A finance app with no advertising raises a fair question: who is paying, and what do they get. The answer is that the people who use it do, through an optional Pro subscription. This page says exactly how, and what was ruled out.
In short
NetWorth+ is paid for by the people who use it. The core tracking stays free; Pro is an optional subscription whose current price is shown in the app. The app has been in active development for over a year and runs on paid infrastructure: Google Cloud and Firebase, email delivery, store fees, crash monitoring and support all cost money every month. Two funding routes were ruled out before launch and are not on the table: advertising, and the sale or brokering of user data. There are no advertising SDKs in the app at all, which is a structural fact rather than a policy that could be quietly reversed in an update. The honest summary for anyone weighing this app for the long term is that NetWorth+ intends to be paid for by the people who use it, because every alternative funding route for a personal finance app involves selling something about you to somebody else.
Price today
Free tier, with optional Pro
Intended model
Paid tier later, price not set
Advertising
Ruled out before launch
In development
More than a year
The real numbers behind free
Free to you is not free to operate. These are the standing monthly costs behind a personal finance app, and naming them is the point.
Google Cloud and Firebase for storage, authentication, sync and exchange rate data. This scales with the number of people using the app, so growth increases the bill rather than reducing it.
Play Store fees, developer account costs, and the recurring work of meeting Google's data safety, permissions and financial app policies, which change and have to be answered each time.
Transactional email delivery, the support address, and the hours spent answering it. Support is answered by the people who build the app, which is better for you and is not cheaper.
More than a year of building before and through release, plus ongoing fixes, Android version compatibility and new features. This is the largest cost by a distance and it is currently unpaid.
The options
There is a finite list. Being explicit about which lines we will and will not use is more informative than any promise about respecting your privacy.
| Funding route | Used by NetWorth+? | The reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising | No, ruled out before launch | Ad targeting inside a finance app means the advertiser learns something about your money. There are no advertising SDKs in the build at all, so this is structural rather than a stated intention. |
| Selling or brokering user data | No, ruled out before launch | The permanent commitment. Your financial records are not a product and are not shared with data brokers, analytics resellers or anyone else. |
| Bank aggregation deals and the data that comes with them | Not possible here | NetWorth+ has no bank connection and no aggregator, so there is no transaction feed to monetise even if we wanted to. The architecture forecloses this one. |
| Affiliate commission on financial products | Not used | Recommending a credit card or a loan for a fee puts the app's interest against yours at exactly the moment it matters. Not in use today, and it would be labelled clearly if that ever changed. |
| Paid tier or subscription | Yes, in use | In use. Users pay for the app, so the app answers to users. The core tracking stays free and Pro is an optional addition, priced in the app. |
| Free forever with no model at all | No, and treat that claim carefully anywhere | An app with real running costs and no revenue plan is either subsidised by something it has not told you about, or it is going to stop. Neither is a good outcome for your financial history. |
The current stage
The reason is ordinary and worth stating without dressing it up.
NetWorth+ needs users more than it needs revenue at this point. A personal finance app is only as good as the range of real situations it has been tested against: currencies, bank SMS formats, salary patterns, loan structures and the specific mess of a life split across two countries. That feedback is worth more right now than early subscription income, and charging from day one would have bought far less of it.
So the core tracking stays free and Pro pays the running costs. Saying which parts are paid for by whom is more useful to you than a free forever banner that quietly disappears in a future release.
There is a motive underneath that which is worth stating plainly. NetWorth+ was built on the conviction that everyone should know their net worth, and a number that only reaches people who can afford a subscription is not really closing that gap. Reach matters more than revenue at this stage because the point of the app is the habit it creates, and charging for entry now would buy a smaller, wealthier and much less interesting set of users to learn from.
The last point is the one that matters most, because it means a pricing decision you dislike is never a trap. If NetWorth+ ever charges for something you are not willing to pay for, your records are already yours in a file on your own device, and you can take them elsewhere. That is covered on the data ownership page.
Whatever the eventual price, two things were settled before launch and are not commercial decisions to be revisited when money is tight: NetWorth+ does not show advertising, and NetWorth+ does not sell, rent or broker your financial data. The absence of any advertising SDK in the app is the version of this promise you can check rather than take on trust.
Questions
Install it, use it properly, and hold this page against us when the pricing conversation eventually arrives.
Android and iPhone. No bank login. No ads. Message reading is optional and off until you switch it on.