BudgetBee vs Firefly III
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
BudgetBee
Self-hosted personal finance and budgeting manager
VS
Firefly III
Self-hosted personal finance manager
| Feature | BudgetBee | Firefly III |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 80 · Excellent | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | JavaScript | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, source | docker, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 644 | ★ 24,712 |
| First released | 2024 | 2016 |
| Replaces | YNAB, Mint | Mint, YNAB |
What are BudgetBee and Firefly III?
BudgetBee
BudgetBee is an open-source, self-hosted personal finance manager that runs entirely on your own infrastructure via Docker. It tracks day-to-day expenses, plans monthly budgets, monitors upcoming bills, and visualizes financial health through charts.
- Expense and budget tracking
- Upcoming bill monitoring
- Charts and reports
- Runs entirely via Docker
Firefly III
Firefly III is a free, open-source personal finance manager. It helps you track income, expenses, budgets, and bills, with rules for automatic transaction categorization and detailed reporting.
- Budgeting and bill tracking
- Rule-based auto-categorization
- Detailed financial reports
- REST API and data importer
BudgetBee vs Firefly III: key differences
BudgetBee is written in JavaScript, while Firefly III is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for BudgetBee versus AGPL-3.0 for Firefly III. BudgetBee is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Firefly III. Firefly III is the more established project (first released 2016), while BudgetBee arrived in 2024. Firefly III has the considerably larger community, at 24,712 GitHub stars versus 644.
Why pick each one
Choose BudgetBee if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in JavaScript
Choose Firefly III if…
- Powerful budgeting features
- Strong API for automation
Watch out for
- Manual entry unless importing
- Steeper learning curve
Frequently asked questions
Is BudgetBee or Firefly III better?
Neither is universally better. Firefly III has the larger community, while BudgetBee is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are BudgetBee and Firefly III free and open-source?
Yes. BudgetBee is licensed under MIT and Firefly III under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run BudgetBee and Firefly III with Docker?
BudgetBee: yes. Firefly III: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, BudgetBee or Firefly III?
BudgetBee has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Firefly III. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.