8 Best Round-Up Apps for Saving + Investing Money Instantly

Round-up apps are the modern-day coin jar.

For younger readers who aren’t as familiar: Tossing spare coins into a jar used to be one of the most popular forms of saving. It stopped your pockets from jingling, you didn’t miss the money, and once the jar was full, you could exchange all of the money at the bank or a coin machine.

Assuming you weren’t living paycheck to paycheck, this was “fun” money you could spend however you wanted—you might head out to a restaurant or pick up a new pair of shoes.

Paying with cash is becoming less common by the year, however, as people increasingly use more convenient methods: credit cards, debit cards, and money apps. Plastic and digital spending are in … and jingling pockets are out.

But that doesn’t mean “spare change” is gone completely—it, like spending, has simply evolved, becoming the “round-up.” Read on as we explain how these work, and then we’ll look at the best round-up apps you can use as your own digital coin jar.

What Are Round-Ups?

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With round-ups, your purchase prices are rounded up to the nearest dollar.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because you see it all the time at grocery stores and other retailers. The cashier will ask you if you’d like to round up your total, say, to donate to a charity.

But this kind of roundup involves a financial app rounding up your purchase, with the “spare change” put into a savings account or invested for you.

How Do Round-Ups Work?

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Let’s say you’re heading to work, and you decide to grab breakfast. You get a coffee and a sandwich, and it sets you back $9.69. You go to pay with a normal debit or credit card or money app, you pay the $9.69, and the transaction is over.

However, now let’s say you have a card or app with a round-up feature. Instead, your card is charged for $10, then the extra 31 cents is added to a spillover fund like a savings account or investing account. And this happens with every purchase you make with the card or app—a seamless process that makes saving automatic.

But which app does it the best?

Round-Up Apps—Our Top Picks

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Best Round-Up Apps

1. Acorns (Best for Using Round-Ups to Invest)

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• Function(s): Saving, spending, investing
• Available: Sign up here

Acorns is a micro-investing app geared toward minors, young adults and millennials by offering Round-Ups: The app rounds up purchases made on linked debit and credit cards to the nearest dollar, investing the difference on your behalf.

For example, if you purchase a coffee for $2.60 on a linked credit card, Acorns automatically rounds this charge up to $3.00 and puts the 40-cent difference aside. Once those Round-Ups reach at least $5, they can be transferred to your Acorns account to be invested. You can also invest your Round-Ups more quickly with the Acorns Visa debit card—any time you swipe, your spare change is immediately invested, rather than waiting for your Round-Ups to reach the $5 threshold.

You can also choose to amplify your Round-Ups with the Multiplier feature, which allows you to multiply your Round-Ups investments by 2x, 3x, or 10x. And not sure what to do if the transaction is an even dollar amount? (Say, $1.00 or $2.00.) Whole-Dollar Round-Ups let you select how much to round up whenever this happens.

The Acorns investment offering itself is a simple, automated platform that uses pre-built portfolios of ETFs to keep investors exposed to stocks and bonds. While it doesn’t have much to offer intermediate investors who want variety in their portfolios, Acorns’ basic approach makes it one of the best investment apps for beginners.

Learn more in our Acorns review or sign up today.

Related: How to Invest as a Teenager [Start Investing as a Minor Under 18]

2. Cash App Families (Cash App’s Debit Card for Teens & Kids)

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• Available: Teens (13-17): Sign up here | Kids (6-12): Sign up here
• Price: Free* (no subscription fees)

Do you want your children to start learning smart money habits? Cash App Families can accomplish that—with no subscription fees—by putting the power of Cash App into your kids’ hands while keeping their financial safety firmly in yours.

Teens can spend, save and invest with Cash App Families. A parent or guardian** sponsors the account, which comes with a designable Cash App Visa^® Card they can use to spend money where Visa is accepted. Meanwhile, access to Cash App allows them to save money toward specific goals, send money to friends, accept offers for instant discounts at their favorite places, and check out securely in stores and online by using a QR code.

If your teen direct-deposits $300 or more each month, they’ll also unlock a bevy of other features, including getting paid two days earlier, no ATM fees¹ when withdrawing from more than 40,000 in-network ATMs, and one waived out-of-network ATM withdrawal per month.

Cash App Families even has an investing feature with fractional shares, allowing teens to purchase as little as $1’s worth of stocks and Bitcoin (parent permission is required).²

Younger kids, ages 6 to 12***, can learn money basics, too, through Cash App Families Managed Accounts. These provide a fully parent-managed money experience with no subscription fees, no minimum balance requirements, and no hidden charges, and they too can design their very own Cash App Visa^® Card, making their first financial tool feel truly their own.

Both teens and kids can watch money grow thanks to Cash App’s high interest rates on savings balances and with the assistance of their parents/legal guardians, and they can save their spare change with Round Ups.³

Children also benefit from downright stellar parental controls and safety features. Parents can monitor activity from their own Cash App or receive real-time transaction alerts for kids’ payments and purchases. You control which features—stocks, Bitcoin², sending money, the Cash App Visa^® Card—your teens can access, and certain spending categories are auto-blocked. For kids ages 6-12, all account access lives within your own Cash App—your child never logs in independently. You set the rules, and you can change them anytime.

Parents/guardians must download Cash App (also free). From there, they’ll either invite their teen to create a sponsored account, or create a managed account for children under age 13.

Use our links to sign up for Cash App, whether you need Cash App Families for teens (ages 13-17), or Cash App Families for kids (ages 6-12).

Related: 8 Best Automatic Savings Apps + Savings Accounts

3. Greenlight (Best Investment Account With Parental Controls)

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• Function(s): Saving, spending, investing
• Available: Sign up here

Greenlight is a premier kids’ financial app that teaches minors the ins and outs of saving, spending, and financial responsibility—and with a Max, Infinity, or Family Shield plan, they can start to invest, too!

Greenlight’s investing app will help your kid learn the basics of investing, how to invest in stocks, how exchange-traded funds (ETFs) work, and more—that’s real-life lessons made with real money and real investments, all with your direct involvement and supervision. Better still, the app doubles as a savings account and a banking app for kids and teens, too.

With Greenlight Investing, your child can:

• Buy kid-friendly stocks they admire
• Start investing with as little as $1 thanks to fractional shares
• Spread out their risk with the best ETFs
• Buy and sell without paying commissions

Parents can enjoy peace of mind knowing that Greenlight’s popular guardrails extend to its investing offering, too. While teens have access to more than 4,000 stocks and ETFs, parents must approve every trade directly in the app before it can be completed.

And, of course, you get everything else that comes along with Greenlight. That includes a prepaid debit card with strong parental controls, mobile payments, ATM access, instant money transfers, savings, and even cash-back rewards.

Read more in our Greenlight Card review, check out plan pricing below, or sign up for Greenlight Max, Infinity, or Family Shield today.

Related: How to Invest Money: 5 Steps to Start Investing w/Little Money

4. SoFi® Checking & Savings Account

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• Function(s): Saving, spending, investing (through SoFi Invest®)
• Available: Sign up here

The SoFi Checking & Savings Account sounds like your run-of-the-mill bank account, but it’s more: It’s also a high-yield savings account that earns far more than the national average percentage yield (APY)² and more than the average high-yield account. Better still, it boosts your ability to save right off the bat by rewarding you with either $50 or $300 upon sign-up.¹

Sofi Checking & Savings covers all of the basics: An account with website and mobile app access with no monthly account fees, overdraft fees, and minimum balances³. Among its best perks:

• FDIC insurance of up to $250,000, and you can access additional insurance up to $3 million on deposits through a seamless network of participating banks.⁴
• Access to more than 55,000 fee-free ATMs within the Allpoint® Network.⁵
• Get your paycheck up to two days early when you set up direct deposit.⁶
• No-fee overdraft coverage up to $50⁷
• Round-ups on debit card purchases, which are deposited into your savings.

You can get a head start on your savings with qualifying direct deposits. You’ll receive $50 in bonus cash if $1,000.00 to $4,999.99 is sent to your account within a 31-day period, starting from when you receive the first direct deposit. That number jumps to $300 when you receive $5,000 or more within the 31-day period. The higher cash bonus requires you to hit an admittedly high threshold, but the $50 is a reasonable bonus for a much more manageable threshold.

Want to get started on your cash bonus? Use our exclusive link to sign up with SoFi today.

 

5. Current Bank (High-Powered Banking App)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Free (no monthly fees)

Current is a banking app designed for families; it offers both parent and teen accounts, with the latter acting like prepaid debit cards that parents load for their children. The Current app allows you to track your teen’s spending in real-time, set limits on how much your children can spend, and even block specific merchants on its Visa-enabled debit cards. You also get the peace of mind that comes with knowing your children’s money is safe because it’s not cash—no temptations, just a tool parents can use to help teach teens financial responsibility.

Among Current’s features:

• No minimum required balances, no fees on transfers to other Current accounts, and no hidden fees.
• Create Savings Pods, or Giving Pods, that allow you to save up for various goals.
• Round-Ups allow you to round up purchases to the nearest dollar amount and store the difference in Savings or Giving Pods.
• Buy and sell 27 different cryptocurrencies with zero trading fees.

Teens will love easy allowance deposits, a card they can use in stores or online, instant gas hold removals when buying gas, and access to more than 40,000 fee-free Allpoint ATMs nationwide. They’ll also have the opportunity to learn about financial responsibility and financial independence through Current’s Budgets feature, which allows them to track their spending and even receive alerts when they get too close to (or exceed) a predetermined limit.

The product has no specifically stated minimum age requirement, but the marketing suggests teens are the target audience. However, you might be able to open an account for a younger child. Read more in our Current review.

Related: 14 Best Investing Research & Stock Analysis Websites [2026]

6. Chime (Checking Account With Round-Ups)

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• Function(s): Saving, checking, spending
• Available: Sign up here

Chime was created with the idea that basic banking services should be easy and free. Thus, users aren’t charged service fees, overdraft fees, foreign transaction fees, and other charges. Chime customers also have access to more than 60,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, and they can get paid up to two days earlier if they set up direct deposit.

When you open a Chime checking account, you can choose to enroll in savings, too. Chime’s high-yield savings account boasts an average annual percentage yield (APY) that’s several times higher than the national savings account yield.

With Chime’s Save When You Spend feature, round-ups from your Chime Visa Debit Card are automatically transferred from your checking account into your savings account, helping you put that high yield to work more quickly.

Related: Best Custodial Accounts: How to Start Investing for Kids

7. Qoins

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• Function(s): Saving, spending, budgeting
• Available: Sign up here

Qoins is a financial app and prepaid debit card with features centered around getting its users out of debt faster.

Unlike other apps where your goal might be a car down payment or a vacation to Greece, Qoins helps its users meet goals like knocking out their credit card debt or student loans. (But once you’re debt-free, you can set fun savings goals, too!)

Qoins takes the money in your account and makes debt payments with it once every month. This can help you pay off debt faster, reduce the amount of interest you pay, and improve your credit score. According to Qoins, its program can shave anywhere from two to seven years off loan terms, and it has saved users an average of $3,200 in interest payments.

As you might expect, Qoins’ round-ups work with the same goal in mind. The app rounds up purchases that you make, but rather than putting the digital change toward savings, it goes to paying off your debt.

Related: 15 Best High-Yield Investments [Safe Options Right Now]

8. Qapital

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• Function(s): Saving, spending, investing, budgeting
• Available: Sign up here

Qapital is a highly customizable savings app that pulls money from an existing checking account you connect with the app.

Qapital has one of the more flexible round-up programs. Like with most programs, when you make a purchase with an account that its “Round-Up Rule” is applied to, Qapital will deposit the spare change into one of your Goals (investment or savings).

However, unlike most programs, you don’t just have to round up to the nearest dollar—you can round up even higher. So, let’s say you selected $4 for your Round Up Rule amount: If you spent $5.50 on a coffee, the purchase wouldn’t be rounded up to $6—it would be rounded up to $9! And whole-dollar amounts are always rounded up to your Round Up Rule amount; if it’s set to $2 and you spend $1, you’ll be charged $3 and a full $2 will be saved toward your goal.

You can save in other ways, too. For instance, you can set Qapital to save a dollar every time you go for a jog, or five bucks every time you go to a baseball game.

People who want to incorporate Qapital further into their financial lives can sign up for the Qapital Visa Debit Card and spending account. The fee-free card provides no-fee access to more than 55,000 ATMs, and is compatible with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. It offers round-ups, too, as well as money management features such as Spending Sweet Spot and Money Missions.

When you’ve reached a certain savings goal, you can cash it out through the debit card, or through one of your bank accounts.

If you prefer to invest with your round-ups, you can pick from several pre-built portfolios—from very conservative (90% bonds, 10% stocks) to very aggressive (10% bonds, 90% stocks).

Related: 10 Best Stock Trading Apps for Beginners [Free + Paid]

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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Do Savings App Round-Up Plans Work?

Absolutely. A round-up app works in the background to set aside more money than you typically would. Every purchase you make suddenly becomes a new opportunity to save money.

But let’s be clear: If you have lofty savings goals—say, a child’s college fund or your retirement—you need to save and invest more substantial amounts than what a round-up program can provide. That said, some savings apps will also let you send over regular payments from a savings account or checking account, so you can augment your savings that way.

Are Round-Up Apps Safe?

Round-up apps aren’t inherently safe or unsafe. Features matter.

For one, you want to make sure that your savings are FDIC-insured. And all of the round-up apps listed above offer FDIC insurance up to $250,000 on savings. If your app has an investing component, you’ll also want to ensure there’s insurance on that—Stash Invest, for instance, offers $500,000 worth of insurance on investments through the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (DIPC). Just note that insurance only protects investments from an institutional failure—not from losses if your investments simply lose value.

Past that, you’ll want to make sure your round-up app has other types of security, such as account verification, identity protection, encryption, etc.

Are Round-Up Savings Apps Worth It?

If you want a way to incrementally save without having to think about it, round-up savings apps are excellent tools that are worth the time and energy. They automatically transfer money to your savings with each transaction, letting your savings slowly build up over time. They’re especially useful if they can double as standard banking and investment accounts.

Do be mindful of fees, however. If you’re paying a few dollars a month for an app and only end up saving a few dollars per month, you’re still where you started before. So make sure if you’re paying for a round-up savings account, that your savings progress—and the app’s other features—are worth the cost.

Is the Digit Account a Round-Up App?

Digit is a financial app that provides typical banking features such as saving and spending, allows you to invest, and also helps you budget your money. However, it is not a round-up app in the truest sense.

Some reviewers include the Digit account in their lists of round-up apps because it can help you save. Specifically, Digit uses artificial intelligence to study your finances, then it automatically saves money for you in incremental accounts, as your budget allows, to help you reach savings goals.

It sounds similar, and it has a similar goal of helping you save, but it’s not the same thing.

Why Should I Use Round-Up Apps?

We can think of several good reasons to use round-up apps, including (but not limited to):

• They’re easy to use. Setup is typically simple, and saving is even easier. Just make your regular purchase, and money will trickle into your savings account without you lifting another finger.
• Little amounts add up. Several of the round-up apps we’ve talked about claim that their users can save hundreds if not thousands of dollars each year. Yes, 30 cents here and 45 cents here doesn’t seem like much. But add those amounts up across dozens of transactions each month, and you’re generating real savings.
• They keep you focused on your goals. Round-up apps typically center around financial goals. That’s good! Vaguely saving can be difficult for people. But when you start to see real, tangible progress toward a stated goal, that can act as motivation to keep up what you’re doing and even find other ways to save.

Put simply: Round-up apps are easy to use and can help you reach savings goals more quickly than you’d think.

Read More on Young and the Invested

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Disclosures

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Cash App Families for Teens + Cash App Families for Kids

Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Offers, Instant Discounts, Savings, and Direct Deposit provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Offers may not be affiliated with third party merchants.

* Card use fees apply. Free Cash App Cards come in black, white, pink, or glow-in-the-dark. 

** Teens 13 to 17 can use Cash App with sponsorship by an eligible parent or guardian. To view the eligibility requirements for sponsoring a teen, please visit the Sponsored Accounts section of the Cash App Terms of Service.

*** Parents and legal guardians can open a managed account for kids 6-12. To view the eligibility requirements for sponsoring a teen or child, please visit the Sponsored Accounts section of the Cash App Terms of Service.

**** With a Cash App Card, your money is eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance through Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Sutton Bank, and/or The Bancorp Bank, N.A., Members FDIC, for up to $250,000 per customer when aggregated with all other deposits held in the same legal capacity at each bank, if certain conditions are met. See the Cash App Terms of Service.

Cash App is a financial services platform, and not an FDIC-insured bank. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc..

¹ Cash App reimburses ATM fees for all in-network withdrawals when you deposit at least $300 monthly of Qualifying Deposits into Cash App, or spend $500 or more in Qualifying Purchases using your Cash App Card or Cash App Pay in a calendar month. Service fees may apply. See terms for more details.

² Brokerage services provided by Cash App Investing LLC, member FINRA/SIPC, subsidiary of Block, Inc. Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. Bitcoin services are not licensable activity in all U.S. states and territories. Block, Inc. operates in New York as Block of Delaware and is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Investing and bitcoin are non-deposit, non-bank products that are not FDIC insured and involve risk, including monetary loss. Cash App Investing does not trade bitcoin and Block, Inc. is not a member of FINRA or SIPC. For additional information, see the Bitcoin and Cash App Investing disclosures. Additional fees for securities may apply such as regulatory fees and fees to transfer securities externally. Please see our House Rules for more information. Fractional shares investing may involve additional risks such as non-transferability. For additional information regarding the unique risks and limitations of fractional shares, please see your Investing Customer Account Agreement.

³ Cash App will pass through a portion of the interest paid on your savings balance held in an account for the benefit of Cash App customers at Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Member FDIC. To earn interest on your Cash App savings balance, you need to have sponsor approval. Exceptions may apply. Savings yield rate is subject to change.