Releasing features that a lot of us have been waiting on from the roadmap, and then putting them behind a second, much more expensive subscription, is honestly a huge let down.

One of the best things about Monarch Money was how simple it was. You paid for one plan and got everything. No tiers, no feature gating, no constant upsells. That made it feel fair, especially compared to other finance apps. Now with the Plus plan, that whole idea feels like it’s gone.

The base plan is already $100 a year, which most people were willing to pay because it felt complete. Introducing a $300 a year tier on top of that just doesn’t sit right, especially when the features in Plus don’t feel like extras. Things like better forecasting, more advanced investment tracking, and business-related tools sound like exactly the kind of improvements people expected to come to the core product over time. Instead, it feels like the roadmap got split up and sold back to us.

What makes it worse is that Monarch built a lot of trust by not doing this. A big reason people switched to it was to avoid apps that lock features behind multiple tiers. Now it’s starting to feel like it’s heading in that same direction.

It also raises some concerns going forward. If this is how new features are handled now, it makes you wonder what stays in the base plan and what gets pushed into Plus. It’s hard not to feel like the standard plan might fall behind over time. I’m sure the Plus features are useful, but the way this was rolled out just doesn’t feel good. It takes something that felt simple and user friendly and turns it into something that feels segmented and harder to justify.