Built by a CFI for student pilots.

When I was instructing, every student asked the same question early on: what is this actually going to cost? And every answer they had been given before they met me was some version of the FAA legal minimum, which almost nobody finishes at. Real examiner data puts a typical Part 61 private pilot near 72 hours, not 40. Those 32 extra hours are most of the gap between the quote and the bill.

The most common advice on r/flying for budgeting your training is build your own spreadsheet. That advice is honest, and also completely nuts in 2026. Every other expensive life decision has a tool. Flight training has a Google Sheets template a stranger made and the inside of your own head.

So I built PilotBound. It does one thing that no other app does: it projects what your certificate will actually cost, using real completion data and your aircraft and rates, then tracks every dollar against that projection as you fly. No tight, false number. An honest range that sharpens as you log real flights.

I'd rather be honest than confident. Where the public data is thin (the instrument rating, the CFI), I say so out loud and show a wider range. That disclosure is a feature, not an apology.