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What bank sync would actually cost

Bank feeds and app integrations are the most requested things I haven't built. What they really cost, and why the answer is later rather than never.

Update, October 2026. This post is older than bank sync. It exists now and comes with Premium, for banks in the US and Canada only, and the numbers below are why it sits on the one plan rather than on every plan. Plus and Premium also have a calendar feed now, which another calendar app can subscribe to for the tasks you've given a date. Tasks on a Household's or a Team's board aren't part of it. It runs one way, out of Buhata. Everything else is as I wrote it, apart from one line near the end about importing a bank's statement file, which Buhata has never done.

Two questions come up more than any others. Can it read my bank account, and does it talk to my calendar.

Today the answer to both is no. I decided that on purpose, and I'd rather show you the arithmetic than write "coming soon" and hope you forget you asked.

You don't connect to a bank

You connect to an aggregator, a company sitting between a few thousand banks and everybody who wants to read them. Getting real access means being a registered business with the paperwork to match, which I have, so that part isn't the obstacle.

The billing is. Their transaction products charge a monthly fee per connected account. Not per customer. Per account, every month, whether you opened the app that month or ignored it entirely. Somebody who links a checking accountChecking accountA bank or credit union account for everyday money going in and out, used by debit card, checks, transfers and direct deposit. See more, a savings accountSavings accountA bank or credit union account for money you're setting aside for later, which earns interest and is insured up to federal limits at insured institutions. See more and a credit card is three of those, running forever, against one subscription.

It also stopped being predictable. In 2025 one of the biggest US banks started charging aggregators for data it had been handing over free, and the rule that was supposed to settle who pays for what is tied up in court and being rewritten, with the fee question reopened. So I'd be committing to a bill I can't forecast on behalf of somebody paying me a fixed amount every month. I've run a few businesses. That's the shape of the ones that go badly.

Why this matters more than the money

The promise I made is that a household can afford this and rely on it. Those two things are the whole product.

Bolt on a cost that grows with how many banks people link and I get one of two outcomes. Either the price goes up for everybody, including the people who never wanted the feature and are now paying toward it. Or I cap it somewhere quiet and the feature becomes a disappointment with a good name.

Neither of those is something I want to explain to somebody who trusted me with their grocery list.

The other integrations are the same story in better clothes

Calendar, mail, chat, the automation platforms.

The large providers class calendar and mail as restricted data, which means a security assessment carried out by an approved third party, paid for by me, repeated every year. There are companies that will sell you one connector covering hundreds of services, and when you read the list properly, most of it is business software no family has ever opened. Apple Health comes up a lot for the fitness side. It has no server API. There's nothing there to connect to.

None of this is impossible. All of it is expensive in a way that arrives monthly and doesn't care whether anybody used it.

What happens instead

Later, and in a tier of its own.

I'm not raising the price of the plan you're on to pay for something you didn't ask for. When integrations arrive they'll sit in a higher tier, so the people who want them are the people paying for them, and everybody else keeps the price they signed up at.

Meanwhile there's a route that costs nothing a month. Type an entry once, and anything that repeats, a salary or a bill, fills itself in ahead of you. It's unglamorous. It also doesn't need anybody's permission to keep working.

Not a closed door

None of this is me saying never.

I want Buhata talking to the other things in your life eventually. I'm just not willing to pay for that with your subscription before I know what it costs.

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