Ask your budget
questions YNAB can't answer.
YNAB is great at tracking your money. But it can't compare spending year-over-year, generate custom reports, or catch up on months of uncategorized transactions. This MCP server connects your AI assistant directly to your YNAB data so you can.
❯ Compare my dining out spending: Jan–Mar 2025 vs. Jan–Mar 2026
❯ Break down last month into needs, wants, and savings
❯ I have 47 uncategorized transactions — categorize them based on my payee history
❯ Find subscriptions I'm paying for that I haven't used category budget on
❯ Generate a tax-ready summary of all deductible categories for 2025
Not a replacement for YNAB.
A power tool on top of it.
Clicking through YNAB to categorize 5 transactions is fast. But analyzing spending trends, catching up after a rough month, or building custom reports? That's where your AI assistant earns its keep.
Insights YNAB Can't Show You
Year-over-year spending comparisons, needs vs. wants breakdowns, seasonal patterns — ask complex questions that would require spreadsheet exports to answer.
Catch Up on Months of Transactions
Life happens. If you've fallen behind on categorizing, let AI bulk-process weeks or months of transactions using your existing categories and patterns.
Spot Bad Habits
Find overused "Other" categories, duplicate transactions, subscriptions you forgot about, or spending that crept up without you noticing.
Custom Reports
Weekly spending summaries, monthly budget reviews, tax-time category breakdowns — get reports YNAB doesn't offer, in the format you want.
Import From Anywhere
Paste bank statement text, scratch notes, or CSV data and let AI create properly categorized YNAB transactions from messy real-world input.
Smart Caching
Built-in 4-tier caching with delta sync keeps responses fast without hammering the YNAB API.
This doesn't replace manual budgeting
The hands-on, intentional process that makes YNAB work? Keep doing that. This is for the stuff that's tedious, time-consuming, or simply impossible in YNAB's UI.
Keep doing in YNAB
Assigning dollars to categories
Approving daily transactions
Reconciling accounts
Making intentional spending decisions
Use your AI for
Analyzing trends across months or years
Bulk-categorizing a backlog
Custom reports and breakdowns
Finding patterns you'd miss manually
Setup
Two steps. No server to host. No account to create.
Get your YNAB API key
Go to YNAB Developer Settings and create a new personal access token.
Your API key stays on your machine — it's never sent anywhere except directly to YNAB's API.
Configure your AI platform
{
"mcpServers": {
"ynab": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["mcp-ynab"],
"env": {
"YNAB_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
}
}
}
}Config location — macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json · Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Your data stays yours
This MCP server runs locally on your machine. Your YNAB API key and budget data are never sent to any third party — only directly to YNAB's official API. The source code is fully open.