Actual

Actual Budget is a personal finance management tool built around envelope budgeting, the method where you assign every dollar you actually have to a specific category before spending it. No projected income, no made-up numbers. You budget what's in your accounts right now, which keeps your plan grounded in reality.

It's local-first by design. Your data lives on your device, and the app works fully offline. Sync happens in the background across as many devices as you want, but a dropped connection doesn't stop you from using it. For people who've grown uncomfortable with cloud-first finance tools, that's a meaningful distinction.

Key capabilities:

• Envelope budgeting assigns real cash on hand to categories, so overspending in one area is immediately visible
• Bank sync connects to goCardless (EU/UK) and SimpleFIN (US/Canada) for automatic transaction imports
• Transaction imports support QIF, OFX, QFX, CAMT.053, and CSV files
• Split transactions and transfers are handled in the same editor, with linked entries on both sides of a transfer
• Reports include built-in net worth and cash flow views, plus a custom report engine for anything else
• End-to-end encryption is optional but available, keeping data unreadable even to the sync server
• YNAB4 and nYNAB importers let you bring over your full history if you're switching from YNAB
• API access lets developers write custom importers or build features directly against local data
• Undo/redo covers any change you make, so mistakes aren't permanent

The interface is intentionally minimal and fast. Categorizing transactions, reviewing spending, and moving money between envelopes are all optimized to take as few taps or clicks as possible. Dark mode and system-level theming are built in.

Actual is self-hosted. You run the sync server yourself, which means your financial data never touches a third-party service unless you choose bank sync. Among budgeting apps that offer this level of privacy, few match its combination of polished UI and full local control.