Actual Budget alternative: how Rinalance compares

Actual Budget is free, open source, and very good. If you are comparing it with Rinalance, the honest framing is not which app has more features. It is whether you want to run and maintain the thing yourself.

Actual gives you more control than Rinalance does, at the cost of being something you operate. Rinalance gives you nothing to operate, at the cost of being a hosted product you pay for once you outgrow the free limits. That is the whole trade, and everything below is detail.

What Actual Budget does

Actual is a local-first, MIT-licensed personal finance app built around envelope-style zero-based budgeting. Your data lives with you, syncs in the background across devices, and keeps working without a connection. It imports QIF, OFX, QFX, CAMT.053, and CSV files, offers optional end-to-end encryption, and can connect to banks through GoCardless in the EU and UK or SimpleFIN in the US and Canada.

You run it yourself with Docker, pay a small hosting fee somewhere like PikaPods or Fly.io, or use the desktop app for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Rinalance and Actual Budget side by side

Where Actual Budget is the better choice

This is the shorter, more useful section, so it goes first.

You are comfortable running a server. If Docker, backups, and updates are things you already do without thinking, Actual is free, it is yours, and no subscription is involved. Take it.

You want your data on your own hardware. Rinalance is hosted. Your records sit in our infrastructure, encrypted in transit and at rest, but we operate it, not you. Actual can run entirely on a machine you own.

You need end-to-end encryption. Actual offers it. Rinalance does not.

You need offline access. Actual is local-first and works with no connection. Rinalance needs one, and we do not claim otherwise.

You have years of history in files. Actual imports QIF, OFX, QFX, CAMT.053, and CSV. Rinalance has no import at all.

You want zero-based envelope budgeting. Rinalance uses monthly category budgets on top of a ledger, which is a different model.

That is a real list, and if two or more of those describe you, Actual is probably the right answer.

Where Rinalance is the better choice

There is nothing to set up or maintain. No Docker, no server, no updates, no backups to remember, no sync service to keep running. You sign in and start recording. For a lot of people the reason a self-hosted budget app fails is not the software, it is the month they stop maintaining it.

Seven currencies with automatic conversion. EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, JPY, CAD, and AUD, converted from cached rates that record their provider and timestamp. If you earn or spend across borders, this is the clearest reason to look at Rinalance.

Separate financial contexts that stay separate. Personal, Business, or anything else lives in its own account, and Rinalance never merges them into one combined total. You switch contexts rather than filtering one big pile.

Debts and subscriptions built in. Money you owe and money owed to you attach to the balance they belong to, with counterparties, due dates, and repayments. Subscriptions are tracked as their own recurring commitments.

No bank connection anywhere in the product. Actual makes bank sync optional. Rinalance does not offer it at all, which some people want as a guarantee rather than a setting.

What "free" actually costs

Actual is free software, but running it is not always free. Hosted options land somewhere around one to a few dollars a month, and bank aggregation is a separate paid service in both regions. If you self-host on hardware you already own, the software cost is genuinely zero and the cost is your time.

Rinalance is $0 on the Free plan, with 2 accounts, 3 assets per account, 5 tracked subscriptions, and unlimited records. Premium is $4.99 per month when you need 20 accounts, 20 assets per account, unlimited subscriptions, monthly budgets, custom categories, and cash-flow forecasting.

Compare those honestly against an hour of your own time, and the answer will differ from person to person. That is fine.

Moving between them

Actual to Rinalance: there is no import path. You would enter the current balance of each account, card, and wallet, add your debts and subscriptions, and record forward from there. Keep your Actual data as an archive.

Rinalance to Actual: CSV export is available on both Rinalance plans, and Actual imports CSV. Your records are not locked in, which is deliberate.

Which one to pick

Choose Actual Budget if you want free, open-source software you control, if offline access or end-to-end encryption matters to you, if you need to import years of existing files, or if envelope budgeting is the method you want.

Choose Rinalance if you would rather not run anything, if you deal in several currencies, if you need personal and business money kept in genuinely separate contexts, or if you want a manual tracker that works the same on any browser you sign in from.

If you are still unsure, the deciding question is simple: are you going to enjoy maintaining it? If yes, Actual. If the honest answer is no, hosted is worth paying for.