Actual Budget vs ExpenseOwl
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?
Compare Actual Budget with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Firefly III Lago Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Crater Wallos BTCPay Server OctoBot Hospitable Ledger Beancount Kill Bill ezbookkeeping Frappe Books hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Pretzel Finance Rotki Paisa Spliit mempool Fava Money Manager Ex BTC RPC Explorer Crater Self-Hosted Invoicing I Hate Money Sequence Finance LNbits Elements Core BlueWallet Lightning RoboSats Tracktor Invio Bitcart OpenBudgeteer WYGIWYH Specter Desktop Kresus Ride The Lightning (Core Lightning) Fedimint Lightning Gateway Bitcoin Knots monetr Budget Zero BudgetBee Tellico SHKeeper Lightning Terminal REI3 Ocular VoucherVault Fulcrum Beancount Import ThunderHub Public Pool Suredbits Wallet Family Accounting Tool Jam BillManager MyFin Alby Hub ✨ Receipt Wrangler SatSale LNDg chantools CLI hledger-flow Tryton Cashu.me Wallet Skrooge OFX Importer Monero Daemon Grisbi DATUM DePay Circuit Breaker Bitfeed Budgetwarrior Nostr Wallet Connect YAFFA Bitcoin Ordinals Shopstr Econumo Libre Relay Bitcoin Node ItchySats Nutstash Wallet Core Lightning nolooking Squeak Road Krystal Bull BTC Tracker Helipad Bassin Costflow Tallycoin Connect PeerSwap sat.watch LndBoss Lightning Node Bitaxe Sentry Mybucks.online Blockstream Blind Oracle DeepSea Dashboard WoofBot (LND) LN Markets Bleskomat Server Canary MinerSentinel TDEX Provider Bitwatch Electrs Kollider LnVisualizer Public Pool's Web Urbit Bitcoin Connector Sparkkiosk Samourai Server LNbits Holesail Proxy Lightning Network+ Toshi Moto bitBalance ElectrumX Bitcoin Regtest Dashboard ChainForensics Lightning Shell lnSwitchboard Oak Node Pancake Saifa
Compare ExpenseOwl with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Firefly III Lago Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Cashew Self-Host Paisa Money Manager Ex Kresus Budget Zero BudgetBee Tellico Beancount Import MyFin OFX Importer Budgetwarrior Costflow
Feature Actual Budget ExpenseOwl Category Budgeting & Finance Budgeting & Finance License MIT MIT Language TypeScript HTML Setup difficulty Easy Easy Min. RAM 256 MB 64 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, binary, source GitHub stars ★ 28,019 ★ 1,475 First released 2022 2024 Replaces YNAB, Mint Mint, Spendee
Frequently asked questions Is Actual Budget or ExpenseOwl 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 ExpenseOwl free and open-source? Yes. Actual Budget is licensed under MIT and ExpenseOwl under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Actual Budget and ExpenseOwl with Docker? Actual Budget: yes. ExpenseOwl: yes.