About Pocket Runway
Budgeting apps assume you get paid the same amount on the same day every month. Most people don't.
Pocket Runway exists because regular budgeting tools break the moment your income stops being regular. If you're hourly, freelance, gig, commission, or seasonal, you already know the problem: the apps want one tidy monthly number, and your life doesn't hand you one. So the budget falls apart halfway through the cycle, and you're left guessing whether you can actually afford the thing in front of you.
This was built to answer one question, every day, without a spreadsheet: how much is safe to spend right now?
What Pocket Runway actually solves
"How much can I spend today without coming up short before payday?"
This is the whole point. Pocket Runway takes what's left after your reserved bills and savings, divides it by the days until your next paycheck, and gives you a single daily number. Stay under it and your plan stays on track. That number updates on its own as you log spending and as payday gets closer — so instead of mentally tracking your balance against a wall of due dates, you just look at one figure.
"Why does my budget fall apart in the middle of the month?"
Because calendar-month budgets and real life don't line up. Rent hits, a subscription renews, pay lands on a Thursday that isn't the 1st — and a monthly plan can't see any of that timing. Pocket Runway is built around your pay period, not the calendar. It plans from one paycheck to the next, which is how the money actually arrives and leaves.
"My income is different every paycheck — how do I plan for that?"
You tell it how much and how often you're paid — weekly, biweekly, monthly, or irregular — and the plan adjusts to each paycheck instead of pretending they're all identical. A big invoice extends your runway; a quiet stretch tightens the daily number automatically. You're always budgeting against what you actually have, not an average that lies to you in both directions.
"How do I make sure rent and bills are covered when money comes in unevenly?"
Set up your recurring bills and transfers once, and Pocket Runway reserves that money from your paycheck before it ever shows up in your spendable number. Rent, subscriptions, savings transfers — they're carved out first, so the "safe to spend" figure already accounts for the money that's spoken for. Sinking-fund automation (on the Plus plan) extends this to irregular costs like annual renewals or quarterly bills.
"I'm self-employed — how do I avoid getting wrecked at tax time?"
Nobody withholds taxes for you, so a surprise bill every quarter is the default unless you plan for it. Pocket Runway's self-employed tax reserve (on the Plus plan) sets aside a percentage of each payment into a fund you don't touch, sitting right alongside the rest of your budget — so the money for estimated taxes is already there when it's due.
"Do I have to connect my bank account?"
No. You can run Pocket Runway entirely on manual accounts and logging, for free, with no bank login at all. You can also import a CSV from your bank in seconds; bank linking through Plaid and auto-import are coming to the Plus plan. Either way: no ads, and your financial data is never sold. That's a line we don't cross.
What we believe
- Pay-period native. Real budgeting follows your paychecks, not the calendar.
- Privacy first. No ads, no data selling, ever. Bank connection is optional, not required.
- Variable income ready. Built specifically for gig, hourly, freelance, and commission workers — not retrofitted from a tool meant for salaries.
- Honest pricing. The daily number that makes this useful is free, forever. Plus is $4/month for the automation — analytics, the what-if simulator, sinking funds, and the tax reserve, with bank sync coming soon — with a 34-day free trial and cancel-anytime billing. No upsell maze.
Why we built Pocket Runway
Pocket Runway started with a simple frustration: every budgeting tool assumed a steady paycheck, and none of them worked for the people who don't get one. So we built the one we wanted — pay-period native, privacy-first, and focused on a single daily question: what's safe to spend today? We keep things lean on purpose, ship constantly, and let real user feedback drive what comes next. If your income varies, this was built for you.
Guides for your pay schedule
However you're paid, there's a guide for it: biweekly and semi-monthly pay, irregular income, gig, 1099, and freelance income, hourly and shift work pay, and commission-based income.
Weighing your options? See Pocket Runway vs. YNAB and Pocket Runway vs. spreadsheet budgeting, or browse the full Support & FAQ.