Guides

Actual Budget vs Firefly III vs Sure: private budgeting, compared

You want to budget without handing your bank history to a company cloud. Three open-source apps on BespokeAI do this well, but they are built around different ideas of what "budgeting" means. Pick by how you think about money, not by feature lists.

The short version

• Actual Budget - for envelope budgeting: decide in advance what every coin is for. The natural home for people leaving YNAB.
• Firefly III - for detailed tracking and reports: record everything, let rules sort it, study the charts.
• Sure - for the whole household picture: accounts, investments, property and net worth in one place, with budgeting on top.

Actual Budget: give every coin a job

Actual is built around envelope budgeting: you assign money to categories before you spend it, then track against the plan. It syncs between your devices with optional end-to-end encryption, imports bank files and can connect to banks in many countries, and has an official API for your own scripts.

Strengths: the method works for people who want a plan, not just a history; local-first with encrypted sync; MIT licence; runs as a desktop app or on your own server; one-click hosted option from $2.00/month.

Honest downsides: envelope budgeting is a habit, not a feature - if you won't assign money ahead of time, the app has less to offer. Setup is moderate complexity, and you must turn on end-to-end encryption yourself before syncing through any server you don't fully control.

Firefly III: the bookkeeper's choice

Firefly III is a personal money manager with a strict double-entry core. You record accounts, income and spending; rules sort transactions automatically; budgets, bills and "piggy banks" track goals; and the charts and reports are the deepest of the three. Any currency, many languages, full REST API.

Strengths: unmatched reporting and automation through rules; makes no outside connections unless you turn on a feature that needs one; proven, mature project.

Honest downsides: the hardest setup here - it's a large PHP application that needs Docker or a server and a database, with no desktop app. The catalogue rates it "advanced" difficulty. And it rewards people who are happy to type in or import their transactions; if you want automatic everything, that effort is the price. Hosted option from $2.70/month.

Sure: the whole financial picture

Sure is a family finance app: bank accounts, cards, savings, investments and property in one dashboard, with net worth over time, budgets, automatically spotted bills and savings goals. It is the community-run continuation of Maybe Finance, and its AI assistant is optional and can run on a local model.

Strengths: the only one of the three that covers investments, pensions and property alongside spending; net-worth view built in; designed for households, not just individuals. Hosted option from $3.00/month.

Honest downsides: also rated "advanced" - the stack is Rails plus PostgreSQL, Redis and a background worker, so it's the heaviest to run yourself. And the convenience features have a privacy cost you control: the AI assistant and bank-sync providers send financial data to outside services unless you use a local model. It needs HTTPS and closed onboarding before any internet exposure.

Side by side

Which one is yours?

• Leaving YNAB, or you want a plan that shapes spending before it happens: Actual Budget.
• You like data, rules and reports, and don't mind server setup: Firefly III.
• You want one private place for everything the household owns and owes: Sure.

Try it with your AI

Each app page on BespokeAI has a "Tell my AI" button: it hands your AI a pinned project pack - one exact version of the app, with setup notes, licence and customisation points - plus a short guide for the conversation. Your AI asks what you need and works through setup with you step by step, or you start with a hosted trial and move later.

• Actual Budget
• Firefly III
• Sure