Actual Budget vs Hospitable Ledger

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 BudgetHospitable Ledger
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITBSD-3-Clause
LanguageTypeScriptC++
Setup difficultyEasyHard
Min. RAM256 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebare-metal, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 28,019★ 6,011
First released20222003
ReplacesYNAB, MintQuickBooks, Quicken

Why pick each one

Choose Actual Budget if…

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

Choose Hospitable Ledger if…

  • Extremely portable data
  • Scriptable and version-controllable
Hospitable Ledger details

Frequently asked questions

Is Actual Budget or Hospitable Ledger better?

Actual Budget is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Hospitable Ledger if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Actual Budget and Hospitable Ledger free and open-source?

Yes. Actual Budget is licensed under MIT and Hospitable Ledger under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Actual Budget and Hospitable Ledger with Docker?

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

Related comparisons