Actual Budget vs Beancount
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 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 ExpenseOwl 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 Beancount with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Firefly III Lago Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Worktile ERP Wealthfolio Crater Wallos BTCPay Server OctoBot Hospitable Ledger Kill Bill ezbookkeeping Frappe Books hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Pretzel Finance Rotki Bigcapital Paisa InvoicePlane Spliit Fava Tryton
Feature Actual Budget Beancount Category Budgeting & Finance Budgeting & Finance License MIT GPL-2.0 Language TypeScript Python Setup difficulty Easy Hard Min. RAM 256 MB 128 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source binary, source GitHub stars ★ 28,019 ★ 5,881 First released 2022 2008 Replaces YNAB, Mint QuickBooks, Xero
Why pick each one
Choose Beancount if… Released under the GPL-2.0 license Mature project with 5.9k GitHub stars Written in Python Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM Beancount details
Frequently asked questions Is Actual Budget or Beancount better? Actual Budget is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Beancount if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Actual Budget and Beancount free and open-source? Yes. Actual Budget is licensed under MIT and Beancount under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Actual Budget and Beancount with Docker? Actual Budget: yes. Beancount: check the project docs for container support.