Actual Budget: The Self-Hosted, Offline-First Budget App

In a world where every other app wants to sync your data to the cloud, sometimes you just want to keep things local. Especially when it comes to your personal finances. That’s the exact itch that Actual Budget scratches. It’s a budgeting tool built with a developer-friendly mindset: powerful, flexible, and completely under your control.

What if you could manage your money with the precision of a spreadsheet but the usability of a modern app, without ever worrying about your transaction data leaving your machine? That’s the promise of Actual.

What It Does

Actual is a local-first personal finance and budgeting application. You install it on your machine, and it runs a local server to manage your budget files. You can connect it to your bank for automatic transaction imports (via a secure, self-hosted bridge), or you can go fully manual. It uses a proven envelope-style budgeting method, letting you assign every dollar of your income to specific jobs (bills, savings, fun money) while tracking your spending against those plans.

Why It’s Cool

The "cool factor" here is all about the architecture and philosophy. Actual isn’t just another Electron wrapper for a website.

• Offline-First & Local Data: Your budget data is stored in a single, encrypted SQLite database file on your computer. You own it. You can back it up, version it with Git, or move it around. The app is fully functional without an internet connection.
• Self-Hosted Sync (Optional): If you want to use the app on multiple devices, you can optionally set up your own sync server. This means your data can flow between your laptop and phone without ever touching a third-party cloud. It’s sync, on your terms.
• Built with Web Tech (The Good Parts): The frontend is a React application, making it familiar and potentially hackable for frontend devs. The backend is Node.js. The whole project is transparent and open source.
• It’s Actually Pleasant to Use: Beyond the tech, it’s a thoughtfully designed app. Features like goal tracking, scheduled transactions, and robust reporting make it a practical tool, not just a tech demo.

How to Try It

The easiest way to get started is with the desktop app, which bundles everything you need.

1. Head over to the Actual GitHub repository.
2. Download the latest release for your OS (macOS, Windows, or Linux) from the Releases section.
3. Install and run it. It’ll fire up the local server and open the UI in your browser (typically at http://localhost:5006).
4. Create a new budget file and start playing around. You can add accounts and categories manually to get a feel for it.

For the brave, you can also clone the repo and run it directly in development mode, or set up the optional self-hosted server for multi-device sync (instructions are in the repo).

Final Thoughts

As developers, we often over-engineer our side projects but under-manage our personal finances. Actual feels like a tool built by someone who got tired of that paradox. It gives you the control and transparency of a self-hosted tool without sacrificing usability.

Whether you’re privacy-conscious, a fan of local-first software, or just a dev who likes to tinker with the tools you use daily, Actual Budget is worth a look. It proves that a powerful, modern budgeting app doesn’t need to be a SaaS product. Sometimes, the best cloud is no cloud at all.

Find more interesting projects like this by following @githubprojects.