I built a multilingual personal finance app — here's what I learned shipping in two languages from day one

I loved the Free Budget Planning Tools feature

much useful tool for me

If I could make changes once I made the planning It would be much better

For the translation management side — i18n-validate catches missing keys and placeholder inconsistencies between your English and French locale files:

npx [@i18n](/i18n)-agent/i18n-validate --base messages/en.json --targets messages/fr.json

For the next-intl fallback issue (MISSING_MESSAGE errors when a French key doesn't exist), next-intl-localechain deep-merges messages from a fallback chain:

import { withLocaleChain } from 'next-intl-localechain';
export default withLocaleChain({
  chains: { 'fr': ['fr', 'en'] },
  loadMessages: async (locale) => (await import(`../messages/${locale}.json`)).default,
});

Install: npm install next-intl-localechain

The non-English market gap is real – I'm seeing the same thing with my car maintenance app. Most existing apps are very US/English-centric and completely ignore how different car service habits and regulations are in Europe. On pricing – the annual plan feels right, but €5.99/mo might indeed push price-sensitive users away. What's your current free-to-paid conversion rate looking like?

The non-English finance content gap is a real opportunity - and a huge moat if you nail it. Most big apps are English-first and too lazy to properly localize.

On pricing - the monthly at €5.99 might be slightly high for a budgeting app where people are literally trying to save money. Consider a bigger gap between monthly/annual to push annual conversions. We saw annual conversion jump significantly when we widened that gap.

The receipt scanning with AI OCR is a great differentiator. Most indie finance apps skip that because it's hard to build. Props for shipping it from day one.

Congrats on the launch, Rehan! Supporting both French and English from day one is a bold and smart move.

I'm a solo developer from Brazil building a social network for tree-planting tracking (Plant-a-Tree), and I'm currently wrestling with this exact same dilemma, launching locally in Portuguese first to gain traction or going full English/Global from the start.

You mentioned that bilingual SEO was your biggest challenge. Did you find that implementing localization slowed down your feature development significantly in these early stages? Also, since you're using OCR for receipts, how does the AI handle different languages/formats in the same account?

Great job on the UI, it looks very clean!

The non-English finance content gap is a real opportunity. I build tools for small business bookkeeping and even within English, the moment you move outside the US (different date formats, different CSV delimiters, different tax categories), most tools just break.

On the receipt scanning — how are you handling the localization of expense categories? That's one of the trickiest parts of multilingual finance tools. A 'grocery' category maps cleanly between languages, but tax-relevant categories (like distinguishing deductible business meals from personal dining in France vs the US) are where it gets messy.

Re: pricing — I'd echo the other commenter about the monthly being slightly high for a budgeting app audience. One thing that worked well for me: offering a generous free tier that handles the basic use case, then gating the 'power' features (receipt scanning, multi-account net worth) behind premium. People who need those features are much less price-sensitive than someone who just wants to track expenses.

the bilingual SEO challnge is real, we deal with something similar with our iOS apps. not multi-language per se but multi-market - trying to rank for completley different keywords in different app stores is a nightmare

the "personal finance content is underserved outside english" observation is super interesting tho. thats actally a huge moat if u think about it. all the big budgeting apps are english-first and theyr too lazy to properly localize. if u nail the french market u basically have no competiton

on pricing - i think the yearly plan at 49.99 is smart but the monthly at 5.99 might be a bit high for a budgeting app where ppl are literally tryng to save money lol. maybe consider a lower monthly with a bigger gap to annual to push annual conversons? we do something simlar with our apps and the annual conversion rate went way up

the receipt scanning with AI OCR is a nice differentiator btw. most indie finance apps skip that becuase its hard to build. props for shipping it from day one

how are u handling the french market distribution? just ASO or doing content marketing in french too?