head to head · open source
Actual vs ezBookkeeping
Actual has 28,976 GitHub stars, 2,991 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ezBookkeeping has 5,598 stars, 687 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Actual leads on adoption by 418% (28,976 vs 5,598 stars). Actual is written in TypeScript under MIT; ezBookkeeping is written in Go under MIT. Actual has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ezBookkeeping 12%. Actual was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (finance), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Actual | ezBookkeeping | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 687 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Actual if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ezBookkeeping if
- You want the ezBookkeeping feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ezBookkeeping fits your workflow better
About Actual
Actual is a local first personal finance application built for envelope budgeting, part of the open source personal finance ecosystem. It runs entirely on the user’s device by default, ensuring data remains under full local control, while optionally syncing changes across devices via a self managed or hosted backend.
read the full Actual overview →
About ezBookkeeping
ezBookkeeping is a self hosted personal finance application written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the self hosted bookkeeping ecosystem, alongside the Docker, NAS and home server tooling that its topics list names. The project records daily transactions, imports data from a range of external sources, and offers search, filtering, visualization and analysis over the resulting history. It ships separate interfaces for mobile and desktop, and it is packaged as a Progressive Web App so it can be added to a phone home screen and used in a native like way. It is distributed primarily as a Docker…
read the full ezBookkeeping overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Actual or ezBookkeeping more popular?
Actual has 28,976 GitHub stars and ezBookkeeping has 5,598. Actual has the larger community by that measure.
Are Actual and ezBookkeeping free?
Both are open source. Actual is licensed under MIT and ezBookkeeping under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Actual and ezBookkeeping?
Actual is written in TypeScript and ezBookkeeping in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Actual or ezBookkeeping?
Choose Actual if you want the larger community (28,976 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ezBookkeeping if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.