# Actual Budget

29 Hacker News commenters recommended Actual Budget and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, open source envelope budgeting app that people recommend as a YNAB alternative, with bank import and local-first, self-hosted use.

## Why people recommend it

- Praised as excellent, does everything needed (8 comments): "It is really good software for managing personal finance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47243204)) "faster and more features than the commercial options had" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46012329)) "especially loving Immich and Actual Budget" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869520))
- Free, open source, self-hosted (5 comments): "It's FOSS, and has nifty power user features like a DSL for distributing monthly funds" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467590)) "ActualBudget is a pretty great YNAB alternative that is free and locally hosted." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007305)) "a nice FOSS envelope budget app that can import transactions from my bank" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466241))
- Automatic bank sync via SimpleFIN (2 comments): "self hosted ActualBudget and SimpleFin for fetching data automatically works great for me so far" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46016698)) "Actual Budget uses SimpleFIN in the US. The integration is pretty good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46009927))
- Local-first, works offline (3 comments): "you can still use Actual as a PWA and later sync to the server when you're back online" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50139149)) "it works surprisingly well when "off network"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662261)) "the local-first nature is really neat" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50117203))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Monarch Money](https://hackerapproved.com/p/monarch-money.md): 17 recommend
- [YNAB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ynab.md): 17 recommend
- [Quicken](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quicken.md): 10 recommend
- [Tiller Finance](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tiller.md): 10 recommend
- [FinBodhi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/finbodhi.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Actual Budget", https://hackerapproved.com/p/actual-budget/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).