A calmer money app · Proudly made in Wellington, New Zealand
Upload a bank statement. MicroCost sorts every transaction on its own, and Stu answers your money questions in plain English. No spreadsheets, no jargon, and never, ever your bank password.
Free plan at launch · No bank passwords, ever
We'd sooner run a sausage sizzle outside Bunnings than sell your data, and we'll never train AI on it.That Sunday night feeling
A coffee here, a tap there. Then the month ends, you open your banking app, and all that's left is one big question: where did it all go?
Your statement is line after line of merchant names, amounts and dates. Add it up by hand, or type it all into some app? There goes your evening, so you stopped doing either long ago.
A small charge, every month, on autopilot. You'd cancel it in a second, if only something put it in front of you.
On payday your balance looks great; on rent day it looks like a crisis. The line jumps around and never shows how you actually spend.
Your statements say a lot about your life, so a little hesitation is fair. You want to know exactly how they'll be looked after, and to trust they'll stay private.
Three steps, a few minutes
Step 1
Export from ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Westpac or Sharesies and just upload it, exactly as your bank gives it to you. A file, not your bank login. We never see your password, and nothing here can move your money.
Step 2
MicroCost recognises your bank, reads every line, and files each transaction into the right category: dining, transport, rent, shopping, salary, refunds. You never type anything in or tag it by hand.
Step 3
View your money as clear charts, or just ask Stu in your own words, like "how much did I spend on dining last month?", and get a straight answer that matches the numbers.
A different way to look at money
A business never guesses: every dollar is categorised, big costs are spread over the months they cover, and moving money between accounts never counts as spending. MicroCost quietly runs that whole playbook on your family's numbers, and Stu explains it in plain words.
Payday is the clearest example. Most apps pile your whole pay onto one day, so the chart lurches from rich to broke. MicroCost keeps every transaction on its real date, but spreads salary, rent and yearly bills across the time they actually cover, so the trend line finally shows how you really live. Today's coffee still counts today.
What you actually get
Each one lands in the right category on its own. If something looks wrong, fix it in one click, and MicroCost remembers your correction for next time.
Ask in your own words, the way you'd ask a person, and get a straight answer with a chart to match. Love a view? Name it, save it, and come back to it anytime, always with your latest numbers. And Stu won't invent figures to sound clever: if it knows, it tells you; if it doesn't, it says so.
Big lump sums like salary, rent and yearly insurance get spread across the time they actually cover. That happens in your charts only, and never changes the real transactions. So you see what you actually spend each day, not a spike on payday.
Transfers between your own accounts aren't treated as spending. Refunds are matched against what you spent, and money you invested is kept separate from everyday costs, so your totals show what you really earned and really spent.
On the way: ask Stu to keep an eye on a category, like "tell me if dining goes over $800 this month". Coming soon
The part that makes people smile
Not to trick you into opening an app, but because a tool that feels warm is one you'll actually use. The world is hand-drawn and gentle. The numbers underneath stay dead serious.
Drop in, stamp the day like a postcard, and watch your month fill up. Miss a day? There's forgiveness built in. It's a tiny ritual, and tiny rituals are how you stay close to your money.
Check in, ask Stu a question, tidy up a category. Small quests earn MicroCost Coins, and coins pay for real things like deeper analysis. Good habits shouldn't just feel good; they should count for something.
Your finances live in a hand-drawn seaside world. Upload a statement and the lighthouse lights up with your results. It sounds whimsical, until you notice you've checked your money three times this week, without dreading it once.
A money app you can genuinely trust
This is your bank data, and it deserves a money app's strictest protection, not to be treated as raw material to analyse, share or sell.
You upload statement files, so there's no online banking login to hand over. Your password stays where it belongs, with you and your bank. And nothing here can move your money: MicroCost only ever reads and explains.
We don't send your financial data to external AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, and it's never used to train AI. All processing happens within MicroCost's own secure environment.
Your data is isolated from every other customer's account, so your transactions and balances stay yours alone.
Before Stu analyses anything, sensitive details like account numbers and original transaction descriptions are removed. It works with what it needs, not your full raw records.
Before Stu changes anything or sets up a reminder, it shows you exactly what it's about to do and waits for your approval. Every change is logged, and easy to undo.
Good questions
Yes. Your data is isolated from every other customer's account and stays inside MicroCost's own secure environment. We don't send it to external AI providers like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, and never use it to train AI. Before Stu analyses anything, sensitive details like account numbers and original transaction descriptions are removed.
There'll be a free plan at launch, so you can start without paying anything. Paid plans are a modest monthly subscription, priced to be far less than the time it saves you and the forgotten charges it helps you catch. Exact pricing goes up the day we open the doors.
Not today. You upload statement files that your bank gives you, and we never ask for your online banking password. If we ever add automatic bank feeds, it will only be through official open banking channels: you approve access at your own bank, it's read-only, and you can switch it off anytime. Either way, your password stays with you, always.
ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Westpac and Sharesies. Upload whatever your bank exports, Excel for ANZ and CSV for the rest, with no converting or cleaning up. MicroCost even skips ASB's extra header rows for you. And the list keeps growing: mainstream banks and money apps across New Zealand, Australia and China are on the roadmap.
That's allocation, and it only affects trend charts, never your real transactions. Instead of piling your whole pay onto payday, MicroCost spreads it across the days it relates to, so the chart shows your true daily level. Everyday buys like a coffee still count on the day you spent them.
No, deliberately. It helps you see your own past numbers clearly and honestly, but it won't predict the future, recommend products, or pretend to know what it doesn't. When something's beyond what it can do, it tells you straight instead of making an answer up.
No. Nothing you upload is sent to external AI providers or used to train any model.
Your money story is already there
Upload one bank statement, and watch a month of messy transactions turn into a picture that's clear, honest, and finally easy to read.