I've been using Copilot Money for managing my finances, and I looked at Origin Financial as an alternative. The feature gap isn't the problem. The execution gap is.

The Automation Problem

Here's the core difference: good automation shouldn't require constant validation.

Copilot categorizes transactions automatically. I check in once a week. Done. The app shows spending trends, balances, and projections. Nothing overwhelming.

Origin wants me to review transactions regularly. That defeats the purpose of automation. It just shifts work from manual entry to manual review. Busy work.

That single design choice—requiring constant transaction reviews—undermines everything else Origin offers. It's cognitive overhead that erases the value of their broader feature set.

Missing the Basics

Origin tries to be a Mint replacement: net worth tracking, AI planning, tax filing, estate planning, CFP access. Ambitious.

The AI features are cool in theory. In practice, they're slow and don't give you anything Copilot's simpler approach doesn't already provide. You wait for the AI to generate insights you'll probably ignore anyway.

But it can't handle bulk delete for transactions. When you import accounts or fix mistakes, you delete one-by-one. For an app claiming to be comprehensive, that's a fundamental miss.

Both apps use Plaid for bank connections. Origin offers fallback options (MX and Finicity) with broader coverage—50,000+ connections vs Plaid's 11,000. That matters if your bank doesn't connect through Plaid.

But better connectivity is worthless if the core experience exhausts you.

The Real Lesson

Copilot is polished because they iterated ruthlessly on the core experience. The UX is thoughtful. The app doesn't ask you to do work it should handle. That's the result of focus.

Origin feels unfinished. The feature roadmap is ambitious but execution lags. You can't ship tax filing and estate planning before you've nailed bulk delete and automatic categorization.

If I were building a financial app, I'd do this: start with Plaid, make automation work without user validation, add bulk operations, then expand. Keep it simple. Make it reliable. Don't ask users to do your job.

Copilot gets it. Origin doesn't. Not yet anyway.

That said, Origin's ambition is worth exploring if you need something Copilot doesn't offer. If you want multiple data connector options or their tax filing and estate planning features, it might be worth the friction. Use this referral link to get your first year for only $1. Just go in knowing you'll be reviewing transactions regularly—that's the trade-off.