Debt Descent vs Debt Payoff Planner
Two debt-payoff apps compared, as of October 2026.
Debt Payoff Planner & Tracker is OxbowSoft’s app, on the App Store since 2015 and on Android, with a web app for Pro subscribers. Several unrelated apps share the name; this page is about the OxbowSoft one. Debt Descent is my native app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, free with a one-time $14.99 Pro purchase. Here is how they line up, with the sources at the bottom. Where Debt Payoff Planner is the better pick, I say so.
The short version
- Pick Debt Payoff Planner if you’re on Android or want to share one plan with a partner.
- Pick Debt Descent if you’re on Apple devices and want no ads, no account, a native Mac app, on-device statement reading, and a price you pay once.
Price, platforms, and privacy
| Debt Descent | Debt Payoff Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. Pro is $14.99 once, and one purchase covers your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. | Free with ads. In the app, Pro is $6.99 a month, $13.99 for three months, or $27.99 a year, and Friends & Family Pro is $10.49 a month or $41.99 a year. On the web, Pro also comes as passes that don’t renew: $10 for two months, $18 for six months, or $24 for 24 months. There is no lifetime option. |
| Paid tier over three years | $14.99 | $83.97 on the App Store’s yearly plan, or $125.97 for Friends & Family. On the web, two 24-month passes cover it for $48. |
| Platforms | Native app for iPhone (iPhone Duo included), iPad, and Mac. | iPhone, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro (iOS 15 or later), Android, and a web app for Pro subscribers. No Mac app. |
| Account | None. | An email account, used for backup. |
| App Store privacy label | “Data Not Collected.” | Financial info, contact info (email), user content, and usage data, all linked to you, plus third-party advertising. |
| Ads | None. | Yes, in the free app, including an offer from a debt-relief company. The app’s code hides that offer for Pro. |
What’s free
| Debt Descent | Debt Payoff Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Debts | Unlimited, with notes on each one. | Ten. It won’t add an eleventh without Pro, and notes on a debt need Pro too. |
| Payoff methods | Snowball and Avalanche. Pro adds five more, including a custom order, plus planned windfalls: one-time extra payments, the same idea as a Snowflake. | Snowball, Avalanche, Snowflake (one at a time on a free account), and custom ordering, up to three custom orders. |
| Charts | Every balance falling to zero, per method, with the debt-free date and what each method saves. | A payoff chart with a minimums-only line beside the accelerated plan, balance pie charts, and a Plan Summary with 30-day and total interest. |
| Payment logging | Yes, with progress against the plan and the interest your paydown has already saved. | Yes. |
| Statement import | Reads a statement PDF, a photo, or a camera scan on your device and fills in the balance, APR, minimum, and due date for you to confirm. Paystubs too. | Not mentioned by the developer. |
| Bank sync | None. It reads your statements instead. | None. |
| Sync and backup | Through your own iCloud, free. A backup is saved to your iCloud Drive every week, and there’s JSON export and import (a plan PDF imports too). | Email-account backup. Using the app on both mobile and desktop needs Pro. |
| Sharing | A progress card rendered as an image, sized for a post or a story, and one for your year so far. | Friends & Family Pro shares one membership across several people. |
| Debt management plan | Payment groups: one payment, the plan’s fee, and the member debts, with the fee kept out of the payoff math. | Not mentioned by the developer. |
| Deferment and promos | Student-loan deferment with an end date, 0% intro APRs that revert on a date, and deferred-interest promos tracked for deadline warnings, with a notification two months and two weeks before a promo ends (Pro). | Not mentioned by the developer. |
| Income and bills | A Left over card: take-home pay at your pay cadence, minus the bills the plan doesn’t track. A bill can take a due date, and then it’s listed with your payments under the payday that covers it. You can save up for something there too, and see what charging it would cost instead. | Not mentioned by the developer. |
| Widgets, Siri, Spotlight | Yes, and the medium widget logs your next payment in one tap. | Not mentioned by the developer. |
| Loan categories | Cards, loans, mortgages, and track-only debts. | Eight loan categories. |
“Not mentioned by the developer” means exactly that: the App Store listing and the developer’s site don’t list it. It may exist in the app. I haven’t claimed a feature is missing where I couldn’t check.
The paid tiers
| Debt Descent Pro, $14.99 once | Debt Payoff Planner Pro, from $24 for two years | |
|---|---|---|
| What the paid tier adds | Five more payoff methods (custom order, highest interest, cash-flow index, credit utilization, credit-score impact), a what-if slider and per-debt payoff tests, picking a debt-free date and seeing the extra it takes, planned windfalls, refinance and balance-transfer modeling with one-step apply, amortization schedules, PDF and calendar export, due-date, payday, and promo notifications, and the statement-day balance check. | On the developer’s 2.0 help page: use on more than one device (the web app), biweekly payments, alternative minimum-payment methods, and Friends & Family sharing. |
| How you pay | Once. Offer codes for discounts; Family Sharing. | Monthly, quarterly, or yearly, as an auto-renewing subscription in the app, or as a fixed-term pass on the web. |
What Debt Payoff Planner does better
- Android, and a web app with Pro, so a household with mixed devices can share one plan.
- Friends & Family sharing: one Pro membership across several people.
- Snowflake one-time payments and multiple custom orders in the free tier. Debt Descent has both (windfalls, and a custom order), but in Pro.
What Debt Descent does better
- It has no ads or account, and its privacy label is “Data Not Collected.” Debt Payoff Planner’s lists financial info, contact info, user content, and usage data linked to you, plus third-party advertising.
- A native Mac app. Debt Payoff Planner has none.
- It reads statements and paystubs on the device, so you don’t type the numbers in.
- A price you pay once: $14.99 for Pro on every device, against $27.99 a year in the app (its web passes cost less, $24 for two years). Over three years that’s $14.99 against $83.97 in the app, or $48 on the web.
- Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, and Spotlight.
- It has a model for a debt management plan and its fee, a student loan in deferment, and a store promo with a deferred-interest deadline.
Which should you use?
On Android, Debt Payoff Planner. On Apple devices, it comes down to whether you want to share a plan, or want a native app with no ads and no account that keeps everything on your devices and in your own iCloud, and costs $14.99 once. Both will get you to the same debt-free date on the same numbers. Try both free tiers first.
Sources
Everything about Debt Payoff Planner above comes from the developer’s own listing and site, read on October 16, 2026:
- The App Store listing (opens in new tab) (version 2.3.4, September 26, 2026): the in-app purchase prices, the privacy label, and the feature description.
- debtpayoffplanner.com (opens in new tab): the home page, the overview page, and the 2.0 help page, which is where the Pro feature list comes from. The site’s “from $2 a month” is the yearly plan divided by twelve.
- The web app (opens in new tab): its checkout’s price list, for the web passes, and its code, for the free tier’s limit of ten debts and one Snowflake, the notes that need Pro, and the offer Pro hides.
Debt Descent’s side comes from the app itself and its support page. If something here is out of date, tell me and I’ll fix it.
More free tools
- Debt Snowball & Avalanche Calculator: your debt-free date and total interest, both methods side by side.
- Deferred Interest Calculator: what a “no interest if paid in full” promo bills if you miss the deadline.
- Balance Transfer Calculator: whether the transfer fee beats the interest you’d pay by staying put.
- Debt Management Plan Calculator: a DMP’s reduced rate and fees against paying on your own.
All of them run in your browser and send nothing back to me. They come from Debt Descent, my debt-payoff app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If you’re weighing it against another planner, I’ve written up Debt Descent vs Undebt.it, Debt Descent vs Debt Payoff Planner, and Debt Descent vs Debt Free.
Disclosure: I’m a current client of Consolidated Credit’s debt management plan, and I built Debt Descent to track it. Debt Descent is my app, so read this comparison knowing that.