ExpenseOwl vs Sure
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | ExpenseOwl | Sure |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 46 · Fair | 93 · Excellent |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | HTML | Ruby |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,514 | ★ 10,024 |
| First released | 2024 | 2025 |
| Replaces | Mint, Spendee | Mint, Quicken |
What are ExpenseOwl and Sure?
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
Sure
Sure is a self-hosted personal finance application maintained by the community as a continuation of an archived finance project. It tracks accounts, transactions, budgets, and net worth in a single dashboard.
- Accounts and transaction tracking
- Budgets and net worth view
- Community-maintained
- Self-hosted with Docker
ExpenseOwl vs Sure: key differences
ExpenseOwl is written in HTML, while Sure is built with Ruby. Licensing differs — MIT for ExpenseOwl versus AGPL-3.0 for Sure. ExpenseOwl is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Sure. Sure has the considerably larger community, at 10,024 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 Sure if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 10k GitHub stars
- Written in Ruby
Frequently asked questions
Is ExpenseOwl or Sure better?
Neither is universally better. Sure 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 Sure free and open-source?
Yes. ExpenseOwl is licensed under MIT and Sure under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ExpenseOwl and Sure with Docker?
ExpenseOwl: yes. Sure: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, ExpenseOwl or Sure?
ExpenseOwl has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Sure. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.