Truebill App Review [My Honest Thoughts]

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If you’re like most, you’ve got dozens of subscription services and bills and you’re paying for them on a monthly basis. Keeping track of your monthly expenses isn’t an easy job, and you can often find yourself occupied for hours trying to sort things out.

You may have even forgotten that you’ve subscribed to certain services such as cable, audio, or video streaming services that you’re just not using anymore. But you’re still paying for it.

It can be quite complex and daunting to try and figure everything out on your own, especially with overlapping billing dates and monthly versus yearly subscription charges.

If you don’t want to keep being billed on services you no longer use, there are apps like Truebill to help you organize your finances and cancel relevant subscription services for you. They can save you hundreds, if not thousands per year.

Let’s take a closer look.

What is Truebill?

Truebill is a personal finance tech company and was founded in 2015 by three brothers:

• Haroon Mokhtarzada
• Idris Mokhtarzada
• Yahya Mokhtarzada

Haroon serves as the CEO, Idris serves as the CTO, and Yahya serves as the Chief Revenue Officer.

In a nutshell, the Truebill app is a service that collects your financial information and optimizes your bills, subscriptions, and savings in various ways. They do this to save you money and build up your savings account.

Features of the Truebill app

Here are a few of the services that Truebill has to offer:

• Subscription Management: Truebill will analyze your subscriptions to determine which ones you are using and how much you are paying. They automatically cancel them if necessary.

• Negotiating Bills: When signing up for Truebill, you will insert your relevant banking and bill information. This will allow Truebill to analyze your account and make sure you are paying the lowest amount possible for your services. Be careful when using this as Truebill has been known to cancel services or reduce usage rates without asking.

• Budget Planning: Truebill also offers a budgeting service to not only save money, but also to learn how to spend your money. They help you optimize your savings by guiding you in the best way to allocate funds and pay bills.

• Financial Analytics: This service will give you information on how you’ve been spending your money and when. You’ll get a better idea of your spending habits and possible places to eliminate unnecessary spending.

• Savings Account: A savings account is also offered as an option with Truebill. They use their own FDIC-insured accounts to help you save money with minimal to no monitoring, depending on how much you trust them. They allow you to pull funds from this savings account whenever you’d like.

• Credit Scores: When you are saving, budgeting, or paying off debt, it’s beneficial to watch your credit score. This service will allow you to monitor your score.

How much does the Truebill App cost?

Truebill offers a free service and a Premium service.

The free service covers all of the services addressed above, while Premium covers a few other services 

You can expect to spend between $3 – $12 per month depending on what you choose to subscribe to. The additional premium service options are as follows:

• Balance Syncing
• Premium Chat
• Cancellations Concierge
• Custom Categories
• Unlimited Budgets
• Smart Savings Plans

These services can enhance your original services as they will offer more budgets, one-on-one interaction with Truebill representatives, assistance with savings plans, and representatives negotiating on your behalf with bills and subscriptions. 

Additionally, Truebill also charges for some services where they are required to use any additional employee time. For instance, if a service requires a representative to wait on hold to dispute a bill, a small fee is involved. This may be worth it if you tend to be busy and if they end up saving you money.

And finally, Truebill does charge a commission rate for each and every successful bill negotiation they are able to procure. More on that below.

How much does Truebill charge for successful bill negotiations?

Truebill charges you a 30-60% commission (you get to choose the percentage) on any savings they net you. This can get substantial. What makes this even more difficult to swallow is that Truebill will proceed to multiply the monthly savings by twelve months and then charge your card on file the full 30-60% of that number. 

Example: Say, for instance, you are using an internet provider that is charging you $160 per month, but the promotion in your area is $80 for the same package. Truebill may automatically sign you up for the promotion, netting you $80 in savings per month. That’s $960 savings for the year.

Once the yearly savings are established, they then bill the card you have on file for 30% (lowest option) of what they saved you. In the internet subscription scenario, that’s 30% of $960, which comes out to a $288 charge from Truebill.

It’ll take a few months for you to break even. Then you’ll start seeing the savings. You’ve got to keep that in mind and make sure that you have enough in the bank to pay that upfront.

This can be burdensome for those already living paycheck to paycheck. However, if you are in a position to be able to take advantage of this, a long-term mindset comes in handy and is crucial to getting ahead with this service.

Does Truebill App lend you money?

Truebill will be able to assist you with finances if needed. They offer cash advances until your next payday to help you get through tough times. Cash advances typically come with exorbitant fees, but Truebill offers it with no interest or fees attached. 

Will the Truebill app still charge you if you don’t actively use it?

Keep in mind that ironically, even though Truebill performs a service of reducing your monthly bills, the app itself can become one of those monthly bills that you may forget about if you don’t actively use their services. Unlike other services that Truebill purports to remove if unnecessary, they won’t suggest you remove their own app if you fail to use it.

You need to understand that once you link your card, you are allowing Truebill to charge for any successful negotiations that are done on your behalf. Of course, Truebill will always ask your permission before moving forward with any negotiations, but be sure to keep that in mind.

Who do we recommend the Truebill app to?

Based on the popularity of the Truebill app and its stellar ratings, we can safely say that Truebill is suitable for anyone who is looking to save time and money. It’s a low-risk proposal if you want to try it out for one month to see if it’s worth it for your particular situation.

You might find that the app is quite thorough and saves you a ton of time in checking your accounts, including your insurance, savings, student debt, mortgages, and other accounts you may not have thought to look through before.

How to sign up for Truebill

It is easy to create a new Truebill account. Just follow the steps outlined below:

1. Download the Truebill app for Android or iOS.
2. Enter your email and set a password for your account.
3. Select your bank institution(s) through a third-party service called Plaid.
4. You are now ready to get started with Truebill and all the features it has to offer.

Of note, Plaid is a safe and legitimate company that is used by many other major platforms, including one of Truebill’s competitors, Hiatus. You can rest assured that is a completely safe connection.

Also, since Truebill works by helping you to manage your finances, Truebill needs to access your bank account information. There’s no way around it. If you don’t see your bank name on the list, you may use the Truebill search function to look for it.

You may be asked to upload billing statements in addition to providing Truebill with access to your bills and subscriptions. Truebill will ask you to put a debit or credit card on file for them to be able to charge if needed. You are then ready to make use of their full features to save money.

How do I cancel my Truebill subscription?

Truebill does not have you locked into a contract. You are free to unsubscribe at any time without penalty. Here are the directions to do so:

• From the app, scroll to the Settings tab
• Select the Premium option
• Scroll to the bottom and select “Modify Premium”
• Follow the steps to cancel your subscription

It isn’t difficult at all, which is perfect for those that want to dip their toes in and see what it’s like without fully committing.

Is Truebill legit?

Truebill is probably the most legit bill-saving app in terms of reputation. They’ve been around for quite a while and have garnered great reviews.

The app is very comprehensive as a personal finance tool in addition to saving you money. Furthermore, it’s got a great, easy-to-use interface.

Is Truebill safe for users?

Overall, Truebill is safe and can be trusted with your information. They comply with regulatory standards for good reason. With the amount of access you are giving to Truebill, it’s essential to know whether or not your identity and financial information are safe. 

The various ways in which Truebill does its part in being safe for users to use are as follows:

• 256-bit encryption for security, which is bank-level security.
• They use Plaid, which is a separate third-party service to connect with financial institutions, so you won’t actually be giving Truebill any of your banking information.
• They do not share or sell any of your private information.
• Amazon Web Services is where your data is hosted. Security is top-notch, so much so that the Department of Defense stores sensitive data there as well.

So, while it might be somewhat alarming to give an app every detail about your financial life, Truebill does its due diligence in ensuring that you are protected.

Truebill Alternatives

Truebill app reviews (by real users)

Truebill is available on both iOS and Android. On the Apple App Store, it’s got over 42,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.5/5 stars. On the Google Play store, it’s got over 31,000 reviews with an average of 4.3/5 stars. Those are some seriously good numbers.

Customers are overall very happy with the Truebill experience. Check out some of the reviews below:

“At first I didn’t get the point of paying an extra five dollars a month for a service that touts cutting your subscriptions down, but this has already saved me more than I’ve paid for it.”

“The only mistake I made was not using it in the first place many months back. It’s user-friendly, incredibly comprehensive, and saves me an absurd amount of time. Best yet, it’s finally gotten me on track of understanding our expenses.”

“Budgeting isn’t my favorite activity, but Truebill takes all of the stressful aspects away so that it makes it a breeze! There are aspects to the app that I have yet to utilize, but simply categorizing my purchases, tracking income, and seeing where my money is spent has been a huge eye-opener for me. I just signed up for premium so that I can add notes to my purchases. I know that the other premium benefits will only add to my appreciation of Truebill.”

“Automatically signs you up for premium membership. Makes it ‘easy’ to cancel which it technically is, but it’s also a multi-step process to cancel because they basically beg you not to leave.”

How to contact Truebill customer service

You can get in touch with customer service via email by filling out their form on the Truebill contact page. They respond to support requests between 9am to 5pm ET, Monday through Friday.

They can take care of requests relating to billing and refunds, bill negotiations, and account access, among other things.

Additionally, you can always get in contact with the support team via chat whenever you are logged into your Truebill account. This is the quickest and most direct way to get your questions answered.

Unfortunately, Truebill doesn’t provide any phone numbers for customers who prefer to communicate verbally.

Are there any alternatives to the Truebill app?

Trim

This is one of Truebill’s truest competitors. The app was released around 2015 and is focused on saving its customers money by negotiating bills and canceling subscriptions as well. Trim also charges a much more appealing 15 percent as compared to Truebill’s minimum of 30%. Trim’s rate used to be 33%, but they’ve done away with that. This alone likely attracts a ton of customers over to Trim compared with Truebill. However, it doesn’t have a mobile app if you’re someone who likes to check things on the go.

Hiatus

With the Hiatus app, they will negotiate bills, cancel subscriptions, help you budget, and assist you in paying off debt. For their services, they used to charge a whopping 50% of the savings they net you for the year, but they’ve done away with that completely and don’t charge for any savings they negotiate for you. Hiatus’s only cost is a flat $9.99 per month subscription.

Mint

With Mint, you’ll get help budgeting, canceling subscriptions, tracking credit for free, and so much more. But it’s more of a do-it-yourself kind of app. Since Mint is owned by Intuit, a highly trusted and well-established company, you can rest assured that you are safe using them. And, it’s completely free.

In conclusion

Let’s quickly recap the good and the bad of the Truebill app:

• Truebill excels at monitoring and analyzing your expenses
• The app itself is free unless you want to unlock certain Premium services for $3-12
• Truebill charges you 30-60% commission (you get to choose) on any savings they net you
• They can offer cash advances without interest or fees until your next payday if needed
• It’s got great ratings on both iOS and Android; 4.5/5 stars and 4.3/5 stars respectively

If you are someone that struggles to save, budget, and wastes more money than you should due to disorganization, then absolutely, Truebill can be worth it for you. Their 30-60% fee might seem a bit much, but that is still some significant savings. Remember, 70% of a watermelon is still bigger than 100% of an orange.

However, if you’re already on top of your budgeting game, it may not be worth your time. They may be able to find you some savings, but it may not be significant enough to justify the fees. Instead, you could probably just take a few minutes and go over your bank statements to cut costs yourself.

Hopefully, this review helps you out. If you’re interested in signing up for Truebill, we’ve provided a link for you down below. Feel free to let us know what you think of the app!

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