Paisa vs Sure
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Sure
Community-driven personal finance app
| Feature | Paisa | Sure |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 88 · Excellent | 93 · Excellent |
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,217 | ★ 10,024 |
| First released | 2022 | 2025 |
| Replaces | Mint, Personal Capital | Mint, Quicken |
What are Paisa and Sure?
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
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
Paisa vs Sure: key differences
Paisa is written in TypeScript, while Sure is built with Ruby. Paisa is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Sure. Paisa is the more established project (first released 2022), while Sure arrived in 2025. Sure has the considerably larger community, at 10,024 GitHub stars versus 3,217.
Why pick each one
Choose Paisa if…
- Beautiful visualizations
- Plain-text portable data
Watch out for
- Requires Ledger knowledge
- Single-user focused
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 Paisa or Sure better?
Neither is universally better. Sure has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Paisa and Sure free and open-source?
Yes. Paisa is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Sure under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Paisa and Sure with Docker?
Paisa: yes. Sure: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Paisa or Sure?
Paisa has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Sure. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.