Actual vs Quicken Classic
Actual and Quicken Classic are both personal finance software. Actual is open source under MIT, with 30k GitHub stars. Quicken Classic is a commercial product from Quicken Inc.
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 Quicken Classic when
- You are in the US or Canada and want detailed desktop tracking of accounts and investments with long history.
Side by side
A local-first envelope budgeting app, similar to YNAB, with an optional self-hosted sync server, bank import and rules.
Desktop personal finance software for tracking bank accounts, bills, investments and budgets, with a business and rental property edition.
Automatic bank sync depends on third-party providers (GoCardless, SimpleFIN) with limited regional coverage.
Subscription now required, bank connection issues are common, and it is mainly for North America.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and desktop app
Desktop app and mobile app
TypeScript, React, Node.js and SQLite
Not published
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Quicken Inc.
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
780 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
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.