ExpenseOwl 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.
| Feature | ExpenseOwl | Firefly III |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 46 · Fair | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | HTML | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,514 | ★ 24,712 |
| First released | 2024 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Mint, Spendee | Mint, YNAB |
What are ExpenseOwl and Firefly III?
ExpenseOwl
ExpenseOwl is a simple, lightweight self-hosted expense tracking application written in Go. It focuses on quick expense entry, category breakdowns, and clean visual reports.
- Minimal expense logging
- Category pie charts
- JSON-backed storage
- Single-binary deployment
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
ExpenseOwl vs Firefly III: key differences
ExpenseOwl is written in HTML, while Firefly III is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for ExpenseOwl versus AGPL-3.0 for Firefly III. ExpenseOwl is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Firefly III. Firefly III is the more established project (first released 2016), while ExpenseOwl arrived in 2024. Firefly III has the considerably larger community, at 24,712 GitHub stars versus 1,514.
Why pick each one
Choose ExpenseOwl if…
- Extremely lightweight
- Fast and simple
Watch out for
- Very minimal feature set
- Single-user only
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 ExpenseOwl or Firefly III better?
Neither is universally better. Firefly III has the larger community, while ExpenseOwl is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are ExpenseOwl and Firefly III free and open-source?
Yes. ExpenseOwl is licensed under MIT and Firefly III under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ExpenseOwl and Firefly III with Docker?
ExpenseOwl: yes. Firefly III: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, ExpenseOwl or Firefly III?
ExpenseOwl has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Firefly III. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.