512 MB RAMamd64 / arm64TypeScriptVery easyMITVersion 26.10.0
Instead of a subscription
Self-hosted alternatives to YNAB
YNAB teaches envelope budgeting on a subscription, with bank imports and a shared household plan. The budgeting recipe here follows the same method, with the ledger on your own server.
Catalog
Recipes that cover it
Requirements
Side by side
| Application | Minimum RAM | Disk estimate | Database | Installation difficulty | Backup | Recipe verification | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual Budget | 512 MB RAM | 2 GB | SQLite | Very easy | Yes · Restore tested | Fully verifiedRecheck overdue · 0 dCheck is current | MIT |
The bill
The subscription against a server
Both figures are editable, because only you know which of them you actually pay. The server is sized from the figure the recipe recommends — the same one the catalog calls a comfortable fit on your profile — and not from the cheapest row of a price list.
Actual Budget asks for 1 GB of RAM, 1 vCPU and 2 GB of disk — $6 a month on DigitalOcean Basic.
The difference
- Per month
- $3.08
- Per year
- $36.96
- Over three years
- $110.88
Hosting it yourself is cheaper — $36.96 a year stays with you.
Not counted: your own time, a domain, and a backup kept anywhere other than that same server. A machine you already run costs nothing extra — set the server to zero.
YNAB · YNAB, billed annually, price checked 2026-09-10Server prices: DigitalOcean Basic, checked 2026-09-10
Migration
What changes when you host it yourself
The data stops leaving your network, and so does the responsibility for it: backups, the restore you have actually tested, and the disk it all sits on.
Feature parity is never exact. Read what each recipe states about limitations and the smoke test before planning a migration.
The bill turns into work: updates, certificates and an eye on the release notes. The catalog shows how much of that each recipe asks for.
Categories
Guides with these applications
- Applications with a minimum of 1 GB RAM or lessSmall declared resource requirements for a VPS or thin client, with new metrics, notifications, notes and utility recipes. The limit applies to each application separately.