Firefly III vs Paisa
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
Paisa
Personal finance manager on plain-text accounting
| Feature | Firefly III | Paisa |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 97 · Excellent | 88 · Excellent |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | PHP | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 24,712 | ★ 3,217 |
| First released | 2016 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Mint, YNAB | Mint, Personal Capital |
What are Firefly III and Paisa?
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
Paisa
Paisa is an open-source personal finance manager built on top of the Ledger plain-text accounting format. It provides budgeting, net worth tracking, retirement planning, and rich visualizations.
- Built on Ledger format
- Net worth and retirement planning
- Rich interactive charts
- Goal tracking
Firefly III vs Paisa: key differences
Firefly III is written in PHP, while Paisa is built with TypeScript. Paisa 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 Paisa arrived in 2022. Firefly III has the considerably larger community, at 24,712 GitHub stars versus 3,217.
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 Paisa if…
- Beautiful visualizations
- Plain-text portable data
Watch out for
- Requires Ledger knowledge
- Single-user focused
Frequently asked questions
Is Firefly III or Paisa 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 Paisa free and open-source?
Yes. Firefly III is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Paisa under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Firefly III and Paisa with Docker?
Firefly III: yes. Paisa: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Firefly III or Paisa?
Paisa 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.