See everything, finally
Your whole financial picture, side by side.
Most people's money lives in pieces: chequing at one bank, a card at another, investments somewhere else. NBU is one of the only tools that brings them together without asking for a single login. Import each account and NBU shows you total spending across all of them, plus a net worth figure that counts your savings and investments against what you owe. No bank does this for you. None of them can see your accounts at other banks, and none of them are in a rush to, since money that's easy to compare is money that's easy to move. You can see the whole picture anyway.
Works with your bank. Whatever bank that is.
Upload a statement and NBU recognizes where it came from. It knows the export formats for RBC, TD, Scotiabank, CIBC, BMO, Desjardins, National Bank, Tangerine, Simplii, and more. If your bank isn't recognized yet, a simple column mapper lets you point NBU at the right fields once, and it remembers for next time.
Here's the part that compounds: when someone maps a new bank format, NBU can offer that mapping to everyone else with the same bank. Mappings are only promoted after several people submit the same one, so they stay accurate. The more Canadians use NBU, the better it gets at reading Canadian banks. CSV is free to process. PDF costs a few Sparks, since reading a PDF takes AI and a CSV doesn't. If your bank only gives you PDF, that works too.
We don't need your bank login. And we don't want it.
Many apps pull transactions by screen-scraping or open-banking access. Both mean giving up your credentials. NBU doesn't. You download a CSV or PDF and upload it, and your banking login never touches our system. Before Valerie's AI analyzes anything, identifying details like names and account numbers are scrubbed. Your data lives in your account, and you can export or delete all of it whenever you want.
The boring part, done for you
Valerie figures out the groceries. You handle the exceptions.
Valerie reads every transaction and files it. Most imports need a handful of corrections, not an afternoon.
- Fix anything in two clicks, and she learns your preferences
- Apply one fix to every similar transaction at once
- Your own categories, with monthly targets per category
- Stubborn merchant? She'll search the web and figure it out
Ask the question you've been avoiding.
Valerie knows your transactions, your categories, and your patterns. Not in a surveillance way, in a "she can actually answer you" way. Ask why spending went up, what your average grocery bill is, or whether you're on track for a savings goal. She runs the numbers and explains them. She'll also help with general questions like RRSPs, TFSAs, or debt payoff, and she'll tell you plainly when you're better off talking to a registered professional.
Your fix helps the next person's import.
Statements spell merchant names in odd ways, and someone has to be the first to sort each one out. When that's you, NBU can pass your fix along, and other people's fixes come back to you. NBU scrambles the store name before it shares anything, so the fix can't be traced back to you. The amount, the date and your name never go with it. Community learning stays off until you turn it on.
Make your money earn
Make the rewards work for you, not the bank.
Done well, churning is one of the most lucrative things a disciplined person can do. The overhead is what stops most people. NBU carries it:
- Spend targets and deadlines, tracked from your statements
- Cancel-by alerts before the annual fee hits
- Cooldown tracking per card and institution
- Every chase checked against your real spending
NBU checks each card against the spending you already have, not the spending a bonus would require.
See the real value of every card.
A card's real value is hard to know, and some cost more than they give back. NBU runs the math on the transactions you have already imported: the welcome bonus, plus what your everyday spending really earns, minus the annual fee. You see what each card is worth to you in dollars.
Where does your next dollar go?
There's a well-worn order: employer match first, then the debt that costs the most, then the emergency fund you sized yourself, then the FHSA, RESP, TFSA or RRSP question. NBU lays that order out and shows where your real numbers put you on it, with the dollar amount in view. What to do next stays your call, and when it's a call for a registered professional, Valerie says so.
One place for your contribution room.
TFSA, RRSP, FHSA, RESP. Each plan has its own limit, and the CRA number you half-remember is usually a year old. In NBU you enter your room once, and every contribution you log moves the bar. When you wonder in March how much space is left, the answer is on one screen.
How NBU compares
Honest, no asterisks.
| Feature | NBU | YNAB | Copilot | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works with Canadian banks | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | Manual |
| No bank login required | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Brings multiple banks into one view | ✓ | Partial | Partial | Manual |
| AI categorization | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI chat assistant | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Credit card churning tools | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Manual |
| Free option | ✓ (beta) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| French language support | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Manual |
| Québec privacy law compliant | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | N/A |
Works with Canadian banks
NBU
✓
YNAB
Partial
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
Manual
No bank login required
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
✓
Brings multiple banks into one view
NBU
✓
YNAB
Partial
Copilot
Partial
Spreadsheet
Manual
AI categorization
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✓
Spreadsheet
✗
AI chat assistant
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
✗
Credit card churning tools
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
Manual
Free option
NBU
✓ (beta)
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
✓
French language support
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
Manual
Québec privacy law compliant
NBU
✓
YNAB
✗
Copilot
✗
Spreadsheet
N/A
Comparison reflects publicly available information as of 2026. We update this when things change.