Actual Budget vs Grisbi

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 BudgetGrisbi
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITGPL-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptC
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebinary, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 28,019★ 156
First released20222000
ReplacesYNAB, MintQuicken

Why pick each one

Choose Actual Budget if…

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

Choose Grisbi if…

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Written in C
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Grisbi details

Frequently asked questions

Is Actual Budget or Grisbi 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 Grisbi free and open-source?

Yes. Actual Budget is licensed under MIT and Grisbi under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Actual Budget and Grisbi with Docker?

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

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