Debt Descent vs Undebt.it
Two debt-payoff planners compared, as of October 2026.
Undebt.it has been around since 2012 and is the planner I’d point a Windows user to. It runs in any browser, its free tier is unusually generous, and the paid tier is $10.00 a year. 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 Undebt.it is the better pick, I say so.
The short version
- Pick Undebt.it if you use Windows or Android, want all ten payoff methods without paying, or want YNAB or nightly bank-balance sync.
- Pick Debt Descent if you’re on Apple devices and want a native app with no account, on-device statement reading, widgets and Siri, and a price you pay once.
Price, platforms, and privacy
| Debt Descent | Undebt.it | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. Pro is $14.99 once, and one purchase covers your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. | Free. Undebt.it+ is $10.00 a year, billed as a non-recurring annual fee, with a 30-day trial that needs no card. |
| Paid tier over three years | $14.99 | $30.00, at $10.00 a year for Undebt.it+. |
| Platforms | Native app for iPhone (iPhone Duo included), iPad, and Mac. | Any browser, on any device. The “mobile apps” are progressive web apps installed from Safari or Chrome, not from the App Store or Google Play, and they need an internet connection. |
| Account | None. | The tracker needs an email account. The public calculators don’t. |
| Where your data lives | On your devices and in your own iCloud. App Store privacy label: “Data Not Collected.” | On Undebt.it’s servers, under its privacy policy. |
| Ads | None. | None on the public calculators, blog, and help pages. The logged-in free tracker shows ads; Undebt.it+ removes them. |
What’s free
| Debt Descent | Undebt.it | |
|---|---|---|
| Debts | Unlimited, with notes on each one. | Unlimited, and free since the site launched in 2012. |
| Payoff methods | Snowball and Avalanche. Pro adds five more, including a custom order. | All ten: Snowball, Avalanche, Hybrid (debt-to-interest ratio), Cash Flow Index, Custom (highest number first or lowest first), Highest monthly payment, Highest credit utilization, Highest monthly interest, and Lowest interest rate. |
| Compare methods side by side | Yes. | Yes. |
| Promo rates | A 0% intro APR that reverts on a date, plus deferred-interest promos tracked for deadline warnings, with a notification two months and two weeks before a promo ends (Pro). | Promo interest rates, including deferred-interest promos with an end date. Since October 6, 2026, Undebt.it+ can also plan a debt to be paid off by a date you set. |
| 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. | No. Balances are typed in, or synced from your bank with Undebt.it+. |
| Bank sync | None. It reads your statements instead. | Undebt.it+ only, through SimpleFIN, with a separate SimpleFIN fee. |
| Sync across devices | Through your own iCloud, free. | It’s a web app, so sign in anywhere. |
| Backup and export | A backup saved to your own iCloud Drive every week, JSON export and import (a plan PDF imports too), and your payment history as a CSV. Pro adds PDF and calendar export. | Export to Excel. |
| 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 listed on its feature pages. |
| Student-loan deferment | A loan in deferment sits out of the plan until its end date, then rejoins on its own. | Not listed on its feature pages. |
| 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. | Plan.it, a weekly and monthly bills-and-debts checklist, free since September 2026. Bill tracking with reminders is Undebt.it+. |
| Printable sheets | PDFs of your plan and your payment history, with Pro. | Eleven printable sheets, free, blank or filled in from your own plan. |
| Widgets, Siri, Spotlight | Yes, and the medium widget logs your next payment in one tap. | No. Push notifications need Undebt.it+. |
| Progress sharing | A progress card rendered as an image, sized for a post or a story, and one for your year so far. | Payoff Snapshot stories and the journey infographic are Undebt.it+. |
The paid tiers
| Debt Descent Pro, $14.99 once | Undebt.it+, $10.00 a year | |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | No ads, YNAB sync, bank sync through SimpleFIN, the Undebt.AI plan generator, and bill tracking with reminders. |
| How you pay | Once. Offer codes for discounts; Family Sharing. | Yearly. Apple Pay accepted since September 2026. |
About the bank sync
Undebt.it+ has synced balances through SimpleFIN Bridge, a third-party aggregator, since September 12, 2026. You pay SimpleFIN directly, $1.50 plus tax a month or $15.00 plus tax a year, and Undebt.it takes no cut. Balances update once a night, transactions are optional, and interest rates, minimums, and due dates don’t sync, so those stay manual. It’s read-only and covers the lenders SimpleFIN supports.
Debt Descent doesn’t link to banks. It never has your bank login, and nothing about your accounts leaves the device. Instead it reads a statement (PDF, photo, or camera scan) on the device and fills in the balance, APR, minimum, and due date for you to confirm. When the next statement arrives, import it again and the balance catches up.
What Undebt.it does better
- All ten of its payoff methods are free. Debt Descent gives you two free and the rest with Pro.
- Eleven free printable sheets, including versions filled in from your own plan.
- It runs anywhere with a browser, including Windows and Android.
- YNAB sync and nightly bank-balance sync, with Undebt.it+, if you want balances to update without you.
- Fourteen years of features: bill tracking with reminders, a calendar planner, a savings challenge, an AI plan generator, Excel export.
- $10.00 a year is not much, and the trial needs no card.
What Debt Descent does better
- A native app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with widgets, Siri Shortcuts, and Spotlight.
- It has no account and collects nothing. Your data stays on your devices and in your own iCloud.
- 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. Over three years that’s $14.99 against $30.00 for Undebt.it+.
- 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.
- No ads anywhere.
Which should you use?
If you’re not on Apple devices, use Undebt.it. If you are, it comes down to whether you want a web app with bank sync and ten free methods, or a native app 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 the free tiers of each; neither asks for a card.
Sources
Everything about Undebt.it above comes from its own pages, all read on October 16, 2026:
- undebt.it (opens in new tab), the home page.
- Undebt.it+ features (opens in new tab) and pricing (opens in new tab). The features page still lists unlimited accounts and “all 8” methods under premium; the FAQ says both are free and counts ten methods, and I’ve gone with the FAQ.
- The FAQ (opens in new tab), for what the free tier includes. Its answer on which payoff methods are free (September 5, 2026) lists all ten and says the public pages’ eight counts the two custom directions as one and leaves out lowest rate first.
- The Undebt.it blog (opens in new tab): the target-date announcement (October 6, 2026), the free printables post (September 24, 2026), the SimpleFIN sync announcement (September 12, 2026), the post on its mobile apps (September 10, 2026), the Plan.it launch (September 3, 2026), and the August 2026 redesign post.
- SimpleFIN Bridge (opens in new tab), for its pricing.
Undebt.it doesn’t publish a user count, so I haven’t quoted one. Older roundups that say $12.00 a year are quoting the pre-2026 price. 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.