I switched from Monarch Money to Halfway a few months ago, and the reason is small but it mattered a lot to me.
Monarch was fine for the basics, tracking spending, seeing where money was going. But my partner and I share pretty much everything financially, and there was no real way to keep any single transaction private. That sounds like a non-issue until you actually run into it. I remember trying to buy him a birthday gift and realizing he'd see the exact purchase the moment it hit our shared view. Not a huge deal that one time, but it happened again with a few other things I just wanted to keep to myself, nothing shady, just things that are mine.
We share almost everything financially and that's by choice. But I don't think that means every single transaction needs to be visible to both of us all the time. Honestly, I think having a little bit of privacy in a relationship, even a financial one, is healthy. It's not about hiding money, it's about having some room that's just yours.
Halfway actually lets you do this. You can mark things as personal and they just stay private, while everything shared still stays completely visible to both of us the way it always was. It's a small feature on paper but it changed how the app actually fits into our relationship. I'm not hiding anything meaningful, I just finally have the option not to share every single dollar, and that's made the whole experience feel less tense.
If you're a couple who shares finances but still wants a little breathing room, this is the one difference that made me switch.