Comparison
Ray vs Tiller
Tiller pulls your bank data into Google Sheets or Excel. Ray pulls it into an AI advisor. Both give you more control than a typical app — but the workflow is completely different.
Ray
An open-source CLI that connects to your bank via Plaid and gives AI-powered financial advice. Runs locally on your machine. $0 self-hosted or $10/mo managed.
Tiller
Tiller Money is a service that automatically syncs your bank transactions into Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. It gives you full control over your financial data in a spreadsheet format, with customizable templates for budgeting, net worth tracking, and more.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Ray | Tiller |
|---|---|---|
| AI financial advice | Yes — conversational AI advisor | No |
| Bank sync | Yes (Plaid) | Yes (Plaid into Sheets/Excel) |
| Data storage | Local only (encrypted) | Google Sheets or Excel (cloud) |
| Open source | Yes (MIT) | No |
| Pricing | $0 free / $10/mo managed | $79/year |
| Privacy | No cloud storage, PII-masked AI calls | Data in Google/Microsoft cloud |
| Analysis | AI-powered — ask questions in plain English | Manual — you build formulas and charts |
| Setup effort | Install and connect bank (~5 min) | Set up templates, learn spreadsheet workflow |
| Investment tracking | Yes — holdings, gains, cost basis | Manual (build your own sheet) |
| Debt payoff planning | Yes — avalanche/snowball simulations | Manual (build your own sheet) |
Key differences
AI does the analysis for you
Tiller gives you raw data in a spreadsheet. You write the formulas, build the charts, and interpret the results. Ray does all of that automatically — just ask a question and get an answer.
No spreadsheet maintenance
Tiller users spend hours building and maintaining their financial spreadsheets. Formulas break, templates need updating, and the system only works if you keep investing time. Ray works out of the box with no maintenance.
Actually local-first
Tiller syncs your bank data to Google Sheets — which means your financial history lives on Google's servers. Ray keeps everything in an encrypted database on your machine. No cloud, no third-party storage.
Ask questions in plain English
With Tiller, getting an answer means writing a formula or building a pivot table. With Ray, you type "how much did I spend on groceries in Q1?" and get an instant answer from your real data.
Pricing comparison
Ray
$0 self-hosted
$10/mo managed
Open source, MIT licensed. All features included.
Tiller
$79/year
The verdict
Tiller is a good product for people who genuinely love spreadsheets. If you want complete control over your financial data and enjoy building custom formulas, Tiller gives you that power. The bank sync is solid and the templates are a decent starting point.
But Tiller's core assumption is that you want to be the analyst. You write the formulas, you build the dashboards, you maintain the system. For most people, that means Tiller starts strong and slowly gets abandoned as life gets busy.
Ray takes the opposite approach. You don't build anything — you just ask questions. "Am I on track to save $10k?" "What's my monthly burn rate?" "Can I afford this trip?" Ray queries your actual bank data, runs the math, and gives you a direct answer. No formulas, no maintenance.
The tradeoff: Tiller gives you infinite flexibility in a spreadsheet. Ray gives you none of that — it's a CLI tool, not a canvas. But if you've ever built a beautiful financial spreadsheet and then stopped looking at it two months later, Ray might be the tool that actually sticks.
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