Short answer, yes it's free. There is one line in it I would rather explain myself than have someone else explain badly: the community contribution.
Every month, free accounts put 100 Sparks into a shared pool. You can earn all of it back, every month, without ever spending a dollar. The deal NBU offers every user is: help make Valerie better for everyone, including you, and enjoy NBU for free.
First, what Sparks are
Sparks are small credits that pay for Valerie's AI work: categorizing a tricky import, answering "why did I spend more in March?", reading a PDF statement or a screenshot of your transactions (a CSV import is free unless Valerie has to work out a format she has never seen). A standard AI action costs 10 Sparks. New accounts start with up to 600 Sparks in welcome bonuses: 150 on your first login, 200 when you finish your first monthly review, 250 the first time you close a later month.
Why free accounts contribute anything at all
Every question you ask Valerie costs us money. Not metaphorically. The compute bills arrive monthly and they scale with how much people use the app. Every free app pays those bills somehow, usually by selling your data, showing you ads, or getting you to log in daily so the engagement numbers justify the rest. We ruled all three out before writing a line of code. Your financial data is never sold, there are no ads, and the product is built to keep you logged out between monthly sessions.
That leaves sharing the cost. 100 Sparks a month, from every free account, into the pool that keeps Valerie running and improving.
Don't worry, there is no rush to get started as soon as you create an account. We only start counting once you have actually used NBU. The contribution begins after your first import lands. Sign up, look around, come back three months later, and nothing was charged while you were away and nothing is owed.
How to never feel it
Teach Valerie during your monthly review. You import, you fix the handful of merchants she guessed wrong, you close the month. Every unknown merchant you categorize earns 10 Sparks, up to 150 a month, so about ten fixes covers the contribution with room left over. Mapping a bank format she has not seen earns 10 more, on top of that cap. None of it is extra work. It is the review you came to do.
Two other ways to come out ahead. If you have been away five days or more, your next 20 actions are half price, which is what an every-few-weeks user should expect to get. And if you report a bug we end up fixing, or suggest something we end up shipping, I will personally put Sparks in your account to say thanks.
Here's the catch
Earning requires community learning to be on, and we ship it off by default. With it off, nothing leaves your account at all. When you turn it on, two things do, for each merchant you fix: a scrambled one way code standing in for the merchant name, and the category you picked. No amounts, no dates, no account details, no readable merchant name, nothing that ties back to you. Those two items are everything that leaves. A category only reaches the pool once five different people have taught the same thing independently. The longer version is on our Privacy-first page.
If you would rather leave it off, the contribution comes out of your Spark balance instead, and the app does not nag you about it. One thing to know if you go that route and never top up: when your balance cannot cover the 100, your account pauses until you top up or subscribe. Your data stays reachable the whole time, and you can export it straight from the screen that tells you the account is paused. Your data is yours and we will never lock it behind a paywall.
Why show the line item at all
We could have hidden it. Every free plan on the internet has a smaller allowance than the paid one, and we could have quietly handed free accounts 100 fewer Sparks a month. Nobody would have asked.
Instead it is a visible line with a visible way to earn it back, so you can weigh it and decide rather than just absorb it. You get the product, and Valerie gets better at reading Canadian bank statements, which shows up in your next review and in everyone else's.
Plus is $6 a month and Household is $12. Both cover the contribution outright if you would rather not think about it. The full breakdown lives on the pricing page.