5 ways self-hosting Firefly III fixed my budgeting (and why it’s better than tools like YNAB)

Capable of tracking every minute detail of your budget, finance management apps are some of the best quality-of-life-enhancing services on the block. But with budgeting applications popping up like mushrooms, you might have a hard time picking the right tool to manage your expenses. Over the years, I’ve tried to use Expensify, YNAB, PocketGuard, and several other bookkeeping services, but each tool lacked the je ne sais quoi to satisfy my budgeting needs.

Ever since I tried hosting Firefly III on my server, I’ve found it hard to go back to any other personal finance utility. Sure, Firefly III may have a bit of a learning curve compared to its rivals, but it’s hands down the best privacy-first budgeting application out there.

5 It’s a FOSS utility

That runs on my local hardware

With cloud services becoming more popular than ever, your personal data is always under the watchful eyes of greedy corporations. This includes the financial information stored inside budgeting applications. Call me overly privacy-conscious if you must, but I refuse to grant third-parties access to my savings, subscriptions, loans, and other financial transactions.

That’s where Firefly III gains its first victory over YNAB and other cloud-based budgeting services. Rather than relying on external servers to store my financial details, I can deploy Firefly III on a local machine, harden the security rules of my home network, and rest easy knowing my data remains safe on a private system.

Then there’s the fact that YNAB has a limited trial period, after which you’ll have to shell out regular subscription fees to access the bookkeeping utility. Meanwhile, Firefly III doesn’t have a pricing structure, meaning I don’t have to spend more money just to manage my finances.

4 Doesn’t enforce zero-sum budgeting

It's just not my thing

This one depends entirely on your use case, but I’m not a fan of the conventional zero-sum budgeting framework used by YNAB and other finance management tools. For the uninitiated, bookkeeping tools using this framework require you to allocate all your income in specific categories, be it savings, expenditure, loans, or other transactions. That way, all your funds are accounted for at the end of the month.

While there are certain perks to this setup, I’m not a fan of micro-managing every dollar I make beforehand. Thankfully, Firefly III has a more flexible budgeting setup, where I can add the surplus money to a piggy bank instead of pre-planning everything at the beginning of the month.

3 Great for managing household expenses

Firefly III supports unlimited user accounts

Although my home lab accidents remain a source of annoyance for the other denizens of my house, I make sure that everyone living under the same roof as me can utilize my self-hosted stack to its full extent. Firefly III is no different, and I’ve created separate accounts for my family members so they can manage their finances via this convenient application.

Unlike Firefly III, other bookkeeping services (including YNAB) tend to restrict the number of accounts available per subscription, meaning you’ll have to come up with alternate solutions if you require multiple profiles for your budgeting needs. In contrast, the self-hosted star of this article lets me configure unlimited user profiles – all without charging a single penny.

2 Compatible with multiple currencies

No need to juggle separate budgets for all currencies

If you’ve used YNAB, you may be aware that the application only supports a single currency for each budget. This means you’ll have to create different budgets if your income and expenditure involve more than one currency. Combine this weird quirk with YNAB’s zero-based budgeting, and you’ll end up with a financial system that’s even more of a mess than the cable-riddled rat’s nest I call my home lab.

Since my finances involve USD, INR, and EUR transactions, YNAB is far from ideal for my bookkeeping needs. As luck would have it, Firefly III lets me add transactions from entirely different currencies into my budget without forcing me to jump through multiple hoops.

1 Solid automation support

The sky’s the limit with Firefly III and n8n

Similar to your average budgeting application, Firefly III and YNAB let you connect your bank accounts to their database, and can automatically pull your transactions once you configure them to do so. However, Firefly III’s self-hosted nature lets me pair the app with automation-specific utilities.

For instance, I can connect Firefly III’s API to Node-RED and set up custom events where my Home Assistant interface would notify me as soon as I go over budget. Likewise, I can use n8n to grab the receipts included as attachments with new Firefly III transactions and send them to my Paperless-ngx setup.

That said, YNAB has its own perks

Although Firefly III is ideal for my bookkeeping needs, I’ll admit that it’s not for everyone. Compared to the simple interface of YNAB, Firefly III’s web UI is a tad too complex – and this is coming from someone who has been hosting the app for several months. Likewise, you may prefer the zero-sum budgeting design of YNAB. But if you’re willing to overlook these quirks, you’ll find Firefly III a worthy addition to your home server.