Guide
A self-hosted budgeting app that keeps your money data at home.
Self-hosting means your finances live on a machine you own, not in someone else's cloud. Here's what to look for, how Budvo approaches it, and a few other good options.
Updated
Why self-host your budget
Financial data is about as personal as data gets: where you shop, what you owe, when you get paid. A self-hosted app keeps all of it on your own hardware, under your control. There's no company account to breach, nothing to sell, and no subscription.
It also means your tools don't disappear when a company changes course. When Intuit shut down Mint in 2024, millions of people had to move their finances somewhere new. Software you run yourself keeps working on your schedule.
What to look for
- Encryption at rest. If someone walks off with the drive, they should get noise, not your bank history.
- Backups and updates that are hard to get wrong. You're the IT department now, so this part should be close to automatic.
- A safe way in from outside. Reaching your budget from your phone shouldn't mean opening ports on your router.
- An easy install. One container is easier to keep running than five.
- Honesty about sharing. Whoever runs a server can, in principle, see what's on it. A good app says so.
How Budvo handles it
- One Docker container on a NAS, a Mac mini, a home server or a Raspberry Pi. It stores your data and serves the dashboard.
- The whole database is encrypted with a 256-bit key, wrapped by your password and by a recovery key only you hold. Backups stay encrypted too.
- Locked after a restart: after a reboot the server can't read its own data until you unlock it.
- Updates with one click, with a backup taken automatically before each one. See updates and backups.
- Remote access without open ports, through Cloudflare Tunnel or privately with Tailscale.
- No analytics, ads or telemetry. Update checks send only the version you run.
- Hosting friends, honestly: before a friend joins your server, Budvo tells them the person running it could technically see their data.
The security model has the details.
Other self-hosted options
Budvo isn't the only way to keep your budget at home, and the right tool depends on how you like to work. Two well established projects are worth a look:
- Actual Budget is open source and built around envelope budgeting. It's a local-first app with an optional sync server you can host.
- Firefly III is open source and built for detailed tracking: double-entry bookkeeping, rules and lots of reports.
Budvo is free to run but isn't open source. Its focus is different: what's safe to spend until payday, a plan for each paycheck and the fastest way out of debt.
| Budvo | Actual Budget | Firefly III | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built around | Paycheck plans, safe to spend and debt payoff | Envelope budgeting | Detailed bookkeeping and reports |
| License | Free to run, closed source | Open source (MIT) | Open source (AGPL) |
| Status | Available, free | Available | Available |
What you need to run Budvo
Anything that runs Docker and stays on: a Synology, QNAP, Unraid or TrueNAS box, a Mac mini, an old PC, or a Raspberry Pi 4 or newer. Budvo is light, and your data takes megabytes, not gigabytes. Budvo is in testing now; when it's released, the self-hosting guide takes you from nothing to your first plan in a few minutes.
Questions
Good to know
Is it safe to keep my finances on a home server?
With Budvo the whole database is encrypted, and the key is wrapped by your password and a recovery key that only you hold. After a restart the server can't read anything until you unlock it, so a stolen NAS is just ciphertext. Keep the machine updated, and use Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale instead of opening ports.
What happens if my server dies?
Budvo keeps encrypted backups, including one before every update. Copy them to a second drive or to cloud storage as well; they stay encrypted. On new hardware, start Budvo, restore the backup and unlock it with your password or recovery key.
Can I use it away from home?
Yes. Cloudflare Tunnel gives your server a real HTTPS address without opening a port, and Tailscale keeps it private to your own devices. The docs cover both.
Can my partner use it too?
Yes. Share a household with a partner, or host friends in their own separate households on the same server.
Your money, on your server.
Free to run, one Docker container, and a database only you can unlock.