Head to head · Budgets · October 2026 research run
Hiatus vs YNAB
YNAB scores 65.1 (B) on agent readiness against Hiatus's 14.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do budgets.
Best subscription, bill and budgeting tools for AI agents · All 43 personal finance comparisons
Which one, for what
Hiatus F
Best for People who want subscriptions found and bills negotiated for them.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No public API or MCP server an outside agent can call.
YNAB B
Best for An agent helping one person with their own YNAB plan, reading spending and editing categories, transactions and targets.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 82 against 15
- Schema & documentation, 77 against 0
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 0
- Security & auth, 51 against 0
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 62 against 54
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 47
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Each access token is limited to 200 requests an hour in a rolling window, and 429 responses carry no Retry-After
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Hiatus | YNAB | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 15 | 82 | YNAB +67 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 0 | 77 | YNAB +77 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 0 | 71 | YNAB +71 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 0 | 51 | YNAB +51 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 30 | YNAB +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 54 | 62 | YNAB +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 47 | 75 | YNAB +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | F 14.3/100 | B 65.1/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Hiatus | YNAB |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Hiatus Inc. | YNAB |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.ynab.com/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Closed service under the Hiatus Terms of Use (Hiatus Inc., a Delaware corporation). | Proprietary service; SDKs Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-02-27 | 2026-04-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-02-27 | 2026-04-09 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | none | 240 stars, 9.6k npm/wk, 2.3k PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
Hiatus
Hiatus covers subscription tracking, cancellation and bill negotiation for people, with dated terms and iOS releases every few weeks. There is no public API or MCP server an outside agent can call today, no developer or partner page, and the terms forbid automated access. Premium prices appear only as App Store in-app purchases.
YNAB
A public OpenAPI 3.1.1 file, a dated changelog and an OAuth read-only scope let an agent read and edit a person's own budget. Each token is limited to 200 requests an hour with no Retry-After, personal access tokens never expire and have no read-only option, and access always starts with a person signing up in a browser.
Before you call either
Hiatus
- Don't plan to call Hiatus from another agent. There is no public API, so hand subscription and bill tasks to the person in the Hiatus app.
- Tell the person bill negotiation and cancellation need Hiatus Premium, bought in the app.
YNAB
- Use last-used in place of plan_id until you have listed plans with GET /v1/plans
- Store server_knowledge and send it back as last_knowledge_of_server to stay inside 200 requests an hour
- Read and write amounts in milliunits, or read the _currency fields added in v1.82.0
- Set import_id on transactions you create so a retried POST is matched instead of duplicated
- Request scope=read-only on OAuth when the task only reads the budget
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Hiatus or YNAB?
YNAB scores 65.1 (B) on agent readiness against Hiatus's 14.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Can an agent call Hiatus and YNAB without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Hiatus. YNAB has a hosted endpoint at https://api.ynab.com/v1.
Other comparisons with Hiatus or YNAB
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/hiatus-vs-ynab.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/hiatus.json·/api/v1/tools/ynab.json - From a terminal
anchor compare hiatus ynab(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "hiatus", "b": "ynab"}at/mcp, no key