SHSelfHostIndex

Actual Budget vs Paisa

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?
Actual Budget Local-first envelope budgeting app VS PA Paisa Personal finance manager on plain-text accounting
FeatureActual BudgetPaisa
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score98 · Excellent88 · Excellent
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcedocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 29,118★ 3,217
First released20222022
ReplacesYNAB, MintMint, Personal Capital

What are Actual Budget and Paisa?

Actual Budget

Actual is a free, open-source personal finance app focused on zero-based, envelope-style budgeting. It is local-first with end-to-end encrypted sync across devices.

  • Envelope budgeting method
  • Local-first with encrypted sync
  • Fast and responsive UI
  • Bank import via plugins

Read the full Actual Budget guide →

Paisa

Paisa is an open-source personal finance manager built on top of the Ledger plain-text accounting format. It provides budgeting, net worth tracking, retirement planning, and rich visualizations.

  • Built on Ledger format
  • Net worth and retirement planning
  • Rich interactive charts
  • Goal tracking

Read the full Paisa guide →

Actual Budget vs Paisa: key differences

Both projects are written in TypeScript. Licensing differs — MIT for Actual Budget versus AGPL-3.0 for Paisa. Actual Budget has the considerably larger community, at 29,118 GitHub stars versus 3,217.

Why pick each one

Choose Actual Budget if…

  • Snappy offline-first experience
  • Privacy-focused sync

Watch out for

  • Bank sync needs extra setup
  • Fewer reports than alternatives
Actual Budget details

Choose Paisa if…

  • Beautiful visualizations
  • Plain-text portable data

Watch out for

  • Requires Ledger knowledge
  • Single-user focused
Paisa details

Frequently asked questions

Is Actual Budget or Paisa better?

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

Are Actual Budget and Paisa free and open-source?

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

Can I run Actual Budget and Paisa with Docker?

Actual Budget: yes. Paisa: yes.

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