Snoop Personal Finance Tools Review

Breadth of Services

Snoop is a financial data analysis app that studies—or “snoops” on—your spending habits and, in turn, makes recommendations on how you could be spending less. A significant portion of what Snoop does is simply connecting users with better deals on their everyday expenses. It also connects them with each other through the Snoop Community.

Screenshot from snoop.app August 2020

Snoop allows users to connect various banking and credit accounts to the app. It provides a single, convenient place to keep an eye on your expenses. The app categorizes expenses so you can see where you’re spending your money. It also combs through your bills to detect unexpected increases, unwarranted fees, and situations where you may be paying more than you should for specific services like broadband, cellular, and insurance. The app scans the products you purchase and sends you discount vouchers to help you reduce expenses, too.

Snoop helps users stay on top of their spending through daily balance alerts and weekly summaries. It also takes note of bill due dates and reminds you weekly what bills you should pay to avoid penalties. That’s important for keeping your credit score up.

Pricing

Snoop is free. End of story. You may wonder how Snoop makes its money and the company is very up front about how it does that. You can leave a tip for Snoop if you are pleased with the money-saving recommendations it makes. That’s not required but if you love the service, you may well find yourself among the Snoop tippers. If you take one of Snoop’s recommendations—for example switching to a lower-cost internet service provider the app points out—Snoop may earn a commission. Snoop provides market research based on the data it collects on users’ financial data to other companies and they are compensated in return. And one last thing: Snoop is so confident that users will love its app that they also sell Snoop merchandise so you can wear the Snoop brand proudly. 

Educational Materials

Snoop offers a very limited blog on its website. When we checked, there were only three articles posted. But Snoop encourages users to educate each other through its community suggestion board. You can also provide feedback to the company by posting in the Snoop Forum.

Customer Experience

Snoop calls itself a “loyal little robot with a big heart.” That’s pretty charming, you have to admit. And the personality of the Snoop app and website reflects this characterization quite sincerely. There is nothing intimidating about Snoop. For people who financial matters daunting, Snoop creates a friendly, encouraging experience. Engaging the app and reaping its benefits won’t put a lot of mental or emotional strain on you. In part, that’s because, when compared to other personal finance apps, Snoop’s purview is relatively narrow. It’s not a banking or investment app. It doesn’t ask a lot of hard questions. Instead, it makes pleasant suggestions on how you can save money. Some users may be looking for more from a personal finance app. But even if that’s the case, Snoop might be an affable companion to the more powerful apps you choose to employ.

Snoop prominently promises that it will never sell your personal data. The data it collects is used exclusively to deliver and market Snoop products and any other products that you have specifically asked to learn more about.  However, Snoop does collect a lot of data in the course of supplying its services and one of the ways Snoop makes money is by aggregating and analyzing data on your financial habits and creating intelligence other companies can purchase to inform their business decisions. However, your data is rendered entirely anonymous prior to being shared in this way.

Snoop is a British company and may be best suited to European users. That’s because it can only connect to a limited number of banking institutions and many of these are not US companies. However the list of supported banks does include some large US and international companies, including American Express, Capital One, Barclay’s, and MBNA. The app continues to expand its list of supported institutions. Snoop’s website also reports a bunch of “coming soon” features, so you may want to check back periodically to see whether upgrades make Snoop more useful for you.

Reputation

Snoop is a very new company and is not yet rated by the BBB or Trustpilot. The app earns a 4.7 out of 5 rating among iOS users and a 4.3 out of 5 rating from Android users. Snoop also earns considerable accolades from various finance-focused online publications.

Snoop Summed Up

Snoop is a terrfic tool if cutting your expenses is you foremost goal. We could all use a little bit of that, but some customers may want more, such as the opportunity to save or invest automatically from the comfort of their phones. Snoop provides a delightful experience, however, and can help you save money on the products and services you already buy. It costs nothing to use so, from our perspective, Snoop is all upside.