Firefly III vs MyFin
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Firefly III
Self-hosted personal finance manager
VS
MyFin
Self-hosted personal budgeting and finance manager
| Feature | Firefly III | MyFin |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 97 · Excellent | 77 · Good |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | PHP | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 24,712 | ★ 312 |
| First released | 2016 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Mint, YNAB | YNAB, Mint |
What are Firefly III and MyFin?
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
MyFin
MyFin is a self-hosted personal finance platform for tracking accounts, budgets, and transactions. It provides reports and forecasting to help understand spending patterns over time.
- Account and budget tracking
- Spending forecasts
- Transaction categorization
- Self-hosted finance reports
Firefly III vs MyFin: key differences
Firefly III is written in PHP, while MyFin is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Firefly III versus GPL-3.0 for MyFin. Firefly III is the more established project (first released 2016), while MyFin arrived in 2022. Firefly III has the considerably larger community, at 24,712 GitHub stars versus 312.
Why pick each one
Choose Firefly III if…
- Powerful budgeting features
- Strong API for automation
Watch out for
- Manual entry unless importing
- Steeper learning curve
Choose MyFin if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in TypeScript
- Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Firefly III or MyFin better?
Neither is universally better. Firefly III has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Firefly III and MyFin free and open-source?
Yes. Firefly III is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and MyFin under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Firefly III and MyFin with Docker?
Firefly III: yes. MyFin: yes.