How to Connect Your Bank Account to Claude (2026)

Claude can’t connect to your bank on its own. As of October 2026 it has no built-in bank feature. To give Claude your real numbers, you add a connector: an MCP server run by a finance app that already syncs your accounts. You paste the connector’s URL into Claude under Customize > Connectors, sign in, and approve read-only access. It takes about five minutes. After that, Claude can answer “how much did I spend on food last month?” with the real figure instead of a guess.

Pasting a CSV export into the chat also works, once. Then the data is stale. The connector route keeps Claude’s view of your money as current as your bank sync.

Why Claude can’t see your bank account on its own

Claude doesn’t connect to anything by default. It knows what’s in the conversation and what it learned in training, and your checking account is in neither.

ChatGPT took a different route. OpenAI launched Finances in ChatGPT in May 2026, a built-in feature that links banks through Plaid. It started with Pro subscribers and is now open to every ChatGPT plan in the US, including Free. I compare the two approaches in ChatGPT vs Claude for personal finance.

Anthropic may follow. In September 2026 an unreleased “Money” tab turned up in Claude’s iOS app, promising bank links. It hasn’t been announced, and as of October 2026 nobody can use it. Until it ships, connectors are the way in.

Claude relies on connectors instead. A connector is an MCP server, which is a standard way for an app to hand an AI assistant a set of tools. A finance connector gives Claude tools like “get my net worth” or “get my spending by category for October.” Claude decides when to call one, gets back structured data, and writes its answer from that.

The chain looks like this:

your bank → aggregator (Plaid) → finance app → MCP server → Claude

Each link only does one job. The bank holds the money. Plaid holds the login. The finance app cleans up the transactions and does the math. The MCP server answers Claude’s questions. Claude writes the reply. Nothing in this chain gives Claude a way to move money, which is the property you want.

What you need

A Claude account. Any plan works. Free allows one custom connector; Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise allow more.
A finance app with an MCP server that already syncs your accounts. I built Bonsave’s, so that’s the one these steps use, but the Claude side is the same for any connector.
Your accounts linked in that app. The connector can only show Claude what the app already knows. If you haven’t linked your brokerage yet, Claude won’t see it either.

How to connect your bank account to Claude, step by step

These are the steps for an individual Pro or Max account on claude.ai. Team and Enterprise are covered below.

Link your accounts in the finance app. In Bonsave, that’s the bank connection flow you go through at sign-up. Check that balances and recent transactions show up before going further.
Open Claude’s connector settings. On claude.ai, go to Customize > Connectors, click + Add, then Add custom connector.
Name it and paste the server URL. Call it something you’ll recognize (“Bonsave”). The URL for Bonsave is:
```
https://www.bonsave.app/api/mcp
```
Choose to sign in. Claude detects that the server uses OAuth. Keep the recommended settings and choose to sign in now.
Approve access. Claude opens Bonsave’s sign-in page. Sign in, review the read-only permissions (balances, transactions, net worth, spending and budgets, holdings), and approve.
Turn it on in a chat. In a new conversation, click + at the lower left, open Connectors, and make sure the connector is toggled on.

Then ask something only your data can answer. “What was my biggest spending category last month?” is a good first test, because a wrong answer is obvious.

On a Team or Enterprise plan

An owner adds the connector once for the whole organization under Organization settings > Connectors, using the same URL. Each member then goes to Customize > Connectors, clicks Connect, and signs in with their own finance account. Nobody sees anyone else’s money. Each person’s sign-in only grants access to their own data.

In Claude Code

If you live in the terminal, add the server with one command and sign in from inside Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http bonsave https://www.bonsave.app/api/mcp

Then run /mcp in a Claude Code session, pick bonsave, and finish the sign-in in your browser.

Some MCP clients don’t support OAuth sign-in. For those, generate a token in Bonsave under Settings > Developer > MCP Access. The HTTP tab gives you the server URL and an Authorization: Bearer header to paste into the client’s config. On claude.ai you can do the same thing by choosing No sign in and adding that header under Request headers, though the sign-in route above is simpler and easier to revoke.

What to ask once it’s connected

A connector is only as useful as the questions you bring to it. The good ones combine your data with something Claude is already good at: reasoning across a lot of numbers at once.

Question	What Claude pulls
”How much did I spend on restaurants in September vs August?”	Spending by category for two months
”Which subscriptions went up in price this year?”	Transactions, grouped by merchant
”Am I on track with my grocery budget this month?”	Budget targets and month-to-date spending
”How has my net worth changed since January, and why?”	Net worth history, account balances
”What’s my allocation across all my brokerage accounts?”	Holdings and investment positions
”Am I on track to retire at 55?”	Your retirement plan and current savings

The last row is the one I find most useful. Asked cold, “can I retire at 55?” gets you a lecture about the 4% rule. With a connector, Claude starts from your actual balances and your plan’s assumptions, and the conversation can get specific fast. If you’d rather run that math yourself first, the early retirement planner and FIRE calculator do it without any AI.

Some of Bonsave’s tools return charts rather than text. Claude shows those inline in the chat: your net worth line, a spending breakdown, your portfolio. A chart is easier to argue with than a paragraph.

Is it safe to connect your bank account to Claude?

The short answer is that a read-only finance connector is about as risky as the finance app it belongs to. The longer answer splits into three questions.

Can it move money? It shouldn’t be able to, and you can check. Bonsave’s connector has 14 tools and all of them only read. A connector that can initiate transfers is a different product with a different risk, and I wouldn’t add one to a chatbot.

Who has your bank password? Not Claude and not the finance app. Aggregators like Plaid handle the bank login, and the app gets a token that allows reading account data. Claude only ever talks to the app’s MCP server, and only with the permission you granted when you signed in.

Where do the answers end up? In your Claude conversation history, like any other chat. That’s the honest trade-off. If Claude tells you your checking balance, that number is now in a chat log. Check your privacy settings in Claude (including whether your chats can be used to improve models), and delete conversations you don’t want kept.

You can cut access from either side. Disconnect the connector in Claude, or revoke it in the finance app. In Bonsave, every connected client shows up under Settings > Developer > MCP Access with a revoke button and the last time it was used.

Other ways to give Claude your financial data

A connector isn’t the only option. It’s the only one that stays current.

Paste or upload an export. Download a CSV of transactions from your bank and drop it into the chat. Free, private to that one conversation, and stale the moment you close it. Fine for a one-off question about last year’s spending.
Community-built MCP servers. There are open-source servers for several budgeting apps. Some work by storing your login for that app on your own machine. Read the code, or at least the README, before you hand one your credentials.
A finance app’s official connector. This is the route the steps above cover. The app does the aggregation and categorization, and Claude does the conversation.

Connecting Bonsave to Claude

Bonsave syncs your bank, card, brokerage, and retirement accounts in the US and Canada, then categorizes the transactions and builds your net worth and retirement plan. Its connector hands all of that to Claude through 14 read-only tools, on either plan. If you want to try the setup above with your own accounts, the 14-day free trial covers it, and the connector is about five minutes of the first day.

Frequently asked questions

Can Claude connect to my bank account?

Not by itself. As of October 2026, Claude has no built-in bank connection. You connect your accounts through a connector, which is an MCP server run by a finance app that already syncs your banks through an aggregator like Plaid. Once it's added under Customize > Connectors in Claude, Claude can read your balances, transactions, and investments and answer questions with your real numbers.

Is it safe to connect my bank account to Claude?

A well-built finance connector gives Claude read-only access. Claude can see balances and transactions but can't move money, and it never sees your bank password, which stays with the aggregator (usually Plaid). The real decision is what you're comfortable having in a chat log, because Claude's answers about your money are saved in your conversation history like any other chat. You can revoke the connector's access at any time.

Can Claude move money or make payments from my bank account?

Not through a read-only finance connector. Bonsave's connector, for example, exposes 14 tools and every one of them only reads data. None can move money, pay a bill, or change an account. Check that any connector you add says read-only before you sign in.

Does connecting my bank to Claude work on the free plan?

Claude's Free plan allows one custom connector, so the Claude side works. The connector itself usually needs an account with the finance app. Bonsave's connector is included on both of its plans, which start at $7 a month after a 14-day free trial.

Does a Claude connector work on the iPhone and desktop apps?

Yes. Connectors you add on claude.ai sync to your Claude account, so they also work in Claude Desktop and the Claude mobile apps. The connection runs from Anthropic's servers, not from your phone or laptop.