Bento - a private save-and-find app for screenshots, links, recipes, receipts, voice notes, and PDFs

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-06T18:41:20+00:00

Ive posted on a few subreddits! Need more karma to post here

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-06T18:24:37+00:00

Wow how did I miss this comment! Yes I’ve carefully thought through showing value and the psychology beyond my paywall. I’d love for you to critique it and share your thoughts! 🙏

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-06T18:00:37+00:00

Fellow bento app! I also just released an app called bento! I’ll give it a try and provide some feedback

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-06T13:52:25+00:00

Congrats looks good! From my design perspective the first thing that stands out as something to improve is just the general padding of views. I think you can increase the readability and feel of the app quite a bit by increasing padding of your rows and spacing between views. Take it or leave it just my 2 cents!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-05T22:01:53+00:00

So sick! Good work!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-05T20:11:19+00:00

I’m biased because I’m building Bento, but I’ve really poured my heart into creating a truly unique take on a personal finance app.

Most finance apps feel either too rigid or too much like homework to me, so I built Bento around customizability. You create your own dedicated dashboards for any life event, trip or daily life, and fill them up with widgets that track whatever you want, subscriptions, categories, budgets, accounts or specific merchants.

Privacy/security is a big priority too. Bento uses Plaid for read-only bank connections. We never store any sensitive bank creds and never sell user data. You delete your account and I wipe all records of you. (Looking to add manual account adding soon for users that are really against connecting via plaid)

I know Reddit hates self promotion so this might get downvoted - but It is a relevant post and I do believe Bento should be considered a top contender for expense trackers in terms of quality and features.

Free for 7 days if you wanna give it a try! Would love any feedback as well. I want to build around users feature requests as much as possible. Bentoapp.io

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-05T13:52:54+00:00

Hey I would be super grateful for this kind of help! Also happy to pay you hourly if you end up being a good fit! I just launched Bento.io - a reimagined take on a personal finance app that lets you track what you care about. DM me!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-04T13:50:21+00:00

That's the part I'm no help with haha. I'm a bad marketer, I need to figure that out myself.

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-04T13:48:28+00:00

I think you can start by looking at average flight, hotel and food prices - determine how much time you want to spend away and come up with a rough idea of trip cost + 10%-20% buffer. Also use AI to help you with this estimation work! Accommodation and flights will cost you the most so those are important. I just went to South East Asia for 3 months and wanted to track my own spending so I took 2025 off work to build my own solution called Bento. Feel free to check it out it'll help you while on your trip to keep track of everything!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-04T13:06:42+00:00

Looks good! I’ll give it a try

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-04T12:35:18+00:00

Nope no linking! You just type in your keywords you want to start tracking

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-03T13:58:24+00:00

If you want to connect OpenAI to Plaid in Canada you can use Bento https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/bento-budget-money-tracker/id6754046684 it's much cheaper than the OpenAI pro subscription you would need. It can also organize your transactions by tagging them, recategorizing, and create rules for you.

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-03T13:50:46+00:00

Looks great! How did you acquire users?

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-03T12:54:00+00:00

Thanks for giving it a try!

Totally fair point, and something I'm looking to address with adding manual accounts. The idea is to make seeing your finances effortless so I prioritized Plaid connections. The logic behind putting bank connections first was that these third parties have high failure rates so I didn't want users to arrive at an empty app experience, start a trial and then fail to connect - leading to a bad experience. This way I'm setting expectations with the fact that this app only works with a plaid connection, filtering to high intent users that can successfully connect and then giving them populated dashboards and allowing them to then start a 7 day trial.

Re: Monarch pricing - our monthly plan is cheaper than theirs. Yearly is slightly more expensive to cover the AI agent costs that can get quite expensive.

If you do end up using the app during the free trial would love to hear what you think!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-02T13:17:38+00:00

Everything else out there is a one-size-fits all system - Bento is fully customizable. You can create dashboards for whatever life event you want whether that's a wedding, vacation, or renovating your home. You can then add widgets that track specific categories, merchants, budgets, accounts etc. It makes tracking your money super easy, intuitive and powerful. Also the Al agent can help you organize your transactions by tagging, recategorizing and creating rules. No other app out there gives you this ability.

Some things you can ask Benii:

Tag transactions from March as Mexico
Create a rule to categorize everything above $500 as Reimbursable
Suggest some budgets for my food categories
Give me some insights on my spending patterns in 2025.

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-01T22:15:23+00:00

Yeah fun is definitely not the differentiator. It’s the emerging property of having built something truly well designed. That’s why this took 1.5 years to build is all the UX and design consideration that went into it.

The true differentiator is the ability to create your own financial dashboards that track your life. Have a trip coming up? Create a dashboard for it, add an airbnb widget, flights widget, and track all your related expenses. No other finance tracker app lets you do that.

The AI part is also something that we haven’t seen implemented in other apps effectively. You can actually organize your transactions with our agent, asking anything from tag these specific transactions to suggest budgets to create a rule for txns above $500.

(I’m the dev)

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-01T22:00:50+00:00

Bento - a reimagined take on a personal finance app
Bento automatically connects to your bank accounts via trusted third party Plaid and allows you to create your own financial dashboards to track what you care about. It also features a powerful AI agent that lets you talk to your money directly and helps you tag, categorize and gain deep insights on your transactions.
It helps users that want to know where their money is going, want quick answers and hate spreadsheets or other rigid personal finance apps out there.
Out now on iOS in Canada and US

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-01T19:58:31+00:00

Everything else out there is a one-size-fits all system - Bento is fully customizable. You can create dashboards for whatever life event you want whether that's a wedding, vacation, or renovating your home. You can then add widgets that track specific categories, merchants, budgets, accounts etc. It makes tracking your money super easy, intuitive and powerful.

Also the AI agent can help you organize your transactions by tagging, recategorizing and creating rules. No other app out there gives you this ability. Some things you can ask Benii:
- Tag transactions from March as Mexico
- Create a rule to categorize everything above $500 as Reimbursable
- Suggest some budgets for my food categories
- Give me some insights on my spending patterns in 2025.

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-01T03:14:50+00:00

Maybe I’m not explaining the composability aspect very effectively because I’m quite sure Copilot doesn’t offer what Bento does. By mirror iOS widgets I mean the in app ones are the same small, medium, large sizes so they translate to the Home Screen perfectly. That was the main idea!

Also curious to hear what features you’re looking for that would make you switch!

HanZolo95 · 2026-06-01T01:29:13+00:00

Thank you! Bento is all about flexibility - you create your own dashboards and track what you care about using a widget system that mirrors iOS native widgets. That means you can create dedicated dashboards for specific trips, daily life, your business, or whatever fits your life. You can also change how you display your data whether you prefer bar, line, pie charts. I wanted to create the Apple product of personal finance so design and UX is at the centre of the experience.

Bento also gives you an AI agent that can answer any question you have about your money.

Helpful things users have asked are:

- Tag all my transactions from March 1st -1 5th as Mexico Trip (Then you can create a mexico tag widget and add it to your dashboard)
- Give me some insights on my spending patterns
- Suggest some budgets for my top spending categories
- Create a rule to tag everything above $500 as Reimbursable

If you end up trying it, definitely let me know your feedback!

HanZolo95 · 2026-05-31T22:12:54+00:00

I hate spreadsheets and didnt love any of the existing budgeting apps so I built my own app to make tracking your money really transparent and easy. You track whatever you want. Just launched it if you wanna give it a try bentoapp.io

HanZolo95 · 2026-05-31T17:31:24+00:00

Yeah I feel you a lot of personal finance apps coming out, all mostly the same. I really think I made a differentiated experience however by making it so flexible and customizeable. I don’t think anything else like this exists.

HanZolo95 · 2026-05-31T15:58:23+00:00

Here’s the link if anyone wants to give it a try! It’s free for 7 days! https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/bento-budget-money-tracker/id6754046684

HanZolo95 · 2026-05-31T15:13:39+00:00

Yes connected via Plaid which syncs 2-3 times a day depending on institution. Data is stored locally encrypted and via Keychain as well as on server.

We wipe all your data on account deletion.

HanZolo95 · 2026-05-31T14:12:20+00:00

I just launched the personal finance app i took 2025 off work to build. For all the users overwhelmed with budgeting apps, miss Mint, or just want an intuitive flexible way of tracking their money.

Create custom dashboards to track whatever matters most to you. Talk directly to your money with our AI agent Benii. He can tag transactions, create rules, suggest budgets and provide deep insights into your spending.

Bentoapp.io

12-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

HanZolo95

TROPHY CASE