The YNAB method, without the YNAB bill

The situation, plainly

YNAB lists at $109/yr and has raised prices repeatedly, which is exactly the kind of bill people audit in January. Actual was built by a former YNAB user and keeps the method: envelopes, monthly rollover, reconciliation. The honest difference is bank syncing — see below. What you gain is price and custody: the ledger of everything you spend money on lives on your own isolated instance, not in someone else’s analytics.

What you get instead

• Envelope / zero-based budgeting with monthly rollover — the same method
• Direct YNAB import: budgets, categories, and history in one screen
• Desktop apps (Windows/Mac/Linux) plus iOS & Android
• Rules that auto-categorize transactions as you import them
• Reports: net worth, cash flow, spending over time
• Local-first: snappy, works offline, syncs when connected

The honest tradeoffs

• Actual is manual-first: there is no built-in US bank syncing. You enter transactions or import CSV/QIF/OFX from your bank. Plenty of people consider handing bank credentials to a middleman a bug, not a feature — but budget five minutes a week for entry.
• Your instance is isolated and access-controlled, not end-to-end encrypted (optional E2EE is on our roadmap).

Making the move

1. Export from YNAB. Your budget exports from YNAB’s settings in a minute.
2. Import in Actual. The built-in YNAB importer maps budgets, categories, and history.
3. Set your envelopes. Same method, same muscle memory — give every dollar a job and keep rolling.

Full import guide →

Questions people ask

Is the budgeting method really the same?

Yes — zero-based envelope budgeting with rollover, built by people who used YNAB. The method is why it works; the software is just where it lives.

What about bank syncing?

Not built in for US banks, honestly stated. You import files from your bank or enter by hand. Manual entry is slower and makes you look at every transaction — which, users keep reporting, is half the budgeting benefit.