head to head · open source
Firefly III vs Sure.am
Firefly III has 24,649 GitHub stars, 2,289 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sure.am has 9,966 stars, 494 forks, 501 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Firefly III leads on adoption by 147% (24,649 vs 9,966 stars). Firefly III is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Sure.am is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0. Firefly III has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Sure.am 5%. Sure.am was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Firefly III | Sure.am | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 10.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 494 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Firefly III if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Sure.am if
- You want the Sure.am feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Sure.am fits your workflow better
About Firefly III
Firefly III is an AGPL 3.0 licensed, self hosted personal finance manager written in PHP that uses double entry bookkeeping to track income, expenses, budgets, categories, tags and savings goals, and it is built for individuals and households who want to own and control their own financial data instead of renting a cloud accounting subscription.
read the full Firefly III overview →
About Sure.am
Sure.am is a community maintained personal finance application that exists as a fork of the archived Maybe Finance project. It is written in Ruby, distributed under the AGPL 3.0 license, and lives in the open source personal finance management ecosystem as a self hosted application.
read the full Sure.am overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Firefly III or Sure.am more popular?
Firefly III has 24,649 GitHub stars and Sure.am has 9,966. Firefly III has the larger community by that measure.
Are Firefly III and Sure.am free?
Both are open source. Firefly III is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Sure.am under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Firefly III and Sure.am?
Firefly III is written in PHP and Sure.am in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Firefly III or Sure.am?
Choose Firefly III if you want the larger community (24,649 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Sure.am if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.