Ballast splits your month in two, puts every bill against the money that has to cover it, and tells you the one number that matters.
Opens the real thing, empty and ready for your numbers. No account needed to try it. Create a free account when you want your ledger saved and synced across your devices. No bank login, nothing to install.
Safe to spend this month
Real arithmetic, no account needed. Change any number.
Every budget app dies the same death: you enter forty bills, then never open it again because keeping it current is a chore. Ballast is getting a prompt box wired directly into your ledger. Say it, and it is done. It is in testing now and arrives in the web app soon.
Attach a picture of a bill or a card statement and say “update my balance from this.” It reads the numbers and writes them in.
Dictate your question straight into the box. Useful when you are looking at a statement rather than a keyboard.
Simple edits answer in a second. Anything that needs real arithmetic gets the slower, more careful model automatically.
Point it at ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini and use the account you already pay for. Pick your provider, paste your key, done.
Paid on the 1st and 15th? Then a monthly budget is the wrong shape. Ballast gives each paycheck its own ring, its own bills and its own leftover.
Every bill is a slice. The gap left open is what you keep. One glance tells you if a half is stretched.
It spots when one check is carrying the month and names the exact bill to move, with the before and after.
Avalanche, snowball, or set each card yourself. See the month each one clears and what interest costs you.
Price a trip line by line. It works out the amount per paycheck and fills each line in as you save.
Every card as a bar, worst first. The one creeping over its limit is impossible to miss.
Scroll back through what you paid and what you owed. Your recurring bills carry forward automatically.
Plenty of apps do paycheck budgeting. Here is where Ballast is different, and where it plainly isn't.
| Ballast | Typical budget app | |
|---|---|---|
| Update by talking to it | Coming soon | No |
| Bills tied to a specific paycheck | Yes | Some |
| Per-card payoff dates | Yes | Some |
| Automatic bank sync | Not yet | Usually |
| Tracks individual transactions | No, by design | Yes |
| Needs your bank login | Never | Usually |
| Use your own AI assistant | Planned | No |
Ballast tracks the money you have already committed: rent, the car, the cards, the subscriptions. Not every coffee. That is the whole idea.
No, and there is nothing to connect. You enter your recurring bills once, then keep them current by telling the app what changed. Nothing asks for a bank login.
No. Ballast runs off money arriving, whatever it is: an allowance, benefits, a stipend, freelance work, a pension, a paycheck. If something lands and bills come out of it, this is built for you. What it does assume today is that money arrives roughly twice a month, because it splits the month into a 1st–15th half and a 16th–onward half. Weekly, fortnightly and once-a-month schedules are the next thing being built.
The prompt box is still in testing and is not in the web app yet. When it arrives, the plan is to let you pick the assistant you already use, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Yes. Open ballastus.com on your phone and add it to your home screen. It gets its own icon and opens full screen, like any other app.
iPhone: open the site in Safari, tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen.” Android: open it in Chrome, tap the ⋮ menu, then “Install app” or “Add to Home screen.”
Free during early access. There is no card to enter and nothing to cancel. If it becomes paid later, anyone already using it keeps access to what they have.
Your ledger is saved to your own Ballast account, so it follows you to any phone or laptop you sign in from. Each account only ever sees its own numbers. None of it is sold, and there is no advertising anywhere in it. You can sign in with Google, so there is no new password to remember.
No. It is arithmetic on numbers you enter, plus widely used budgeting sequences. Nobody here is a licensed financial advisor, and nothing in it accounts for your taxes or circumstances.
Early access is opening in small batches so it gets built around real feedback.
Try it nowNo card, no bank login, nothing sold. Your numbers stay yours.