Actual Budget alternatives, local-first with or without a server

How to choose

Decide which part of Actual you want to keep. If it is local data with no subscription, Buckets keeps the budget in a file on your computer for a one-time price, and Cashew keeps it on your phone for free; both sync through a folder or a drive you already have instead of a server. If it is the server itself, and you want more than one currency, Firefly III is self-hosted the same way, in any currency, as double-entry bookkeeping rather than envelopes.

If it is the method, Aspire Budget keeps zero-based envelopes free in your own Google Sheet, Goodbudget keeps envelopes on two phones, and YNAB keeps every dollar a job in a hosted app with bank import in North America and 18 European countries. Each of those three holds one currency, as Actual does.

If you are leaving over currencies or phones, Lunch Money and Tavala add up many currencies in one budget: Lunch Money is hosted in the United States and web-first; Tavala keeps data on your device, works offline and has apps for both kinds of phone. Neither is open source or an envelope budget.

Moving your data out of Actual

Actual exports the whole budget from Settings (Data, Export data) as a zip file holding a SQLite database, db.sqlite, and a metadata.json file. Its docs describe importing that zip back into Actual only, so keep it as your archive: it is the complete copy. For transactions other apps can read, the account menu has an export (the docs do not state its format), and Actual's command-line tool lists an account's transactions as CSV.

Then pick the importer. YNAB takes CSV, QFX, OFX and QIF on the web; Firefly III's Data Importer reads CSV from any source; Buckets imports OFX, QFX and CSV; Goodbudget QFX, OFX and CSV on the web; Cashew and Lunch Money CSV; Aspire bank CSV files with Turbo. None names Actual as a source, so expect to map columns.

If your history began in YNAB4, Actual imports YNAB4 files directly, so its export may hold that history now. Going back to YNAB, its pricing page gives YNAB 4 users who pay yearly 10% off for life.

Tavala imports nothing from Actual or any other app. Keep Actual's zip and start Tavala from today: a wallet for each account with today's balance, your bills as recurring rules, and the budgets you still use. Debts are the exception: Tavala imports a list of debts or past loan payments from a CSV file, with a preview first.

How this page was made

We picked eight apps that answer the reasons to leave Actual Budget that its own docs state: syncing through a server you run or rent, one currency, no native phone app and bank sync you set up yourself. We compared price, platforms, offline use, where data lives, currencies and bank connections. Every fact comes from the vendor's own pages on 25 October 2026, in US prices, except Firefly III's documentation, which blocked our reader and was read from archived copies of its own pages (August to October 2026). We check every app each quarter, and have not run every import end to end. Tavala publishes this page and is on it, in fifth place, with its limits stated the same way as everyone else's.