I just wanted to clarify that Simplifi uses the "Appears on your statement as..." info to apply Payee Rules to downloaded transactions. This is the info that is provided by the bank, not the renaming logic that Simplifi uses. If you have a Payee Rule setup with certain keywords, Simplifi will look for those in the "Appears on your statement as..." info, and then apply the Payee Rule instead of using renaming logic.

Feature Comparison: Monarch Money vs. Simplifi​

Limited rulesSimplifi only allows users to change merchant names and categories of transactions.

I tried Simplifi a little bit more and I agree: their budgeting feature does not make sense to me. They separate bills and subscriptions from the spending plan, making it impossible to see every planned expense against my projected income. It also doesn’t offer an easy way to cover overspending by transferring available money from other categories.

Simplifi's account connection is just faster. Simplifi provides real time updates every time you refresh, while Monarch's update rhythm is much slower and it's often unclear why some accounts are more updated than others.

Nested categories. If I click into a spending group on Simplifi, I can see the breakdown of all categories within that group. Somehow I cannot do this on Monarch. I can only view by group or category as a whole. There's no nesting.