Actual vs Monarch Money
Actual and Monarch Money are both personal finance software. Actual is open source under MIT, with 30k GitHub stars. Monarch Money is a commercial product from Monarch Money.
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 Monarch Money when
- A US household wants a modern Mint replacement with collaboration between partners.
Side by side
A local-first envelope budgeting app, similar to YNAB, with an optional self-hosted sync server, bank import and rules.
Connects bank, card and investment accounts to track spending, budgets, net worth and shared household goals.
Automatic bank sync depends on third-party providers (GoCardless, SimpleFIN) with limited regional coverage.
Subscription only, and bank aggregation coverage is mainly US.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and desktop app
Cloud service and mobile app
TypeScript, React, Node.js and SQLite
Not published
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Monarch Money
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
30k GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v26.11.0.
Not known
Other comparisons
More personal finance and budgeting apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.