recommended: How to Make a Budget

SoFi Coach Advantages

Tech can change a lot in two years. SoFi Coach stands out with a new AI-powered Coach Chat that can provide personalized answers to budgeting questions based on subscribers’ own financial data. There’s no need to guess where your money is going or how you can get back on track if you’re overspending. You’ll have SoFi Coach in your corner to help you weigh spending decisions, explain what’s going on with your credit score, help you prioritize your debt payments, show how your habits are aligning with your goals, and more.

If you’ve been using a free monthly budget template to track spending manually, SoFi Coach could help you take a big step forward by automating your tracking process. “Automating finances can not only be a smart money move, it could also alleviate some of your stress around payment deadlines,” says Brian Walsh, CFP^® and Head of Advice & Planning at SoFi.

Tips to Maximize SoFi Coach Benefits

Ready to get started? To get the most out of SoFi Coach, keep in mind that its AI learns from your specific financial data, making it a highly personalized tool. You can expect more targeted results than you might get from some other apps or generic chatbots. So you can think of SoFi Coach as your go-to for most questions related to your finances.

Paired with SoFi’s other financial tools, Coach can help you understand and move forward with potential next steps for financial success.

The Takeaway

Mint was one of the first money management apps to help users make decisions based on their own spending and saving habits. SoFi Coach takes that customized help to the next level, with an AI-powered chat assistant that can drill down on specifics.

If you’re familiar with Siri, ChatGPT — or any search engine, really — SoFi Coach should be an intuitive, easy-to-access resource for budgeting, financial planning, and support. Deciding between SoFi Coach and other money management platforms will likely come down to finding the features that best match your money habits and priorities.

Take control of your finances with SoFi Coach. You can easily view all of your accounts in one convenient dashboard: bank and investment balances, current debts, spending breakdowns, and credit score. Easily set up budgets and spot upcoming bills. And get personalized insights on everyday money questions and take action with Coach chat, the AI guide that’s powered by the playbooks of SoFi Financial Planners, so its guidance comes from expert knowledge.

Meet SoFi Coach, your smart personal guide to getting your money right.

Learn more