Actual Budget vs Frappe Books

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

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FeatureActual BudgetFrappe Books
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 28,019★ 4,874
First released20222020
ReplacesYNAB, MintQuickBooks, Wave

Why pick each one

Choose Actual Budget if…

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

Choose Frappe Books if…

  • No subscription needed
  • Simple and clean
Frappe Books details

Frequently asked questions

Is Actual Budget or Frappe Books 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 Frappe Books free and open-source?

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

Can I run Actual Budget and Frappe Books with Docker?

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

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