DEVELOPER STORIES

With elegant graphs, a crystal-clear interface, and accurate machine learning algorithms for categorizing transactions, Copilot Money is a personal finance app that people can bank on.

The app launched in 2020 as a Swift- and UIKit-built utility, and has gone on to become an Apple Design Award finalist and an App Store Editor’s Choice. In 2024, Copilot Money updated with a new Cash Flow feature built using Swift Charts, marking the team’s first shipped feature built with SwiftUI.

“I believe that having a native app makes a difference the moment you start interacting with it,” says Copilot Money founder and CEO Andrés Ugarte.

We talked to Ugarte and team members Bastian Suarez and Sergio Campamá about bringing Swift Charts into their app.

Available on: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Team size: 28
Based in: Brooklyn and Santiago
Awards: Apple Design Award finalist (2024), App Store Editor‘s Choice

Can you tell us how Copilot Money was first built?

Suarez: The app is fully native; we’ve just managed to take core UIKit components and mold them to what we want them to look like. That’s why the app has such a unique look and feel. It’s all native; we just tweak it a lot.

In fact, the macOS app is the iOS app with a couple more Mac-specific UI components. The rest is the same. And we were able to do that quickly just because it was all Swift.

Ugarte: Plus, all the data is kept locally, so the app is really responsive.

What made you consider using Swift Charts for the Cash Flow feature?

Suarez: Honestly, it was as simple as thinking, “Why should we build something from scratch if we can use what’s already there?”

Ugarte: Just to give a little context: We tend to do things very custom. We’re very picky when it comes to the design. So a section like Cash Flow — which has a lot of interactive charts — would have been a lot to build from scratch like we normally would. So we thought, “OK, maybe now is the time to take a look at Swift Charts.”

What benefits were you hoping to get from Swift Charts?

Campamá: Now that we’re on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, we need to support a lot of user-interaction events. Swift Charts saved us from having to manage a lot of custom event types in custom components.

Ugarte: The speed of developing and launching. We’re a very small team, and people want to see a lot of new features from us, so we do need to achieve as fast as we can while keeping a very high quality level.

What other benefits did you discover?

Campamá: Because these features involve less code and fewer UI components, finding and fixing bugs is super-easy. That's not something we thought about at the beginning, but in the end, we looked back and said, “Oh, this is a great benefit.”

Andrés, you began work on Copilot Money on your own back in 2018. What’s it been like to go from software engineer to CEO?

Ugarte: I still code. Not as much as I used to, but I believe that to be an effective leader, I need to stay close to that. Engineers and designers are often told they should focus on the technical aspects or the design and leave the rest to businesspeople. I believe that’s fundamentally wrong. We have a little bit of a superpower when it comes to understanding what goes into crafting a product that people want to use. At the end of the day, users can tell if you’re doing something with passion and love.

Originally published June 9, 2025