Before comparing feature lists, one fact reshapes the whole question: in the United States, GoHenry no longer exists under that name. Acorns acquired GoHenry in 2023 and migrated the US product into Acorns Early in 2024. So a 2026 shopper typing “GoHenry vs Greenlight” is really comparing Acorns Early — still filed with the CFPB as GoHenry USA, Inc — against Greenlight. The official records make the rest of the comparison unusually clean.
GoHenry vs Greenlight: what the official records show
The two products answer slightly different questions. Acorns Early is a kids debit card wrapped in the Acorns money-lesson ecosystem — allowance automation, task lists, quizzes, and a path into investing through the wider Acorns app. Greenlight is a parental-control system with a card attached: category spending limits, real-time alerts, instant lock, and chores-and-allowance automation, the deepest control stack of any kids card in our ranking. Both are fintech programs, not banks.
The fee math over a school year
Priced for one child, Acorns Early is $5/month ($60 a year) against Greenlight’s $5.99 ($71.88). The order flips the moment a second kid joins: Greenlight’s one Core plan covers up to five children flat, while Acorns Early charges $10/month for up to four. For a single kid the two are within a coffee of each other; for three kids, Greenlight’s per-family pricing is the cheaper structure by a wide margin.
Where your money actually sits
This is the line most comparisons get wrong, and here it collapses to a tie: both programs hold deposits at the same partner bank — Community Federal Savings Bank, FDIC certificate 57129, active in FDIC BankFind at our latest verification. Same certificate, same pass-through structure. Whatever separates these two cards, deposit safety isn’t it, and both fiches on this site track that certificate continuously so a parent can re-check it in minutes.
What the records add on trust
The CFPB files frame the trust question. Acorns Early’s fee schedule is filed under GoHenry USA, Inc (product 47547, agreement effective 2024-06-09); Greenlight’s runs under product 47546 with prepaid agreements on file since 2018 — a longer paper trail. On complaints, our latest pull of the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database shows none under GoHenry USA, Inc and 37 against Greenlight Financial Technology. Both are low counts for programs of this size, and the 37 reflects Greenlight’s much larger install base rather than a red flag — a sanity check, not a decider.
The switch point in practice
Choose Acorns Early if you have one child and want the money lessons and investing under the Acorns roof for $5/month. Choose Greenlight if you have two or more kids, or you want the richest spend controls and chore automation — the control stack that keeps it at #1 in our kids ranking. Read the full Greenlight review and Acorns Early review for the line-by-line record behind each, both re-verified against the CFPB and FDIC on every data refresh.