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Comma Personal Finance App - 20% off: Pro A$119, Lifetime A$239 - Pay Once, No Subscription

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Comma Personal Finance App - 20% off: Pro A$119, Lifetime A$239 - Pay Once, No Subscription
Go to Deal
AssociatedLCommaFinance on 05/05/2026 - 11:52 comma.finance (1055 clicks)
Last edited 06/05/2026 - 10:05 by 1 other user
LAUNCH20

Hi all, founder here (declared as merchant rep). Launching today and OzBargain felt like the right place to talk about this.

Comma is a personal finance app I've spent 8 months building. What makes it relevant here is the pricing model: it's a one-time payment, not a subscription.

Comparison with subscription alternatives:

  • YNAB: AU$145/year (ongoing subscription)
  • PocketSmith Premium: AU$190/year (ongoing subscription)
  • Pocketbook: free but discontinued
  • Comma Pro: AU$119 once (with launch code), 12 months of transaction history, all Pro features for life
  • Comma Lifetime: AU$239 once (with launch code), unlimited transaction history, every Comma feature for life

Launch week pricing (5-11 May 2026):

  • Pro: AU$119 (normally AU$149) with code LAUNCH20
  • Lifetime: AU$239 (normally AU$299) with code LAUNCH20

Six things I haven't seen in other finance apps:

  1. World Salary Map - see your effective tax rate in AU/UK/US/NZ/CA on one map. Plus a Relocate Solver telling you what salary you'd need overseas to keep the same lifestyle (PPP-adjusted).

  2. Probabilistic goal tracking - dual rings show savings progress AND confidence you'll hit the target on time, not just a progress bar.

  3. Spending heatmap with 5 features I haven't seen combined: category cells, ghost days for zero-spend, EKG rhythm line, day-of-week labels, discipline streak counters.

  4. Gambling tracker (free on every tier) with 176 AU venue patterns - RSLs, pokies, TABs, casinos. Detects cash spend at venues, not just online betting.

  5. Live Sankey money flow with draggable what-if sliders.

  6. Client-side AES-256-GCM encryption. The server holds encrypted blobs that it can't decrypt.

What you get:

  • Bank CSV import for CBA, NAB, ANZ, Westpac, Macquarie, Up Bank, BankWest, St.George, BOQ
  • Auto-categorisation (60 categories, ~2,460 merchant patterns)
  • Tax engine for AU (factors in Medicare levy, HECS, Super, ETP)
  • AI chat with bring-your-own API key (Claude, GPT, Gemini)
  • All data is encrypted in your browser before sync. Australian-hosted (Supabase Sydney).

30 days free first, no card required. Sign up at comma.finance.

As a thank-you to founding members, I will pick 3 random Pro purchasers from launch week and upgrade them to Lifetime free. Drawn next Monday, 12 May.

Happy to answer questions in comments.

Financial Finance App Personal Finance Software

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  • 30year old Camry on 05/05/2026 - 12:02
    +15

    Can this track how much I spend on vibe coded apps?

    • r0nmac on 05/05/2026 - 12:13
      +2

      MIght as well hire claude to build one personal fin app for me, that I dont need to sell for "lifetime subscriptions"

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 12:13
      -1

      Fair call. Entirely architected by me (this started of as a personal project a long time ago) as an aside to my day job but AI-assisted in some parts, other parts written entirely by me. Happy to walk through it.

      • dan0909 on 05/05/2026 - 15:03

        it takes 10 seconds to tell AI to pick a good theme, you forgot that line in your prompt.

    • Nillionaire on 05/05/2026 - 12:14
      +5

      Can this also track how often lifetime access programs disappear if they fail to be sustainable or dishonour the offer and start charging if they're successful?

      • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 12:17
        +2

        Fair call and something I've been burnt by too. Lifetime deals get burned all the time, usually when subscription pressure or growth targets force a pivot. This is a personal endeavour, so no funding here, no investors, no growth targets to hit. The model genuinely works for me at this scale. If it stops working, I'd rather sunset gracefully and let people export everything than pull a Lastpass.

          • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 12:39
            +10

            @r0nmac: To be very frank, "free" is how PocketBook ended up shut down, and what got Mint killed off. Server costs, time, and upcoming features have to come from somewhere. Charging keeps the lights on and lets me keep building, having fun while doing it, rather than abandoning it when life gets busy. There's also a free tier with the full feature set for 30 days, no card.

            • dan0909 on 05/05/2026 - 15:16
              +2

              @CommaFinance: PocketBook made changes that cost them customers. UI changes were hedious & users had to re-learn how to do stuff. if someone has 100+ expenses saved as 'Car Expense' in 18 months, why change it to 'Work Automotive' & 'Home Automotive'? they annoyed the hell out of customers & got killed themselves.
              Mint was bought by Quickbooks or some american company for good amount of money which raised prices & lost users.
              Make it $2.99 a month & watch users come, especially if you add tax calculation, add tax saving tips, property cost calculations could be an addon for $10.
              What you've done is quick money scheme where you don't have to maintain, take money & exit strategy is not long term business.

              • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 15:22

                @dan0909: Fair points on both, bad UX and pricing changes have killed plenty of finance apps. The lesson I've taken from PocketBook and Mint is the opposite; they both got killed BY the subscription model, not saved by it. PocketBook ran out of runway because $2.99/month didn't support the business. Mint got bought because the recurring revenue made it acquisition bait, which I'm not trying to do. I've settled on one-time pricing because it means I never need an exit, a price hike, or to chase growth at the expense of users. If anything, this is the model designed to avoid being the next PocketBook.

  • Nillionaire on 05/05/2026 - 12:10

    How does yours compare to Monarch Money which looks the most comprehensive and visually appealing to me? The reason I haven't tried them yet is their $150 annual subscription.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 12:15
      +6

      Monarch is solid, especially for couples and investment tracking, but the big difference and the reason I chose to build Comma was paying once instead of annually (3 years of Monarch buys you Comma 3x over), CSV-only, so no Plaid is involved, and everything's encrypted in your browser before it hits the server. 30 days free if you want to compare them side by side.

  • knobbs on 05/05/2026 - 12:24
    +3

    Bank CSV import for CBA, NAB, ANZ, Westpac, Macquarie, Up Bank, BankWest, St.George, BOQ

    The reason I like PocketBook (other than being free), was that they automated pulling in all of your transactions from MANY banks and now with open banking it should be even easier. You are asking for $240 for a lifetime sub but I still have to manually CSV import all my transactions and then only with a limited number of banks ?

    Also web page access? I hate that most of the fin services like this only have app

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 12:37
      +4

      Two fair and valid points.

      CSV was a choice and is a deliberate trade. Open Banking means a third party (Basiq, Plaid) has persistent API access to your bank account. After Latitude and Medibank (and countless other companies) experienced data issues, I wasn't comfortable building on that foundation. CSV is one-shot, no ongoing access. Less convenient, more private.

      Comma is web-first because that's my experience, but it also means it works in any browser on desktop or mobile. No app required.

      Currently, 11 AU banks can be auto-detected, but you can also upload any other bank and use a manual column-mapping tool for those. Tell me which bank you use, and I'll prioritise it.

      • knobbs on 05/05/2026 - 13:10
        +1

        Appreciate it is a privacy decision. For me personally and at $200+ it needs to have some automation even if it does come with privacy concerns. Have you looked at how hard implementing open banking autopulls would be?

        Great to hear web first design!

        Tell me which bank you use, and I'll prioritise it.

        I am a CC churner so go through just about every bank available in Aus, as well as a crypto card, not one preference.

        • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:50

          Fair point.

          I have looked at implementing Open Banking in some way, which honestly doesn't seem that hard, but it goes against the privacy piece that Comma is built on.

          That said, I am exploring the option as we speak to see what I can do, even if I make it opt-in, like the AI BYOK feature.

  • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 12:56
    -5

    "Comma is a personal finance app I've spent 8 months building. "

    Buddy, come on, no

    I built myself a tracker for my meme stocks that's more feature rich than this, in like… 20 minutes ? I mean … when I say "I built" like you, I used the extra tokens from a week of Claude code to have Claude build it.

    Feels like the real deal would be buying a Claude code subscription and have it purpose build you an app if the looks remotely appealing.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:27
      +5

      Mate, I've already said elsewhere in the thread that the build was AI-assisted. Not hiding it.

      But a 20-minute meme-stock tracker vs. Comma is a stretch. Client-side encryption, 60+ bank parsers, tax engines for 5 countries, gambling venue detection, Monte Carlo simulations and my personal real daily use for 8 months without losing data. That's the actual build.

      If Claude Code can give you all of that in a week, genuinely good for you. Build it, ship it, undercut me. The tools are available to everyone.

      • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 14:46
        -3

        "But a 20-minute meme-stock tracker vs. Comma is a stretch."

        I take my meme stocks seriously,
        it includes:
        Selenium container that can auto pull ASX data
        Sentiment analysis for trumps truth social tweets.
        A stonks watch list that lets me search an click from a gui for things I dont own
        A nightly sync to/from discord bot finance channel in my friend group so we can all mock each other for being idiots
        Dynamic market signals analysis for each stock I currently have

        I mean because web app features are trivial now ?

        It sounds like, you vibe coded an app, used it yourself for 6 months, got value from it, created an ABN and are trying to resell/market it, which good luck to you.

        Let me address real quick though this statement:

        'If Claude Code can give you all of that in a week, genuinely good for you. Build it, ship it, undercut me.'

        You see, the problem with collecting money for a project like this, in Australia is that I do not have an Australian Financial Services License, my business is licensed for many things, that is not one of them.
        Things like an AI chat feature, baked into your platform, that's a pretty risky biscuit because there's some argument that your platform may deal in financial product advice.

        If I wanted to compete with you I'd need to go speak to a lawfirm that understands financial tech and there'd be a reasonable cost associated with safely and ethically deploying a product to market.
        Even if you cut AI out you're going to need an hour of consult with an expensive specialist lawyer to draft documentation
        Insurances I'd need to take out:
        Cyber
        Indemnity
        Liability

        That's just to trade in Australia, I have no idea what the risk landscape looks like in the US/UK/NZ/Canada aka your other potential markets.

        Because building the product is not the issue, building the business in a sensible sustainable manner is, honestly if I were going to make a budgeting app I'd cut the feature set down and have the whole thing be client side so that I don't end up falling foul of the billion regulations… but also I just wouldn't because there's solid free and open source solutions out there for a general audience like firefly/wallos/etc

        Like there's complicated stuff in web back ends, sure, but honestly the problem here isn't technical its all business structure.

        Now, that I've gotten through all of that, here's an obvious (profanity) up you've made on your path in going to market.

        I was able to create an account, without agreeing to a terms of service, at all.
        If it were me and I found a service that I had sold had no terms of service, at all I would cease that service immediately until it had been rectified.

        • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 15:27

          That's a absolutely fair flag. ToS gate getting added today.

          On the licensing point, the AI chat is positioned as analytical, not advisory, and there's a disclaimer in the chat about it. But the broader regulatory landscape is something I've reviewed with a fintech-aware lawyer regularly, not something I've ignored.

          Appreciate the time you took to lay it out.

          • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 16:02
            -1

            @CommaFinance: 'But the broader regulatory landscape is something I've reviewed with a fintech-aware lawyer regularly, not something I've ignored.'

            Look, the complete absence of a ToS tells me this just isn't the case or whoever is giving you advice is negligent.

            Your current liability is infinite, in theory if someone had added OpenAI and asked for its advice you may be infinitely liable for the decision they made and defending yourself would be nigh impossible.

            I don't think your business structure would protect you from that liability being personal but that's honestly a pretty uneducated guess, meaning that your own personal assets could be used to cover it.

            There's a ton of other stuff, like I'm not going to give you anything else material in terms of free work here but like your privacy policy has a bunch of stuff that's undisclosed in it would could incur liability, which tells me you likely don't have much if anything in the way of insurances that you should have to trade, like one of your markets is the UK which means GDPR & UK GDPR, one of the explicit reasons my company does not trade with the UK is because getting it right requires legal advise from the UK and a level of work that likely outweighs the benefits..

            Right now any competitor could break apart your platform, and lodge complaints with regulators/consumer protection/whatever and you likely get hit with penalties.

            I genuinely wish you and everyone building things with AI luck, but honestly you can't just skip the costs of starting a business and you can't trust the AI to get it right when giving you foundational legal/structural advice on something that could quite literally and in this case HAS resulted in you assuming a position of infinite liability.

            If someone has bought lifetime, I honestly have no clue how you force a TOS on them after the fact without them being able to screw you pretty hard with complaints to a regulator in their country of origin.

            • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 17:07

              @DellDealLols: To clarify, the ToS and Privacy Policy both exist. They were drafted, reviewed, and are live on the site. What was missed at go-live (in amongst a lot of stuff and completely on me) was wiring the acceptance checkbox into the signup form, which has now been fixed.

              That's a real miss on my part, and I wont shy away from it but the framing that I have no terms or no thinking behind this isn't accurate and is unfounded.

              I appreciate your (in-depth) feedback, its not lost on me.

              • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 17:32

                @CommaFinance: I am aware your privacy policy exists, there are significant issues in your privacy policy that make it clear that a lawyer either wasn't involved or was negligent.

                Your policy contains:
                Claims that are contrary to the nature of the application.
                Failure to disclose things that ought to be disclosed.
                Contradictory claims, both within the policy itself and that contradict the nature of claims made about the service.

                These are all things a competent contract lawyer would prevent

    • KangaDrew on 05/05/2026 - 14:28

      I built myself a tracker for my meme stocks

      'nuff said.

      • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 14:51

        It's like gambling but you get to write off the losses against teh gains.

      • DellDealLols on 05/05/2026 - 14:48

        Member Since 2 hours 3 min

        Welcome new member of Oz-bargain that has literally only commented on this product.

  • aj-99 on 05/05/2026 - 12:56
    -1

    nice. im building something very similar as well and this actually gave me another a couple of ideas (eg: Subscription Orbit).

    Suggestions :
    - UI should be white. It's a finance app. Dark UI should be an option only
    - You might need to re-write all your texts there in the website. They are very 'technical'.
    - Have a lot of features (which is good) but, you should find what's your USP is.

    All the very best. This is really good.

    • ryanwe on 05/05/2026 - 13:01
      +2

      But black and purple is ai's fav colours to pick when vibecoding, it might get confused if it changes!

      • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:33
        -2

        Haha fair. The gradient and colour choice were actually one of the few design calls that I've had since the first version I made. Guess we have similar tastes.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:42
      -2

      Thanks, genuinely appreciate this. Three good calls.

      The Dark UI default is deliberate (it's part of the visual identity I chose), but you're right that a light option should exist, and it's on my to-do list.

      The technical copy is fair feedback. I'm an enterprise architect by trade, and it shows in the writing. I will take a look at this.

      USP is the one that's become clearer, but the honest answer is privacy + one-time pricing, as that's the one thing I couldn't find back when I started this. I keep getting drawn into showing all the visual stuff because that's what people respond to in demos.

      Best of luck with what you're building. Hit me up if you want to compare notes.

      • aj-99 on 05/05/2026 - 15:51

        thank you.
        will DM you for contact :)

  • unleadedFuel on 05/05/2026 - 13:16

    Good effort man and very smart. Don't let the 'vibe-coding' digs take you down. Keep evolving and building.

    The haters are just repeating a new term they learned on tiktok and will be 'ai-replaced' soon so don't think they are your target customers anyway.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:43
      -2

      Thanks mate, I appreciate it. Means a lot.

  • keji on 05/05/2026 - 13:24

    Love this initiative! What guardrails do you have to ensure security against data breaches.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:31
      +1

      Thank you for the kind words!

      To answer your question, the short way: assume the server gets breached, design so the breach is useless.

      All data is encrypted in your browser before it touches the server. AES-256-GCM with a key derived from your password (PBKDF2-SHA256, 600k iterations). The server only ever holds encrypted blobs it can't decrypt. If someone breaks in tomorrow, they get a random-looking ciphertext.

      It's purposefully built with no bank login, no Plaid, or third-party aggregator with API access to your account. CSV import only what you choose to upload.

      Browser storage is also encrypted at rest, so even if your device is compromised, sessions expire, locking the screen rather than leaving data exposed.

      The Trade-off: Your password can't be reset. If you forget it, your data is gone. That's not a flaw, it's the entire point. Recovery paths are also breach paths.

      • ModBot on 05/05/2026 - 21:40

        What if my password was pwned ? I think there should be some way to get back the data.

  • Gaggy boy on 05/05/2026 - 13:40
    +1

    what it delivers more than self hosted sites like Actual Budget , FireFly III…. ?

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 13:45

      Good question. Actual and Firefly are excellent if you're happy to self-host (which is me to some extent but Comma trades that for no setup, broader bank CSV auto-detection, tax engines, a Relocate Solver for 5 countries, a gambling tracker, and AI chat that goes directly from browser to provider. If you're already happy with what you've got, though, genuinely keep using it.

  • g0d on 05/05/2026 - 14:12
    +2

    tested the platform, not for me - UX is not great and platform seems it is at very early stage. not mature enough to ask for $$

    Tried deleting the account but it did not work. Error: "NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource."

    Actual budget on on my homelab or Pikapods is the way to go for me. If I fancy automation I will integrate it with Redbark.

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 15:12

      Thanks for giving it a go, I appreciate it!

      The UX is something I'm working on and have a lot of ideas to make it better so it will get better shortly.

      Please give the account deletion another go, seems I didn't deploy enough mortein.

    • knobbs on 06/05/2026 - 08:27

      Can you share some more info on what budgeting software you are running on your homelab?

  • harveyworld on 05/05/2026 - 15:36

    I'm still using the free version of Quicken from 2013 and I have data going back to 2005.

    I have been on the search for something more updated and flexible for the past 3 years with no luck. Quicken is very expensive to subscribe to and I don't want to be beholding to one platform on a paid up basis. I have no issue for a one off fee if it is the right one.

    How does this compare and can I convert QIF files?
    Does it track shares and other online investments?

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 17:10

      Welcome, this is exactly the kind of long-term tracking Comma's built for.

      Two honest answers: QIF isn't supported directly, but Quicken can export to CSV (File > Export > CSV), which Comma reads cleanly. Happy to help if the format throws anything weird.

      Investments: Comma tracks net worth with manually-entered investment accounts, but doesn't auto-pull live share prices yet. If automated brokerage sync is critical, a fair gap to know.

      30 days free if you want to test it with a slice of your Quicken data first.

  • dingocado on 05/05/2026 - 15:57
    +3

    Comma can't access it at all — the maths won't let us.

    Unfortunately this isn't true with your current design

    POST https://mgrbxecthpcallxermkb.supabase.co/auth/v1/signup sends
    …
    password "my cool password"

    Sending the password over the wire while doing zk server e2ee not possible because anyone server side who has visibility can see the password. it's not enough to just say "we don't log it" that's just trust again.

    correct model is:
    1. create master key with password kdf (argon2id + salt) on client
    2. create auth_token & kek (hkdf) based on master key
    3. create dek (random high entropy token) & wrap with kek
    4. send wrapped dek, auth_token & salt to server, hash auth_token on server, store these things

    on relogin:
    1. get salt from server, rederive auth_token with password
    2. send auth_token & compare on server, send wrapped dek back to client
    3. rederive kek and decrypt dek

    OPAQUE is better than doing auth_token comparison, but i don't know how to do it yet

    you can retrofit this but you can't claim for current user data that your server is zk / that you can't access data. and you won't be able to use supabase's auth to do it i don't think

    *after thinking about htis, because you are using supabase's auth, YOU probably cannot view a user's password ever, but it is still exchanged over the wire, so supabase feasibly could. still susceptible to leaks, law, insider etc

    • AssociatedCommaFinance @ Comma App on 05/05/2026 - 17:20
      +1

      You're right, thats a fair point. The encryption-at-rest is real but the auth flow as it stands isn't fully zero-knowledge, the password does pass through Supabase's auth handshake before hashing. I still have no way to see it but I should be more explicit in some of the text.

      Updating the language today and PAKE/OPAQUE auth will be implemented in the next few days.

      Genuinely appreciate you taking the time.

  • angest on 06/05/2026 - 07:02

    Features look great. But I’m not a fan of using Supabase for production backends. It feels more like an MVP tool to me.

  • DraceSabin on 07/05/2026 - 12:22

    Just pay 7 bucks for the compiledsanity spreadsheet

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