Actual vs Firefly III
Actual and Firefly III are both personal finance software. Actual is open source under MIT, with 30k GitHub stars. Firefly III is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 25k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Actual when
- You want zero-based budgeting without a subscription and are willing to run a small sync server for multiple devices.
- Pick Firefly III when
- You want detailed control over personal finances and accept entering or importing transactions yourself.
Side by side
A local-first envelope budgeting app, similar to YNAB, with an optional self-hosted sync server, bank import and rules.
A self-hosted personal finance manager using double-entry bookkeeping, with budgets, categories, rules, recurring transactions and reports.
Automatic bank sync depends on third-party providers (GoCardless, SimpleFIN) with limited regional coverage.
Run largely by one developer, and the double-entry model has a learning curve for casual budgeters.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and desktop app
Self-hosted server
TypeScript, React, Node.js and SQLite
PHP, Laravel, MySQL and PostgreSQL
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
30k GitHub stars
25k GitHub stars
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v26.11.0.
Established: started 12 years ago, latest release v6.7.9.
Other comparisons
More personal finance and budgeting apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.