Chickadee Bandit

Seven chore and allowance apps for kids, by what each one is for

Greenlight, BusyKid, Acorns Early, Step, Joon, S'moresUp and ours, compared by price and by whether your child gets a real card or a ledger.

Compare › Chore and allowance apps for kids

Quick answer

For a real debit card with the most around it: Greenlight. For the cheapest real card with a weekly payday: BusyKid. For lessons with the card: Acorns Early. For a teenager building credit: Step, which is free. For motivating a younger child without money: Joon. For chore rotation and points without a card: S'moresUp. For chores, allowance and rewards kept as a ledger beside the rest of the household: ours.

"Allowance app" covers two different products. One is a bank card for a child: real money, loaded by a parent, spent at a shop, with a chore chart attached. The other is a ledger: the app counts what a child has earned and what they are saving toward, and the money itself stays in the parent's account or a jar on the shelf. Which one you want depends mostly on your child's age and on whether they need to pay for things themselves.

This list runs from real money to none. We make one of the seven and it is marked, and it is the ledger kind. Prices are from each product's own site, checked in October 2026; where a product publishes no price on its site we quote its App Store listing and say so.

The list

  1. Greenlight

    Best for: A family that wants a real debit card with chores, investing and safety features in one subscription

    The broadest product here. Every plan has a debit card per child, chores, paid jobs, allowance and direct deposit, with spending limits and notifications for the parent. Savings earn a reward from Greenlight that rises with the plan, from 2% on Core to 6% on Family Shield. Investing for kids starts on Max. Infinity adds family location sharing, SOS alerts and crash detection, and driving reports, and Family Shield adds identity and fraud protection. Against it: what you get climbs with the price, so the plan that matches the advertising is rarely the $5.99 one.

    Cost: Core $5.99/mo, Max $10.98/mo, Infinity $15.98/mo, Family Shield $19.98/mo. Each covers debit cards for up to five kids. Its plans page shows no free plan and no annual price; the first monthly fee is refunded if you close the account before the first billing date.

  2. BusyKid

    Best for: The lowest-priced real card for several kids, with a weekly payday

    Built around the chore chart. Parents set the chores, kids complete them, and the allowance is paid every Friday once a parent approves it, split between saving, sharing and spending in the proportions you set. The spending share goes onto a prepaid Visa card. Kids can give to charity from the sharing share and buy stocks, and a parent can match a percentage of what a child saves. Against it: you pay for the year up front, adding money from a card costs a fee, and savings earn no interest.

    Cost: $4/mo, billed annually, with up to five prepaid cards. Its pricing page lists no monthly option. Its FAQ lists further fees, including 2.9% plus $0.30 to add money from a credit or debit card, and says annual subscriptions are not refunded.

  3. Acorns Early

    Best for: A family that wants lessons with the card, or already uses Acorns

    The US product that was GoHenry. A debit card for ages 6 to 18, an automatic allowance, tasks with an amount you set and tick off when done, savings goals with a target date, spending notifications, and more than a hundred short lessons called Money Missions. Investing for a child comes only with Acorns Gold, which is an adult investing subscription with this included. Against it: at $8 for four cards it costs more than Greenlight Core or BusyKid for fewer kids, unless Gold is something you wanted anyway.

    Cost: Acorns Early Lite is $8/mo with up to four debit cards. It is also included in Acorns Gold at $12/mo. Its page shows no annual price.

  4. Step

    Best for: A teenager who needs a spending account and a credit history, not a chore chart

    A free account and a secured Visa card, opened by a teenager with an adult as sponsor. The sponsor can see activity, add money, freeze the card and set a recurring payment for an allowance. Payment history on the card is reported to the credit bureaus once the teen turns 18, which is the reason to choose it. Against it: there is no chore list, no approval step and no savings goals for a younger child. It is a first bank account, and it is on this list because families searching for an allowance card find it.

    Cost: No monthly fee. Its FAQ says there are no monthly, overdraft, minimum or account management fees.

  5. Joon

    Best for: A child of 6 to 12 who needs motivation more than money

    A game, and deliberately not a money app: its own site says it does not support allowance tracking at all. A parent sets tasks as quests, the child completes them to care for a virtual pet, and the parent approves and sets the rewards. It is built for children with ADHD, ODD or autism and for any child who is struggling with routines, and it runs on iPhone, Android, Fire tablets and Chromebooks. Against it: nothing here teaches saving or spending, and the subscription costs more than the entry plan of any card on this list.

    Cost: A free version with no time limit. Premium is $12.99/mo, or an annual plan from $89.99, after a seven-day trial.

  6. S'moresUp

    Best for: A larger family that wants chores assigned and rotated automatically, with points and no card

    The most machinery for the chores themselves: automatic assignment and rotation, detailed schedules, reminders, penalties, and rewards a parent approves, all paid in a points currency. An allowance tracker and a family calendar come with it. No real money moves. Against it: its App Store listing shows its latest iPhone release in October 2025, and what stays free after the first 45 days is not stated there.

    Cost: Its site publishes no price. Its App Store listing shows Premium at $7.99 monthly or $79.99 yearly, and a free version with the premium features for 45 days or 450 completed chores, whichever comes first.

  7. Chickadee Bandit

    That's us

    Best for: A family that wants chores, allowance and rewards kept as a ledger, with the money staying where it already is

    Three apps in a household library that work together. Chores gives each kid a list for the week, a tap to mark one done and a running total, with the dollar value of a point set by the parent. Piggy Bank holds a money balance and a screen-time balance per child, with savings goals, and receives the week's allowance from Chores automatically. Rewards turns chore points into things a parent defines, such as a movie choice or extra game time, and a parent approves each request. All of it is a record: no card, no bank account, no investing and no interest. A parent settles up in cash or by transfer, and the app keeps the count. If your child needs to pay for something at a shop or online, this is the wrong entry, and a card above is the right one.

    Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for the whole household, up to 10 members, with every app in the library. 30-day trial, no card, no ads.

Prices and features are from each product's own site as of October 2026; where a product has a head-to-head page here, its entry restates that page. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.

Choosing between them

  1. If you want a real card and the widest set of features around it, Greenlight. Read its plans page for which plan has the feature you came for.
  2. If you want a real card for several kids at the lowest price, and a weekly payday suits you, BusyKid.
  3. If the lessons matter as much as the card, or you already pay for Acorns, Acorns Early.
  4. If your teenager needs an account of their own and a start on a credit history, Step.
  5. If the problem is getting a younger child to do the routine at all, Joon.
  6. If you want chores assigned and rotated for a big family, with points and no card, S'moresUp.
  7. If you want chores, allowance and rewards counted in the same place as the family's calendar, and are happy to hand over the money yourself, ours.

A card or a ledger

A card teaches a child what spending feels like, and it is the only thing that works once they are buying their own lunch or paying a friend back. It also means a bank, an identity check, a monthly fee, and money that is somewhere other than your account. A ledger costs nothing to hold and suits a young child, who mostly needs to see the number go up and the goal get closer. A reasonable path is a ledger first and a card around the age a child starts going out without you. Nothing stops you running both: a card for spending and a chore chart somewhere else.

Who the fee covers

The card products price by family, not by child. Greenlight and BusyKid cover up to five kids on one subscription and Acorns Early covers four, so the cost per child falls quickly in a larger family. Step is free and is one account per teenager. Joon and S'moresUp are subscriptions for the family. Ours is one price for the household, and the chores and allowance apps are three of the apps that come with it.

Outside the United States

The four card products here are built for families in the US. In the UK, NatWest Rooster Money has a free tracker for chores and pocket money and an optional card, and its site says it is available only there. GoHenry is the UK product that Acorns Early shares its history with. The three without a card, ours included, hold no money and are not tied to a country's banks.

OurHome

OurHome is the older points-and-rewards chore app many families started with, and it still comes up in this search. We compare it with ours on its own page, and list where to go from it.

The feature list is not fixed

Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.

How to build a custom app for your household

Where this list comes from

We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product was checked against that product's own pricing and feature pages on the date above — not against another review site — and where we could not find a published price we say so rather than quote one. The order is by what each product is for, not a ranking of merit.

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