Firefly III
Free, self-hosted personal finance manager with double-entry bookkeeping.
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Description
Firefly III is a free program you install yourself that plays the role of a personal accountant living on your own computer or server: you feed it your bank transactions and it tracks where your money goes, warns you when a budget is about to be blown, and shows the full picture across every account and currency — without your financial data ever touching a company's servers.
Under the hood it's a proper double-entry bookkeeping system (the accounting method banks and businesses use), with multi-currency support, budgets, categories, tags, a rule engine that auto-categorizes recurring transactions, and a bank-data importer. It exposes a full JSON REST API for custom dashboards or automations. It's self-hosted via Docker and AGPL-3.0 licensed — there's no company behind it selling a paid tier.
💬 Our review
The short version: if you're comfortable running a Docker container and want a personal-finance tool that never phones home, Firefly III is one of the most complete free options available — genuinely accountant-grade, not a stripped-down budgeting toy.
Its double-entry model and REST API set it apart from consumer apps like YNAB ($14.99/month) or Monarch Money (~$100/year): those are polished and require zero setup, but your data lives on their servers and the subscription never ends. Firefly III trades that convenience for full ownership — setup takes real effort (a VPS, Docker Compose, some patience with a dated interface), and there's no mobile app as smooth as the commercial competitors'. For a developer or privacy-conscious user willing to spend an afternoon on setup, it's free forever with no feature compromises; for someone who just wants to open an app and see their budget, a paid consumer tool gets there faster.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
100% free and open source (AGPL-3.0); only cost is self-hosting infrastructure
Pros
Completely free, no subscription
Double-entry bookkeeping
Full REST API
Full data ownership
Multi-currency support
Cons
Requires self-hosting
Interface less polished than commercial apps
No official mobile app on par with competitors
No automatic bank sync without extra setup