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Implementing climate policies and programs in cities requires significant investments that inevitably entangle climate action with urban climate finance – the mechanisms and practices city governments use to pay for climate efforts. Here, we use U.S. cities as a case study to examine how climate finance impacts, and is impacted by, the pursuit of urban climate action and climate justice. Drawing on 34 expert interviews, we show how municipal financial decisions and budgetary practices are shaping how, when, and for whom cities are responding to climate change. We demonstrate how public spending decisions are intertwined with the logics of debt financing and examine the impacts of these relationships on cities’ climate investments. We showcase the structuring impacts of finance on climate action and the built environment, and we introduce pathways through which climate and justice considerations are already being integrated into, and potentially transforming, municipal finance in the U.S.