9 Best Apps for Chores and Allowance (Easy Tracking & Payment)

Find the right app for tracking chores and allowance for your family, whether you pay for chores or not.

Maybe you’ve tried a chore chart, but keeping on top of it just didn’t work for you.

Or, maybe you haven’t even tackled this area of your life – allowance, chores, etc. – and you know that you need allowance apps for kids right from the start.

The good news is that there are tons of great apps for tracking chores and allowances for kids.

The bad news? Is the same thing.

How are you supposed to choose the best one for your family?

I’m going to help you sift through the market for allowance apps for kids, plus the best app for tracking chores and allowance for YOUR household (not to mention, tracking how your child uses their money).

Psst: don’t let the word “allowance” trip you up; the app choices below will be based on whether you pay chore commissions, need to organize chore tasks without any pay, or any other way you choose to get money into your child's hands.

But first stop? You've got a few decisions to make before you choose an app.

The One Step to Do BEFORE You Choose an App for Tracking Chores and Allowance

Before you can choose an allowance or chore app, you’ve got to know how you want things to look.

That's because a chore or allowance tracking app is not your actual Kid Money System. It's just a way to organize and track everything.

Key decisions about your Kid Money System to make first:

• Your Money Goals for Your Child: Choose a few money goals for your child. What do you want your child to learn about money?
• Your System Foundation: Choose your system foundation (the dole method, learning-based earnings, allowance, chore commissions, consultant-based earnings).
• Your Payday Details: How will you pay your child (cash, prepaid gift cards, an allowance app, etc.)? How often will you pay your child, and on what day of the week?
• Clear Money Responsibilities to Pass Onto Your Child: Now that your child will be getting consistent money, what money responsibilities are you going to hand over to them?

Don’t worry – I won’t leave you hanging. Here's how to give your child an allowance.

How you set up your Kid Money System will determine which features you need in an allowance and chore-tracking app.

Pay Attention to These When Deciding on an Allowance App

• Recommended age
• Whether or not the app comes with a prepaid debit card
• Whether or not the app makes you pay for chores, give rewards for chores, or just keep track of chores without incentives
• Whether or not the app can link to your checking account for easy transfers, or if it's a money tracking app only
• If your child can set savings goals and/or do other money managing tasks to further their money education

Best Allowance Apps with a Prepaid Debit Card

Allowance and chore apps that are tied to a prepaid debit card your kid, tween, or teen can use to spend their newly earned money can benefit your home in several ways.

First of all, it eliminates the need to stop by the ATM for each allowance payday cycle. Secondly, it teaches kids about how to manage plastic, and that that plastic is tied to a money source – their own “income”.  

This is also great for kids who want to make their own online purchases (without you having to do it for them), and if you don’t want your child to carry around cash for security purposes (like if they’re going on an overnight school trip).

Here are my favorites below.

1. Allowance App Name: FamZoo

Allowance Functionality: You can use this app to automatically pay out a recurring allowance, either as a fixed-dollar amount; there’s also a calculator that calculates the amount by age of your child. Also, you have the ability to pay for chores, set them as recurring, give due dates, and even penalize. If you would like to penalize for chores you have to redo by making your child pay YOU for them (I’ve heard of parents doing this), then you can use this feature, too.

Is FamZoo safe? FamZoo explains, “We always have users push funds onto a FamZoo card, and never know the user's main bank checking account info.” This way, your personal bank information is not open to security breaches within their app, nor can your child “accidentally” drain your checking account.

What Makes this App Different: This award-winning, family finance app packs quite the punch. In fact, it’s called a Virtual Family Bank, and I can see why. For example, kids can also pay their parents with this app, which is helpful for family-shared bills, money responsibilities you've given them to pay for, or if they owe you interest from a loan on their next allowance payday cycle. The card also offers detailed decline information for transactions your child tries to make. Common decline reasons include insufficient funds on the card, Incorrect PIN entered, PIN security block in force (after 3 incorrect PIN entries), billing address mismatch, locked card, blocked merchant (sometimes our card processor deems a merchant as sketchy and blocks transactions there). Finally, you can do informal loans to your kids through this app, and charge them interest with everything calculated and tracked for all eyes to see. That's a good money lesson, in itself!

Pro Tip: The feature of kids being able to pay parents will be useful when you hand over money responsibilities to your child, such as having them pay part or all of their data plan each month.

Available On: iOS, Google Play, and Desktop

Psst: Ever wondered what's the difference between Greenlight and FamZoo? Here's my review on Greenlight vs. FamZoo.

2. Allowance App Name: Greenlight – Famzoo Alternatives

Allowance Functionality: Parents can set up one-time and recurring chores that are tied to payment or not. Parents can choose a standard, flat-rate allowance or connect allowance to chores. Greenlight will calculate the payout. When it's time to pay, parents can choose All or Nothing, or Partial Payments, depending on chore completion.

You can search the app for specific stores and add money to just that store, OR, you can add money and the money can be spent anywhere using “Spend Anywhere”. You and your child both receive real-time notifications when a purchase has been made.

You also have control to turn their card off whenever you’d like.

Pro Tip: Your child can request money to be added to their card. This would be a great tool to use for parents who want their kids to be on top of their allowance paydays. You can have your child keep track of what they’re owed from chore commissions or for allowance pay, or even for extra projects around the house, and then they can be in charge of requesting that money on the payday. If they don’t request it? Wait it out and put the onus on them – this is a good lesson to teach your kids so that they stay on top of their money in life.

What Makes this Different: There's a 1% cash back earned on purchases (Greenlight Max plan only), and a 2% savings reward paid for by the app with the Max subscription (1% savings reward paid to all account types). Kids can text/send a photo from right within the app if they’d like to buy something (and you’re not around). They can also make requests for specific amounts of moneys, and you can either accept or decline the request. There are also store-level controls parents can place, which means you can choose what can be spent at specific stores. That gives you a lot of control over purchases!

Available on: iOS & Google Play

Psst: you also might want to check out my article on Greenlight vs. Acorns Early app.

3. Allowance App Name: Acorns Early (formerly gohenry)

Allowance Functionality: You can send a one-time transfer, or set an allowance schedule – once a week, twice a month – and let it pay out automatically. You can also set up chores with a dollar amount attached. Your kid does the chore, you look at the work and tick it off, and the app adds up what they earned and pays it on your schedule.

What Makes This Different: Plenty of these cards let kids buy real stocks – Greenlight and BusyKid both do. What Acorns Early does that the others don't is put money in. Deposit into your kid's custodial account and Acorns matches 1% of what you add, up to $70 a year. It's a UGMA/UTMA, so unlike a 529 it isn't locked to college – a first car, a gap year, a deposit on an apartment all count. One catch: the investing account and the match both need Acorns Gold at $12/month. The $8 Lite plan doesn't include either.

Psst: wondering how this stacks up against Greenlight? Here's my full breakdown of Greenlight vs. Acorns Early.

4. Allowance App Name: gohenry (available in the UK only)

Allowance Functionality: You can make either a one-time allowance payment or set up automatic weekly transfers. You can also set up tasks/chores for kids to complete for money. Kids can track their chore progress, how much they've earned, and how much money they'll get once all chores/tasks on their list are checked off. You have the option of only allowing parents to check off chores as completed, for more oversight.

5. Allowance App Name: BusyKid

Allowance Functionality: You can use the BusyKid prepaid debit card + app with either an allowance or a chore-based allowance system. Parents can assign chores via the app with an attached monetary amount. Once the chore is completed, the amount earned will be accumulated until Friday, which acts as payday. Since actual money is moved from your bank account to your child through the app, parents must approve the Payday text message sent through the app each Thursday in order for the child to get paid on Friday.

The activity stream shows all money transactions or completed chores (if the kid/teen is doing them).

There are save, share, and spend areas, and these are actually controlled by the parent. However, the child can click the “move money” button to move money between categories. If you don't want your child to be able to do this, then you can enable the feature “Money Lock”.

Children can then choose what to do with their “spend” money from three options:

• Cash Out
• Stock
• BusyKid Visa® Prepaid Spend Card (parents can fund directly)

Kids can also choose to donate a portion of their allowance pay to one of over 60 charities that they choose from the app.

All money transactions must be approved by parents on the Activity/Registry tab, and this is also where parents can approve or deny chore completions.

What Makes It Different: BusyKid actually recommends chores TO you, depending on your child’s age. As your child ages, the chore options change (you can still add in your own, as well).

Available On: iOS & Google Play

Psst: you might want to check out my review on BusyKid vs. Greenlight app.

6. Allowance App Name: Homey

Allowance Functionality: You can take pictures of the messes in your home and assign the work with a visual to individual family members. Chores are divided into two categories: responsibilities ($0 earned, but can be required to unlock weekly allowance) and jobs (have a monetary value, but you can also set them to $0). Detailed chore settings include due dates, recurrence vs. one-time, availability, photo completions, completion confirmation requirement, and difficulty.

On the free forever tier, you can use the app as a money tracker for up to 3 accounts. If it's used this way, parents can choose the “cash” pay option instead of the bank option (since you cannot connect any bank accounts).

Pro Tip: In addition to weekly allowance, responsibilities can also be connected to the daily goal. This allows parents to require a percentage of daily responsibilities to be completed for the daily goal to unlock. The daily goal is usually screen time or similar non-monetary rewards.

What Makes it Different: You can actually take pictures of messes in your home, or areas in your home where attention needs to be paid, then send those pictures + an assigned task to individual family members. This is a two-way feature; kids can take a photo to mark the chore as done. Additionally, you can also toggle on “parental approval”, which will require parents to approve a chore completion before it counts.

Available On: iOS, Google Play (Mobile-only)

Best App for Tracking Chores (Chores for Money App)

If you’re giving chore commissions (i.e., paying for chores), then you might want to check out one of these chores for money apps below, which are set up to pay and otherwise reward your kids for chores.

Psst: here are 100 chores to do around the house for money, and teenage chore chart ideas.

1. Chore Tracker App Name: Bankaroo

Geared For: Children ages 4 years and up.

How It Works: Created by an 11-year-old kid named Dani, Bankaroo allows you to set up deposits into an account your child can track. You can also set up goals and badges for your children to earn based on chores around the house for extra cash. Children are able to see how money goes in and out in an easy-to-understand way while holding them accountable for their spending.

With the pro version, you can transfer money between sibling accounts and checking and savings accounts.

Something nice about this one? You don’t need a smartphone to use it. It has both a web interface and a smartphone app to go with it, and you can use both, or either.

What Makes It Different: Bankaroo allows you to match funds to incentivize your child to save even more. It also allows you to make deductions to mimic real world scenarios.

Available On: iOS, Google Play, Amazon

Price: Free, with a one-time $4.99 fee for the pro version.

2. Chore Tracking App Name: Rooster Money (Only for UK customers)

Geared For: Ages 4-14

How It Works: Rooster Money keeps a running bank balance of money that children earn via chores, gifts, or a weekly allowance allotment. With an easy-to-read ledger, children can easily know if they have money saved up for what they want at the store, which relieves the pressure off of mom and dad. This also gives children control over their own spending power.

Core features of tracking allowance, goals, and savings are available with the free version. Parents can sign up, create accounts for their children, and set a regular allowance using this. Children can also log into their accounts to view their funds and move them between the different pots.

You should note that this app does not integrate with banks – it's a money tracker system, letting parents and children keep track of the pocket money they've earned and saved.

When you upgrade to the paid plan, you get additional features:

• Chore tracking
• Ability to set interest rates (so that you can give kids a bigger incentive than current bank interest rates to save their money)
• Ability for kids to set regular “outgoings” (such as a bill for a magazine subscription)
• Ability to add  unlimited guardians

What Makes It Different: Something that makes this app stand out is, it's international! There are 150 currencies you get to choose from in the app, and they've got users from lots of international countries. However, at the moment, the app is only available in English.

Available On: iOS, Google Play, Amazon

Price: Lite version is free, Pro is $2.99 a month.

Best Chore Apps for Family – Not Necessarily Tied to Allowance or Chore Commissions

Perhaps you’re not looking for an allowance app, per se, but an app that will both manage and track all of your household chores (with OR without paying for those chores).

Let me give you some really great options for the best chore apps for your family.

Psst: you probably want to check out my article on age-appropriate chores for kids that I put together after surveying 179 Mamas about the chores they’re giving their kids. Use the lists to fill up your chore slots for each family member!

Allowance App Name: Our Home

Geared For: Families with children ages 8 and up due to smartphone capability.

How it Works: Parents can assign recurring chores (meaning you don’t have to continually write down the same chores – they automatically renew after a certain period of time that you set), reminders, and one-time tasks for children to complete, with assigned points. Points can be collected towards a goal that parents decide, such as different amounts of money or screen time.

You can decide on the rewards (money, a trip, lunch with Mom, etc.), and you actually put that into the app so that kids can see what they’re working for, and how much each reward will cost in points. Goals are usually the rewards, but they can also be expressed as a weekly or monthly points target.

You can use OurHome to pay kids for chores, but the app does not currently integrate with any banks or do any financial payments. You just enter how many points are required for a set amount of pocket money and then the kids only get the pocket money when they've earned that many points. Once the pocket money has been claimed by the kid then the parent needs to give them that money separately.

You can also use this app as a communication tool for everyone in the family – you can set up events that the whole family needs to know about, and at any time, they can access their calendar on their phones and know who is going where, when.

What Makes It Different: With this app you can apply late penalties and fees if tasks are not completed within a set time frame (such as losing 25% of earned points for each day the task is late). You can also set approval needed to tasks that require a little more guidance before points are earned. It also serves as a social network hub with direct and group message capability. You can use this as your grocery store list as well, and your past items are saved so making new lists can be even easier.

Available On: iOS, Google Play & Webapp (Desktop)

Price: Free

I hope I've given you helpful info to figure out which allowance tracking app is best for you. And if you want to track your kid's money but not use an app? I've got some alternatives in this how can I keep track of my kid's money article.