Actual Budget vs BillManager

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureActual BudgetBillManager
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptPHP
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 28,019★ 321
First released20222019
ReplacesYNAB, MintSplitwise, Tricount

Why pick each one

Choose Actual Budget if…

  • Snappy offline-first experience
  • Privacy-focused sync
Actual Budget details

Choose BillManager if…

  • Leverages Nextcloud auth
  • Good for households
BillManager details

Frequently asked questions

Is Actual Budget or BillManager better?

Neither is universally better. Actual Budget has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Actual Budget and BillManager free and open-source?

Yes. Actual Budget is licensed under MIT and BillManager under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Actual Budget and BillManager with Docker?

Actual Budget: yes. BillManager: check the project docs for container support.

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