Actual Budget vs YNAB

The method: the same envelopes, two kinds of software

Actual's default is envelope budgeting, and its documentation says another name for it is zero-based budgeting: you budget the money you have into categories, and what you spend comes out of them. YNAB asks the same of you in its own words, "Every time you get money, ask yourself 'What's it for?'", with targets for spending and savings goals. Someone who has used one will recognise the other, and Actual can import a YNAB budget.

Around the method the two differ. YNAB adds a loan planner, a set of reports (net worth, spending breakdown and trends, income against expense, age of money) and years of teaching material. Actual adds rules that rename payees and set categories, schedules for expected bills and income, and custom reports; its budget templates and goals are still marked experimental in its documentation. Actual also offers a tracking budget, for people who would rather follow spending than assign every dollar.

The larger difference is who runs it. With YNAB the service runs, the apps update and the bank feed is set up inside the app. With Actual you choose where it runs, how it syncs and which bank provider to use, and you keep the result on your own device.

Pricing, properly compared

Actual has no price. The software is free under the MIT licence, and the desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux runs with no server and no account. Costs start when you want more: syncing between devices needs the Actual server, which you run on your own hardware or rent, for example on PikaPods from about $2 a month as PikaPods stated on 24 October 2026, and bank sync in North America through SimpleFIN costs $15 a year. Actual's own hosted service shut down in 2024, so there is no subscription to buy from the project.

On 24 October 2026 YNAB cost $109 a year or $14.99 a month, plus tax where it applies, with a 34-day trial that needs no card on its own site, and 365 days for college students. It has no free plan.

Over two years, Actual costs nothing on one computer, about $48 with a PikaPods server for syncing, and about $78 with SimpleFIN bank sync as well. YNAB costs $218 paid yearly or $359.76 paid monthly, so even the full Actual setup is about $140 cheaper than YNAB paid yearly. What fills the gap on YNAB's side is real: native phone apps, bank import set up inside the app, and someone else running the service. These sums leave out tax, the trial and the time a self-hosted setup takes.

Where your data lives

Actual is local-first: its privacy policy says your financial data is stored on your device and is not sent to or stored on the project's servers, and it has no trackers. If you sync, the data also sits on the server you run or rent, with optional end-to-end encryption under a second password; bank sync tokens are not end-to-end encrypted. YNAB is a hosted service whose privacy policy says its services are operated from the United States, so data from other countries is transferred and stored there. YNAB says it does not sell your financial data.

Bank connections and countries

YNAB's Direct Import is included in the subscription and set up inside the app, for select banks in the US, Canada and 18 European countries including the UK, through MX and Plaid. Actual's bank sync is optional and needs its server plus an account with a provider you sign up for yourself: SimpleFIN Bridge in North America, Enable Banking in Europe, Akahu in New Zealand and Pluggy.ai in Brazil. GoCardless, once a European route, is not accepting new accounts.

For files, Actual imports CSV, QIF, OFX, QFX and CAMT from any bank. YNAB imports CSV, QFX, OFX and QIF on the web and iPad, but not on iPhone or Android.

Platforms, phones and offline

YNAB has native apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, an Apple Watch app and the web, and no desktop app. Actual has a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux and a web version served by its server. Its official mobile apps are deprecated: on a phone you install the web version to the home screen, which its documentation says works offline once installed. Unofficial community clients exist.

Actual says offline use is ready out of the box on the desktop. YNAB's features page advertises access "even offline!" without describing how offline changes sync. There is also a browser-only Actual at app.actualbudget.org that keeps data in your browser, which Actual itself does not recommend for long-term use.

Currencies and sharing

Neither handles several currencies. Actual's documentation says it is currency agnostic and does not support multi-currency, and suggests tagging accounts by currency. A YNAB plan holds one currency, and YNAB suggests a separate plan for each.

For a household, YNAB Together lets the person who pays invite up to five others, each with their own login, on one subscription. Actual can be shared as one budget file between partners; separate logins need its multi-user mode, which needs an OpenID provider that you configure.

AI, import and export

Actual's own pages mention no AI features. YNAB's privacy policy allows AI for categorizing, cleaning up merchant names, insights and support. Actual lets you export your data from its settings at any time. YNAB exports a plan from the web as two files, the plan and the transaction history, in CSV or TSV, without targets or category notes.

Moving from YNAB to Actual is supported: Actual imports YNAB4 files, and imports current YNAB through a JSON file taken from YNAB's API rather than the CSV export. Going the other way, YNAB's file import loads transactions, not a budget, so categories and targets would be set up again.