Kresus vs Paisa
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Kresus | Paisa |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 800 | ★ 3,217 |
| First released | 2015 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Mint, Bankin | Mint, Personal Capital |
What are Kresus and Paisa?
Kresus
Kresus is a free, open-source personal finance manager that aggregates your bank accounts and helps you track expenses and budgets. It uses the Woob library to import banking data automatically.
- Automatic bank data import
- Expense categorization
- Budget and chart views
- Alerts on balances
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
Kresus vs Paisa: key differences
Kresus is written in JavaScript, while Paisa is built with TypeScript. Kresus is the more established project (first released 2015), while Paisa arrived in 2022. Paisa has the considerably larger community, at 3,217 GitHub stars versus 800.
Why pick each one
Choose Kresus if…
- Hands-off bank syncing in supported regions
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Bank support varies by country
- Sparse documentation
Choose Paisa if…
- Beautiful visualizations
- Plain-text portable data
Watch out for
- Requires Ledger knowledge
- Single-user focused
Frequently asked questions
Is Kresus or Paisa better?
Neither is universally better. Paisa has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Kresus and Paisa free and open-source?
Yes. Kresus is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Paisa under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kresus and Paisa with Docker?
Kresus: yes. Paisa: yes.