About
A free expense tracker for tax season.
Expense is an expense tracker for those filing taxes as individuals—freelancers, self-employed, and side hustlers. Drop in a receipt image, a screenshot, a PDF or a forwarded email: it finds the merchant and the amount, picks a category from the IRS Schedule C lines, and files it in a report you name. Mileage is measured on the map and priced at the year's IRS rate. Ask a question in plain words on the Insights page ("how much have I spent this year?", "where does my money go?") and it answers from your own records, with a chart when the question spans several months. Connect your Gmail or Fastmail account and the receipts in your inbox get pulled in on their own. At tax time you export a PDF per report, or a ZIP with everything your accountant needs. Ad-free.
What do you get
Free while we're early
No credit card, no payment, no ads. Join now while it's free.
Stop losing receipts in your gallery
The receipts are already on your phone: photos in the gallery, screenshots, a PDF in Downloads. Drop one in, or paste it or forward the email, and OCR and AI pull out the merchant, amount, date and category and file the expense. Invoices work the same way, and an attachment on a receipt email, PDF or image, is pulled out and read, not just the text in the body.
Email receipts effortless
Forward a receipt email to your account and the expense is recorded for you, dated from the original email.
Connect your Fastmail account
Connect your Fastmail mailbox and receipts are processed as they land: merchant, amount and category filled in, nothing to forward. Mail is screened locally before any AI runs, so newsletters and bank alerts are ignored, and a merchant you have paid before skips the model entirely. Connecting also scans back through the last 90 days of inbox, so your records start the day you connect, not the day after. Most other expense apps only auto-import from Gmail; Expense works with Fastmail.
Get ready with your deductions on time
Every account starts with the categories from the IRS Schedule C lines, so a receipt is filed on the line it belongs to and nothing has to be sorted out at tax time.
PDF reports to show your accountant
Group your expenses into reports you name, Home or Work or Travel, and each report keeps its own total. Download a PDF per report with its receipts attached, or a ZIP with the CSV and all the receipt images, ready to hand to your accountant.
Log drives without Excel
Map the drive and the app works out the distance and the deduction, at the IRS rate for the date you drove.
Duplicates detection
Every receipt image is fingerprinted with SHA-256 when it's stored, so the same file arriving twice, by upload, forward or connected inbox, is recognized as one receipt. Auto-imports skip the second copy, an upload gets a warning before it messes up your totals.
Reconcile against your monthly statement
Upload a credit card or bank statement (PDF, CSV, QuickBooks, or Excel) and Expense matches the charges against what you logged. Anything you never logged stands out, and you can reconcile as many statements as you like, personal and business spending on one card included.
Share with your family or accountant
Invite someone with a code and you all see the same expenses. Your other accounts stay private.
Use your personal AI assistant
Connect your own AI assistant (Claude, OpenAI or anything MCP-capable) by signing in with your account, no token to paste. Drop a receipt into the chat and it gets uploaded and categorized, ask what you spent on flights, or have it build a report for you. Disconnect in one click in settings. In Chrome, browser agents also get read-only in-page tools (WebMCP) without any setup.
Your data belongs to you
No ads, no data selling. Your expenses stay in your account, and you can export and leave anytime.
Key facts
- Name: Expense
- URL: https://expense.labnotes.org
- Price: free. No ads
- Built for the tax time: categories come from the IRS Schedule C lines, expenses are grouped into reports you name, and the mileage deduction uses the IRS rate for the drive date and type
- Receipt capture: upload, paste, drag & drop, or forward from email (images and PDFs)
- Fastmail: connect your mailbox and receipts in your inbox are processed automatically: merchant, amount, and category filled in, no forwarding. Most other expense apps only auto-import from Gmail
- The OCR finds a merchant and amount, an LLM categorizes the receipt and you just save it
- Export: a PDF per report with the receipts attached or a ZIP with everything (CSV plus all the receipt images)
- Reconciliation: upload a bank statement (PDF, CSV, QFX/OFX, Excel) to match charges against your logged expenses and catch deductions you missed
- Mileage: map-based drives at the IRS mileage rate for the drive date/type
- AI assistant access: connect any MCP client (Claude, OpenAI, etc) by signing in with your account (OAuth), no API keys. The assistant can capture receipts, log mileage, answer questions about your spending, and build and export reports. In Chrome, the app also registers read-only in-page tools for browser agents (WebMCP), no setup
- Insights: the app's own question page, with no assistant to connect. Ask "where does my money go?" or "what still needs a report?" and the answer is computed from your expenses, with a chart when the question spans months
- Multi-user accounts: collaborate on one account with an invite code
- Data remains in your account. No ads, no data resale
Start collecting this year's expenses.
Accounts are free and start empty. Add your first receipt in under a minute.