Off the top of my head, I can easily think of a few similarities:

1) both Mint and Thrive aggregate your data so that you can see all your accounts in one place.

2) both Mint and Thrive offer some sort of auto-categorization system for your purchases and a way to change those categories yourself.

3) both Mint and Thrive will recommend different financial accounts than you have.

But even as I do that, I notice that there are differences. For example, it isn’t true to say Mint and Thrive will both recommend different financial accounts: Mint WILL recommend, Thrive MAY recommend.

Why? Because Mint makes money off getting you to switch accounts, so they’ll recommend that you change as often as possible. They’ll take money from banks to put their listings at the top of the stack, whether they are actually better for you or not.

Thrive makes money when you switch accounts, sometimes. Some banks pay an “account generation” fee when we refer a customer to them. Others don’t. Our algorithm doesn’t care…it just gives you the best possible account for you, whether we make money or not. And if you already have an account that is good enough, where switching won’t change much, then we’ll tell you to keep what you have.

I’m tempted to say it is a subtle difference, but really, I don’t think it is. The example may be simple, but when you apply that sort of difference across the entire site, I think a pattern emerges: Thrive is concerned with helping you. Period, full stop, end of sentence.

Sure, we try to make sure we make money, because if we don’t stay in business, we can’t help anybody. But everyone on our team could be making better money doing something else: we’re here because we want to build a better financial world, one where have the tools to create a financial future that they are satisfied with.