When the first honeymoon phase of a marriage is over, it can be difficult to remember when everything was so fresh. But keeping in contact with the days you spent in your spouse’s company can be easy and fun, believe it or not. With the mobile phone industry growing at an accelerated rate, traveling along with bringing new technologies that can help make your marriage stronger than ever before.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Married Couples
- Love Nudge
The Best Overall Relationship App
Free
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Love Nudge Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Love Nudge is the newly released app by Dr. Gary Chapman, a marriage pioneer and author of The 5 Love Languages.
Hands down, this was the most helpful free marriage app for couples that we tested. It’s well designed, simple to use, genuinely helpful, and totally free app for married couples.
Ryan and I talk often in our Just Duo It program how important it is to express love to your partner in an optimal way.
For example, what’s the point of giving gifts to your spouse if they only care about spending quality time with you? For free marriage counseling, nothing beats the Love Nudge.
This app guides you through a love language quiz, recommends actions that you can do for your partner, and then asks you to set goals to achieve them.
The goals can be pre-scheduled, like giving a back rub or sending an “I love you” text, with alerts. From there, the app tracks how often you meet these goals, plus how satisfied you are that day with your relationship.
The coolest part? Both you and your partner’s accounts are linked, so you can actively see how happy your partner is over time (a weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar of data is shown), and also what your partner’s love language quiz results are.
There’s also a chat section where you can have a private conversation together.
As two engineers, we love this data and the ability to quantify how happy you are within your relationship.
This is a great app for relationship building and it’s an app for every couple, no matter how many years you’ve been married.
- Relish
The Best Marriage Therapy App
Free 7-day trial with $99.99 subscription for six months for 2 people
Relish Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
The Relish couples therapy app is the self-proclaimed #1 Relationship Training app, and we have to agree.
“85% of people in couples therapy think their relationship problems are their partner’s fault.”
Relish is the perfect balance of online learning, partner exercises, and real-life coaching. Yes, you read that right. Everyone on Relish is paired with an online relationship coach.
When we signed up, we got JoAnn and were asked to check in with her weekly.
JoAnn chooses hand-picked lessons based on our messages and relationship health quiz answers. Our first lesson was learning how to re-wire your brain for happiness. That was right up our alley!
As a couple who has never been to couple’s therapy before, we were excited about the lessons chosen for us. We feel like we have a strong relationship but wanted to continue improving, and the app completely understood that.
Our lessons included mindful moments, date night ideas, and self-awareness.
The app also covers deeper lessons surrounding conflict resolution and intimacy but is done in a fun and science-backed way. This customized approach to relationship training felt like a game and wasn’t corny, intimidating, or hard.
Both you and your partner can be on the same subscription, with the app downloaded to both of your phones.
The app is $39.99 for one month, or else a yearly subscription of $8.34 a month comes out to $99.99 a year.
This yearly subscription includes a free trial. Don’t miss this app if your marriage could use some guidance. We thought this was hands-down the best marriage counseling app.
Hands-down, this is the best couples therapy app and our most highly recommended app for couples. Additionally, if you are a couple with trust issues, this is the app for you.
After using the app for several months, we share our full review of the Relish Relationship app. We highly recommend signing up for the free 7-day trial.
Start a 7-Day Free Trial with the Relish Relationship App
- Lasting
Our Runner-up Choice for a Marriage Therapy App
Free 7-day trial with $79.99 yearly subscription
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Lasting Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Just as Relish was the self-proclaimed #1 Relationship Training app, the Lasting marriage app is the self-proclaimed #1 Couples Counseling app. We’ve placed Lasting as our second-place app of choice.
Like Relish, Lasting offers personalized lessons based on you and your partner’s responses to relationship quizzes.
We began with a 4-minute audio recording on what makes a relationship healthy. We loved it and recognized many of the facts from relationship experts like Dr. John Gottman.
The content was solid, but we felt like we were sitting in a lecture hall instead of engaging in a fun and beautiful app as you do with Relish.
I started on 10 lessons about Conflict and enjoyed what I learned, but I found it harder to concentrate during the audio recordings.
Luckily, the written transcript is available to review afterward.
Overall, Lasting offers the best of the science and data surrounding marriage counseling but is presented in a more formal, school course-style which is why it’s our second-best marriage counseling app after Relish.
Also, it does not offer live coaching as Relish does.
- Coral
The Best Intimacy App to Spice Things Up
Free 7-day trial with $59.99 yearly subscription
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Coral Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Coral is everything we want in a couple’s app: science, data, and experimentation. And the fun part? It’s all about intimacy and sex. This is our favorite love app for couples.
Curated by sex therapists, Coral can be downloaded to both you and your spouse’s phones for a shared account.
Take personal quizzes to learn more about your personal sexuality, as well as tackling what you want out of your intimate life with your partner.
The goal is to improve your health and happiness, and exercises are given for you to do together.
As you may be wondering… yes, some of these exercises are sexual.
While our first lesson included a non-sexual exercise recreating a well-known experiment of gazing into each other’s eyes for several minutes (promoting oxytocin), we saw later in the agenda that there were definitely other lessons and activities to spice up your marriage and sex life.
This includes an audio exercise written by their intimacy coaches for topics such as penis massage, vulva massage, and exploring sex positions. And more! This is the best app for couples that lets you touch each other.
We love this couple app’s design and interface, gamifying it and making it fun – not like attending a class.
Another great thing is this app gives you the option to express what you’re looking for, including personal desire as well as non-cisgender preferences.
- Gottman Card Decks
The Best App to Improve Couple’s Communication
Free
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Gottman Card Decks Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Dr. Gottman is arguably the world’s leading researcher on couples, and this is his app.
Similar to card decks, one person can download this app on their phone and read and discuss the questions together.
We were impressed with the Gottman Card Decks app. The truth is, we were expecting it to be corny, but it wasn’t. It was a great relationship app.
Just like the couple’s card games that we recommend at the end of our article, ‘Board Games for Couples,’ these can be downloaded on your phone, free.
After Love Nudge, this is the next best free, relationship building app for married couples. But this is different because it’s a game app for couples.
The categories span topics like “Date Questions,” “Sex Questions,” and the relationship-building “Love Maps.” Here were some of the questions we got:
Date Questions: “What is something small that really makes your day?”
Sex Questions: “What, for you, is the difference (if any) between making love and having sex?”
Open-Ended Questions: “How have your friendships changed lately? Have you grown closer to some friends? More distant from others?”
Additionally, a few categories like “Give Appreciation” and “Expressing Empathy” are designed for one person to review and see how they can work on incorporating more of them into their day.
What Ryan and I liked so much about this app for married couples is that the questions were surprisingly thoughtful and high quality. It even goes into a “Salsa” series of mild, medium, and hot ideas on how to spice up your sex life.
The purpose of this couple app is to create connections and improve communication, and we think it achieves that. Even as a couple who has been together for nearly a decade, we found the questions relevant, new, and fun.
Plus, it’s free!
- Cozi
The Best Calendar and Planning App for Couples
Create a free account for the basic version or $29.99 for premium
Cozi Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Cozi is the ultimate family organizer, with an impressive 4.8 out of 5 stars according to 209,000 ratings on the App Store.
Ryan and I have tried so many times to sync our Google calendars together and forgotten to share events. Finally, Cozi was our solution.
Cozi syncs the calendars you keep on your phone and laptop all into one and will send alerts to remind you of upcoming events.
The calendar is surprisingly clear and simple to view, giving you a nice daily view, and even a monthly view if you upgrade to a premium subscription.
Additionally, you can create shared grocery lists and to-do lists so that you and your spouse always have the most up-to-date information.
No more piecing together individual texts throughout the week like… Pick up bananas! Don’t forget to clean the windows!
When things are organized like this, the family is more efficient and gets things done faster. This is the best accountability app for couples out there.
If you aren’t already sharing your calendars and lists, it’s time to sign up for a free Cozi account and start using the app as a couple.
- Honeydue
The Best Money App for Couples
Free
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Honeydue Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Getting a grasp on your finances as a couple is an important step in every relationship.
As we discuss in our Couple’s Finance Guide, transparency, and getting debt-skeletons out of the closet allows for opportunities to get on a track together and refocus your life goals.
Even for couples who already manage their finances on similar apps like Mint, Honeydue pulls double-work by allowing you link accounts and giving a better overall view of your finances as a couple.
Additionally, Honeydue has couple-centric features like setting budgets, bill reminders, and splitting expenses where you can settle up later.
Even if you don’t like discussing money, it’s important to optimize your spending habits and take a look at the big-picture of where your money goes every month.
This free app for married couples is a no-brainer.
- Couple Game
The Best Relationship Quiz App
Free but extra packs are $1.99 each or for $9.99 all
Download on the App Store
Download on Google Play
Couple Game Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
Couple Game is similar to the Gottman Card Deck we discussed in #5, but a bit more automated and more topical.
It takes the form of a quiz where you link accounts. It asks both you and your partner questions, individually, and then you need to guess what the other person said.
This turns it into a great game for married couples, and you can get points based on how well you know your partner.
At the time of writing this, the Couple Game app only has 24 packs (with only 3 for free) meaning you could go through all of them in a day.
So while it’s fun, this wouldn’t be the best investment compared to our other couple’s game app, the Gottman Card Decks, unless you really needed an ice breaker to talk about specific topics.
The card decks include topics like politics, our home, sex and intimacy, future kids, philosophy & ethics, friendship, and more.
So, if you’ve been wondering what your partner thinks about kids, this might be a non-aggressive way of bringing it up. Also, this is a good app for couples with trust issues.
Overall, this is a fun app but don’t expect it to dive too deeply into the relationship or go beyond a couple of days worth of content, even when purchasing all of the packs.
- Beachbody On Demand
The Best Fitness App for Couples
Start a free 14-day trial or buy an annual membership for $99/year
Beachbody On Demand Best Self-Care Apps
Where can you watch fitness videos, log and track your workout calendar, access nutrition programs with recipes, and interact with a free fitness group for accountability all in one place?
The Beachbody On Demand app. Even with a free account, you have access to these options (although the workouts are limited to just sample workouts and one 7-day beginner program).
You can also start a free (you’ll need to enter your credit card information) 14-day trial of Beachbody On Demand where you’ll get unlimited access.
We’ve made it no secret that we love following Beachbody’s workouts and nutrition tools. Their app works great and you can download workouts for offline use.
This is the most effective way to work out, both for your results and your wallet. Plus, as a couple, you can easily share a membership.
Did we mention there is a new meditation and bedtime stretch series on Beachbody?
Read: Our Data-Driven Review or Beachbody On Demand
- Walk The Distance
The Best Walking Competition App
Free with the option to upgrade or extend routes for $0.99-$2.99
Download on the App Store
Walk the Distance Best Apps for Married Couples Ryan and Alex Duo Life
How could we not include a fitness-style app into this mix? Walk The Distance is one of the best free apps for married couples who are active, outdoorsy, and adventurous.
I discovered this app a few months back when I was looking for information on hiking the Appalachian Trail. This app is for a walking or running competition between friends.
Invite your spouse and select an actual trail, like the Appalachian Trail (2,200 miles), Boston Marathon (26.2 miles), Paris (18 miles), or the Grand Canyon (9.6 miles) among many others.
The app links to your step data from Apple Health, so this app is only available to Apple users, whether with an iPhone or Apple Watch.
The map is then populated with how far you’ve gone, where you both are on the trail, and how far you’ve got left.
Plus, along the way, information about famous sites pop up, giving you smaller goals to reach and an actual, historic tour of your trail!
As we share during our 30-Day Weight Loss Challenge, you should be targeting 12,000 steps a day.
A recent study published in the journal, The Obesity Society, concluded that adult dieters who lost 30 pounds and maintained or continued to lose weight tracked 12,000 steps per day.
Best budgeting apps for married couples
Best for the envelope budgeting system
Goodbudget
Goodbudget
LEARN MORE
Information about Goodbudget has been collected independently by CNBC and has not been reviewed or provided by Goodbudget prior to publication.
Cost
Free for 20 total envelopes; $70 annually for unlimited envelopes
Standout features
Allows couples to use the envelope system digitally for budgeting, and allows couples to track their debt
Categorizes your expenses
Yes, but users must manually input transactions since the app does not sync to your bank account
Links to accounts
No, users must manually input purchases and transactions
Availability
Offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android) and as a version for laptops
Security features
Information is secured using bank-grade 256-bit SSL
See our methodology, terms apply.
Pros
Free version of the app
Helps couples manage their money together, track spending and track debt
Ability to share budget with your partner
Digital envelopes help couples save for big goals that matter to them
Indicates when you’ve gone over budget
Money management courses and resources available
Cons
Can’t connect bank accounts so users must manually enter transactions
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Who’s this for? The Goodbudget app allows users to track their household’s spending using the “envelope method.” The envelope method means that each month, users allocate a certain amount of their income into categories (or digital “envelopes”) labeled for things like groceries, rent, date nights, travel and debt payoff.
This makes it easy to prioritize your spending and plan ahead. Users are only supposed to spend the amount allocated to each envelope, and if they go beyond their budget the envelope will show red to indicate that they overspent.
The envelope method is generally recommended for people who are new to budgeting, so if you and your partner need a way to ease into categorizing your spending, the app might be able to improve your confidence in that area.
Unlike most budgeting and expense tracker apps, Goodbudget does not link to users’ bank accounts and credit cards. Instead, you manually input your transactions into each digital envelope. This actually forces couples to take a hands-on approach to managing their money since they’ll have to actually check to see how much they’re spending in order to upload purchases to the app. However, some people may find manually inputting their transactions to be tedious.
The Goodbudget app has a free version which lets you create 20 envelopes, use the app on up to two devices, track one year’s worth of transaction history and track debt. Some couples may find that 20 envelopes aren’t enough for them, in which case they may consider upgrading to the premium version of Goodbudget for $70 a year or $8 a month; the premium version allows the use of unlimited envelopes, access to the account on up to five devices, access to seven years’ worth of transaction history and debt tracking.
Best for tracking your spending
Mint
Mint
LEARN MORE
Information about Mint has been collected independently by CNBC and has not been reviewed or provided by Mint prior to publication.
Cost
Free
Standout features
Shows income, expenses, savings goals, credit score, investments, net worth
Categorizes your expenses
Yes, but users can modify
Links to accounts
Yes, bank and credit cards
Availability
Offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android)
Security features
Verisign scanning, multi-factor authentication and Touch ID mobile access
See our methodology, terms apply.
Pros
Free to use
Syncs to your bank accounts and credit cards
Users can create savings goals, track investments
Customized alerts when over budget, for large transactions, ATM fees, etc.
Bill payment reminders
Credit monitoring service
Offers blog and education tools, such as a loan repayment calculator
Security features include Verisign scanning, multi-factor authentication and Touch ID mobile access
Cons
Some user reviews complain of ads, glitches in app, expenses assigned to wrong category
View More
Who’s this for? While the Mint app isn’t actually targeted toward couples, the fact that it allows you to connect several different accounts can make it easier for couples to categorize their spending automatically. Mint syncs to your bank accounts, credit cards and retirement accounts to track your income, purchases and savings. And it’ll automatically categorize all transactions so you and your partner don’t have to manually enter purchases and deposits, but you’ll also have the option to revise and add categories as needed. You can also create your own savings goals as a couple and track your investments in the app.
The app will even send alerts if you’re being charged an ATM fee, going over budget or if there’s been a large or suspicious transaction on any of the connected accounts.
The app also has a monthly bill payment tracker allows you see all your bills at one glance, and you can get reminders on upcoming due dates and alerts if your funds are low. These features make Mint a solid pick for couples but unlike Honeydue, Mint doesn’t offer the option to create a joint checking account for you and your partner.
Best for zero-based budgeting
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
LEARN MORE
Information about You Need a Budget (YNAB) has been collected independently by CNBC and has not been reviewed or provided by YNAB prior to publication.
Cost
34-day free trial then $84 per year or $11.99 per month (students who provide proof of enrollment get 12 months free)
Standout features
Instead of using traditional budgeting buckets, users allocate every dollar they earn to something (known as the “zero-based budgeting system” where no dollar is unaccounted for). Every dollar is assigned a “job,” whether it’s to go toward bills, savings, investments, etc.
Categorizes your expenses
No
Links to accounts
Yes, bank and credit cards
Availability
Offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android)
Security features
Encrypted data, accredited data centers, third-party audits and more
See our methodology, terms apply.
Pros
Offers a 34-day free trial, and students get 12 months free
Designed to help you get out of debt
YNAB website claims average user saves $600 in their first two months and more than $6,000 in their first year
Syncs to your bank accounts and credit cards
Users can set goals, customize spending categories
Offers educational resources, such as budgeting advice and 100+ free workshops offered every week
Personal customer support
Security features include encrypted data, accredited data centers, third-party audits and more
Cons
Costs $84 per year or $11.99 per month
Customer reviews note that it takes longer to set up than other apps
View More
Who’s this for? You Need A Budget (YNAB) is best for couples who want to find a way to give every single dollar a job to reach their goals a little faster. YNAB automatically syncs to your bank accounts, credit cards and investment accounts once you link them to the app.
Unlike other budgeting apps which usually categorize your spending for you, YNAB users themselves choose where every dollar gets allocated according to their priorities and what is important to them. Couples who have a joint checking account can sync the account to YNAB to allocate their money to different spending categories.
For these reasons, the app is favorable for anyone trying to get out of debt. According to YNAB’s website, the average customer saves $600 in their first two months and more than $6,000 in their first year of using the app.
YNAB also offers educational resources, such as a budgeting blog, and superior personal customer support. Another big perk is YNAB’s 100+ free, live, online workshops offered every week by expert teachers.
Our methodology
To determine which budgeting apps offer the best user experience, Select analyzed over a dozen apps offered by the top companies in this market and looked at their pricing, features, user reviews and ratings.
We narrowed down our ranking by only considering apps that sync transactions from users’ bank accounts, come with low (or no) cost to sign up, are easy to use and can be accessed on multiple devices so are accessible and compatible for most.
The five apps we selected for this ranking are either free, offer a free version or have a free trial for users to test out before signing up.
All of the apps in our round-up have a sizable number of user reviews and high ratings. Each app on this list has at least 1,000 reviews in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android), as well as a rating over 4 stars (out of 5) on both platforms.
Conclusion
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