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Actual Budget

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Overview

Actual is a local-first personal finance app built around envelope budgeting (every dollar gets a job). The server is small: it serves the web app and stores a sync copy of each budget, while the real work happens in the browser or desktop app, which keeps a full local copy. That means it stays usable if the server is briefly down, and syncs when it's back.

Compose

compose.yaml
services:
  actual-budget:
    image: actualbudget/actual-server:26.10.0
    container_name: actual-budget
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "5006:5006"
    volumes:
      - /mnt/appdata/actual-budget/data:/data
    # Official script, but at /app/src/scripts/ in this image - the build/
    # path shown in some upstream examples doesn't exist here
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "node", "/app/src/scripts/health-check.js"]
      interval: 60s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 20s

No .env needed. Open it through your reverse proxy (e.g. https://budget.<YOUR_LOCAL_DOMAIN>, see HTTPS below), set the server password, then create or import a budget (Actual can import from YNAB4, nYNAB and its own exports).

Notes

  • Pin the version. Upstream's example uses latest, but this holds real financial data. Actual uses calendar versions (YY.MM.patch), and Renovate proposes each new release as a PR, so an upgrade never happens just because a redeploy pulled a new image.
  • Healthcheck path. The image ships health-check.js under /app/src/scripts/; examples pointing at a build/ path fail and leave the container permanently unhealthy. Check with docker exec actual-budget ls /app/src/scripts/ if a future image moves it again.
  • HTTPS. The web app needs a secure context (HTTPS, or localhost) to run in the browser. Put it behind your reverse proxy with a certificate rather than using the raw port from other machines.
  • Backups. /data holds server-files (accounts, settings) and user-files (the budget sync files). Back up the whole directory. Actual's own Export (Settings > Export data) is a good extra copy before upgrades.
  • Bank sync (GoCardless/SimpleFIN) is optional and configured in the app, not in compose.

Sources & further reading