Sonanta
Sonanta is an iPhone app that logs your expenses by voice. Say “spent 300 at the OXXO with my Santander card” and it's saved with amount, merchant, category and card — offline, without an account and without handing your bank password to anyone. These are the short answers; each one links to the page with the detail.
Sonanta at a glance
- What it is: a personal finance and expense tracking app that logs by voice.
- Runs on: iPhone with iOS 17 or later.
- Price: free to download, 14 days with everything unlocked, then a one-time purchase of $149 MXN (or the equivalent in your country). No subscription.
- Languages: English and Mexican Spanish.
- Privacy: everything is processed and stored on the iPhone. No servers, no account, no ads. The App Store lists it as “Data Not Collected”.
- Who makes it: one person, Jesús Eduardo Hernández Martínez.
- Download: Sonanta on the App Store.
Contents
01The basics
What is Sonanta?
Sonanta is a personal finance app for iPhone that logs your expenses by voice. You say one sentence — “spent 300 at the OXXO with my Santander card” — and it becomes an expense with amount, merchant, category and payment method. It also logs from a photo of a receipt, from an Apple Pay payment or by hand; it warns you before each subscription and installment charge, and tells you how much you've spent. It all happens on the iPhone.
Who is Sonanta for?
Sonanta is for people who want to know where their money goes and have already given up on other expense apps because filling in a form for every coffee got old. It suits people who pay half by card and half in cash — the bank app never sees the tacos or the parking — and people who won't give a finance app their bank password. You need an iPhone with iOS 17 or later.
Is there an app that logs expenses just by talking?
Yes: that's what Sonanta is built for. There are no commands to learn and no order to follow; you say it the way you'd tell someone, including amounts like “12 thousand” and dates like “the day before yesterday”. Speech is transcribed and interpreted on the iPhone, so it works offline, and the audio is never kept. The app is in English and Mexican Spanish and follows your iPhone's language.
How much does Sonanta cost? Is it a subscription?
It isn't a subscription. Sonanta is free to download from the App Store, you use it for 14 days with every feature and, if you keep it, you buy it once from inside the app for $149 MXN (the equivalent in your currency elsewhere). The trial never turns into a charge on its own, and updates cost nothing extra. On a new iPhone you restore the purchase with the same Apple ID. All about pricing.
Which devices does Sonanta run on?
Sonanta is an iPhone app for iOS 17 or later. On iPad and on Apple Silicon Macs it can be installed as an iPhone app, but it's designed for one hand. There's no Android version. “Tell me about your day”, the feature that splits several expenses told in one go, also needs an iPhone with Apple Intelligence; without it, you log one expense at a time.
02Logging expenses
How do you log an expense in Sonanta?
Sonanta has four ways in: by voice (hold the button and say it), from a photo of a printed receipt, by paying with Apple Pay, or by hand on a number pad. So you don't have to hunt for the app, it also opens already listening from “Hey Siri, log an expense”, the Action button, the Home Screen widget or Shortcuts. When everything is clear, the expense saves itself and leaves “Undo” within reach. The four ways, in detail.
Does Sonanta work offline?
Yes, fully. Speech recognition, sentence interpretation, receipt reading, alerts and summaries are all computed on the iPhone, so Sonanta logs, categorizes, warns and answers the same way in airplane mode, on the subway or in a store with no signal. The only thing that uses the network is the optional backup to your own iCloud.
Can I log several expenses at once?
Yes, with “Tell me about your day”. Slide the microphone up to the lock and tell it everything in one go — “a 62 coffee at Starbucks, then the Uber, 120, and yesterday groceries at Walmart” — and Apple Intelligence, using the model that lives on the iPhone, splits it into expenses with amount, merchant, category and date. It handles corrections like “it was 230, no, sorry, 320”. It needs an iPhone with Apple Intelligence.
Does Sonanta read receipts?
Yes, printed ones. Point the camera at the receipt; Sonanta crops the paper and reads the total, the merchant and the date, offline, ignoring subtotal, tax and change. The photo is processed on the iPhone and never uploaded. Handwritten receipts don't read well yet — dictate those instead.
How does Sonanta log Apple Pay payments?
Through a shortcut you install once from Settings → Capture. When you pay by holding the iPhone to the terminal, the shortcut passes Sonanta the merchant and the amount, and the payment waits in a tray until you confirm it with one tap. It never asks for your bank credentials. It only works for contactless payments made with the iPhone; cash, transfers and online purchases get dictated.
Does Sonanta handle shared expenses?
Yes. If you paid for dinner for four, say “dinner 1,200, Ana owes me 300 and David owes me 300”: the full amount counts as yours and each person stays pending until you mark them as paid. You can also add it later from the expense detail, and names are learned as you go.
03Alerts and summary
Can Sonanta track my subscriptions?
Yes. Say once “monthly Netflix subscription for 249 pesos” and Sonanta logs it on its own every time it's due, warns you before each charge with as many days' notice as you choose, and shows the monthly total, the yearly projection and any price changes. Weekly, twice-monthly, monthly and yearly subscriptions all work. How the alerts work.
How does Sonanta handle installment plans?
Say “bought a TV for 12,000 in 12 interest-free payments” and Sonanta works out the term, the monthly payment and the month it ends. Each installment is logged on its due date — not the full 12 thousand at once — you're warned before every payment, and everything you're paying off is added up: how much goes out each month, how much is left and the month you're free.
Does Sonanta have budgets?
Yes: overall or per category, by week, half-month or month. Every expense is deducted automatically, Sonanta warns you at 80% and again if you go over, and opening a budget shows how much you can spend per day to stay within it and where you'd end up at this pace. Sonanta's budgets inform; they never block anything.
What does Sonanta tell me about my spending?
Sonanta's monthly summary builds itself: how you're doing against last month at the same point, where you'd end up at this pace, which categories it went to, how much was already committed to subscriptions and installments, the month day by day and your small recurring habits. You can also ask by voice — “how much have I spent on food this month?” — and get the answer instantly. Each period leaves a report as stories and as a PDF. See the summary.
04Your data
Is Sonanta safe? Where is my data stored?
With Sonanta, your expenses, your voice and your receipts are processed and stored on your iPhone. Sonanta has no servers that store anyone's information, shows no ads and sells no data; its App Store listing says “Data Not Collected”. The only place outside the phone is the encrypted backup in your own iCloud account, and only if you leave it on. Where your data goes.
Does Sonanta connect to my bank?
No. Sonanta uses no aggregators or bank connections and never asks for passwords or card numbers. Your cards are just names — “the Santander”, “the red one” — so it knows what you paid with. Even Apple Pay payments arrive through a shortcut on your own iPhone, not through the bank.
Do I need to create an account to use Sonanta?
No. Sonanta has no sign-up, no email and no password: you open it and log your first expense. Apple handles the purchase with your Apple ID, so Sonanta never learns who you are.
Can I export my data from Sonanta?
Yes, whenever you want and at no extra cost. From Settings → My data you export your expenses to CSV, filtered by period, category and payment method, to open in Excel, Numbers or anywhere else. You can export them whether or not you've bought Sonanta.
05Compared with the alternatives
Almost nobody comes to Sonanta without having tried something else first. This is how it compares with what people use instead to keep track of their spending:
| Sees cash | Logging an expense | Needs bank access | Offline | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonanta | Yes | One sentence, a few seconds | No | Yes, fully |
| Your bank's app | No | Automatic, that account only | It is your bank | No |
| App that links your accounts | No | Automatic, bank activity only | Yes | No |
| Manual entry app | Yes | A form per expense | No | Depends on the app |
| Spreadsheet or notes | Yes | By hand, usually later | No | Depends |
How is Sonanta different from an app that connects to your bank?
An app that links to your bank imports your transactions automatically, but it needs access to your accounts, keeps your information on its servers and never sees cash. Sonanta does the opposite: it asks for no credentials and connects to nothing, keeps everything on your iPhone and logs cash too — in exchange, you say the expense in a few seconds or let it arrive from Apple Pay.
Why use Sonanta instead of a spreadsheet or a notes app?
A spreadsheet works as long as you fill it in, and almost nobody fills it in at the checkout: it gets left for Sunday, and by Sunday half of it is gone. Sonanta logs in the moment with one sentence, sets the category itself, warns you before charges and builds the summary with no formulas. And if you ever want your spreadsheet, export to CSV.
06When Sonanta isn't for you
Sonanta does a few things and does them fully. It isn't the right app if:
- You use Android. For now Sonanta only exists for iPhone.
- You want every bank transaction to come in on its own without saying anything. Sonanta doesn't connect to your bank; the closest thing is logging Apple Pay payments.
- You want to invest, borrow or pay your cards from the app. Sonanta logs, warns and answers; it doesn't move money or give financial advice.
- Your iPhone can't run iOS 17.
Question not here? Write to hola@sonanta.com.mx. Sonanta is made by one person and I answer myself, usually within 48 hours.