Firefly III vs Money Manager Ex
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 Firefly III with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Actual Budget Lago Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Crater Wallos BTCPay Server OctoBot Hospitable Ledger Beancount Kill Bill ezbookkeeping Frappe Books hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Pretzel Finance Rotki Paisa Spliit mempool Fava 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 Money Manager Ex with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Actual Budget Lago Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Hospitable Ledger hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Paisa ExpenseOwl Kresus Budget Zero BudgetBee Tellico Beancount Import MyFin KMyMoney Skrooge OFX Importer Grisbi Budgetwarrior Costflow
Feature Firefly III Money Manager Ex Category Budgeting & Finance Budgeting & Finance License AGPL-3.0 GPL-2.0 Language PHP C++ Setup difficulty Medium Easy Min. RAM 512 MB 128 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 24,254 ★ 2,243 First released 2016 2005 Replaces Mint, YNAB Quicken, Mint
Frequently asked questions Is Firefly III or Money Manager Ex better? Neither is universally better. Firefly III has the larger community, while Money Manager Ex is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Firefly III and Money Manager Ex free and open-source? Yes. Firefly III is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Money Manager Ex under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Firefly III and Money Manager Ex with Docker? Firefly III: yes. Money Manager Ex: check the project docs for container support.