Export your whole plan
- Open YNAB in a web browser. Exporting is only in the web app, at app.ynab.com. The iPhone and Android apps don't have it.
- Open your plan's menu. Click the name of your plan at the top of the left sidebar.
- Choose Export Plan. YNAB downloads a .zip file whose name starts with "YNAB Export -", then your plan's name and the date. If you have more than one plan, export each one.
There's no need to unzip it if you're moving to UrBudget: it reads the .zip as it is.
What's in the export
The .zip holds two files, one ending in Plan and one ending in Register. They're CSV files, or tab-separated (TSV) files when your currency uses a comma for decimals, and any spreadsheet app opens them.
- Plan has a row for each category in each month, with its category group, assigned, activity and available amounts.
- Register has a row for each transaction in every account: account, flag, date, payee, category group and category, memo, outflow, inflow and cleared status. Transfers show as "Transfer : " and the other account's name.
Amounts and dates are written the way YNAB shows them in your plan, such as $1,234.56 and 10/16/2026, rather than as plain numbers.
What it leaves out
| Data | CSV export | API with a token |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions, payees, memos, flags, cleared status | Yes | Yes |
| Categories and each month's assigned, activity and available | Yes | Yes |
| Targets | No | Yes |
| Category, month and account notes | No | Yes |
| Scheduled transactions | No | Yes |
| Account types, and which accounts are closed | No | Yes |
| Receipt photos | No; download them one at a time | No |
YNAB's help center says the export doesn't include targets or category notes. The other gaps are what the files simply don't have columns for. Bank connections and payee rules don't export either way.
Export only some transactions
- Open a register. In the web app, click an account, or All Accounts, in the left sidebar.
- Select the transactions. Tick the box beside each one, or search (by category, payee, flag or memo) and filter by date, then tick the box in the table header to select everything shown.
- Export them. Click More in the bar that appears, then Export. The file's name starts with "Selected Transactions for" and your plan's name.
Export reports
Click Reflect in the left sidebar, choose Spending Breakdown, Spending Trends, Net Worth or Income v Expense, set the categories, dates and accounts you want, and click Export. Net Worth gives you each account's balance at the end of every month, which is handy for a tax year or an accountant.
The API: everything, as data
YNAB's API returns your plan with everything YNAB keeps for it, including targets, notes, scheduled transactions and closed accounts. YNAB's own documentation calls its plan request "effectively a full plan export". You don't need to be a developer to use it: you make a personal access token, and an app that reads the API does the rest.
- Open Account Settings. Sign in to YNAB on the web, click your plan's name and choose Account Settings.
- Make a token. Go to Developer Settings, choose New Token under Personal Access Tokens, enter your password and choose Generate.
- Copy it straight away. YNAB shows the token once. Treat it like your password: anyone with it can read your plans.
A few things to know:
- If you sign in to YNAB with Google or Apple, set a YNAB password in Account Settings first; you need one to make a token.
- Tokens don't expire. Revoke yours in Developer Settings when you've finished with it.
- The API only answers while you have a subscription or trial. Once it has lapsed, YNAB's API returns an error instead of your data, so export before you cancel.
- A token can make up to 200 requests an hour, plenty for copying a plan.
Bringing it into UrBudget
UrBudget reads both. With a token, it brings over your accounts (open and closed), every transaction, your categories and monthly assignments, and the targets, notes and scheduled transactions the CSV export leaves out. It then checks every month against YNAB's own totals, and you can import again later to pull in what changed. See how the token import works.
No token? Choose No token? Use YNAB's export file in UrBudget and pick the .zip. The same month-by-month check runs, but without the extras above, and a file import can't be refreshed later.
UrBudget only reads from YNAB; it never changes anything there. And if you leave UrBudget later, it exports your budget as CSV in YNAB's column layout, or as a full JSON backup.
Keep a copy that's yours
Import your YNAB plan into UrBudget and it lives in a file on your computer. Free for 30 days, then $9 once.
YNAB is a trademark of its owner. UrBudget isn't affiliated with YNAB.