An Open-Source Claude Personal Finance Alternative

Anthropic launched Personal Finance in Claude on Nov 5, 2026: link your bank and card accounts through Plaid and ask Claude about your money in plain words. It’s a good first version, and it’s US-only, read-only and limited to balances and transactions. If you’re outside the US, want the data on your own machine, or want an AI that keeps the books as well as reading them, this post compares it with an open-source alternative.

We build Open Net Worth, the open-source personal wealth agent: a private family office for the other 99%, run by Lucius, an AI agent that keeps the books, watches your holdings and reports in on a schedule. We’re the maintainers, so read this as our view. We haven’t used Claude Personal Finance because it isn’t offered outside the US, so what we say about it comes from Anthropic’s announcement and Help Center.

Short answer: Claude Personal Finance is the easy choice if you live in the US and pay for Claude Pro, Max or Ultra: no setup, read-only by design, on web, desktop and phone. Open Net Worth is the alternative if you’re outside the US, want holdings and every currency in one book on your own machine, or want Lucius to change the books under rules you set. It can run on a Claude plan that includes Claude Code.

Note: Open Net Worth is software, not a financial advisor. This post shows how the two work; it is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice.

Claude Personal Finance vs Open Net Worth at a glance

Row details:

• Who can use it: the Help Center says Personal Finance isn’t on Free, Team or Enterprise plans, and that outside the US, or on a VPN from another country, it doesn’t appear.
• Where data lives: for the accounts you share, Claude reads bank and account names, the last four digits, balances, credit limits and up to 24 months of transactions. Anthropic says chats in the Personal Finance hub aren’t used to train its models; elsewhere your privacy settings apply. Open Net Worth keeps one database file on your computer or server and sends no telemetry.
• Banks: Open Net Worth’s connectors are SimpleFIN and Plaid for the US and Canada, Enable Banking for the EU and UK, Lunch Flow for other countries, plus Lunch Money and YNAB. GoCardless still works for existing accounts. A statement from any bank can be imported if it comes as one of the supported file types.
• Investments: Anthropic’s Help Center says Claude reads balances and credit limits for investment, loan and card accounts, “not holdings, trades, rates, or terms”.

What Claude Personal Finance does well

Setup is short. You open Personal Finance in Claude’s sidebar, sign in to your bank through Plaid, and ask “Where did my money go this month?” There’s nothing to install, and Plaid means Claude never sees your bank password.

Read-only is a real safety feature. Anthropic says Personal Finance “can’t move, manage, or invest your money”. If what you want is answers, an AI that can’t change anything is the safer design, and we’d say so to anyone who asks.

The answers come in everyday language. The dashboard has widgets for spending, cash flow, subscriptions and upcoming bills, and Claude explains terms like APR as it goes. Anthropic says there are no ads or sponsored recommendations, and it works in the Claude apps for iOS and Android as well as on the web and desktop.

If you live in the US, already pay for Claude, and want to understand your spending, start there. If you’re also weighing ChatGPT’s version, our Claude Personal Finance vs ChatGPT Finances comparison sets the two vendors’ own pages side by side.

Where it stops

US banks and US users only. The Help Center lists “You can link US banks only” under current limitations. If you’re in the UK, Canada, Europe or Asia, you can’t turn it on.

Balances, not holdings. Claude sees an investment account’s balance, not what’s in it. Questions about allocation, lots or how a single fund moved need another tool.

No scheduled work. The Help Center says Claude can’t use your linked accounts in scheduled tasks, Cowork tasks or Claude Code, so there’s no scheduled review of your accounts.

Figures can lag. Anthropic notes that balances can be a day or two old, and an account linked through two logins can be counted twice. It also says to check important figures against your bank.

Your data sits with a service. Bank data is stored in your Claude chats until you delete them, and the providers that host Claude handle it too. That’s normal for a cloud app, and it’s the trade some people want to avoid. Our post on where your financial data goes walks through that question for any finance app.

Where Open Net Worth is different

It runs outside the US

Open Net Worth is something you install, on a Mac with Apple Silicon, Windows, Linux or a server (installation docs). Bank connectors cover the US and Canada, the EU and UK, and other countries through Lunch Flow. Where no connector fits, import the statement as PDF, CSV, XLSX, OFX, QIF, MT940 or CAMT.053, up to 25 MB, and review every row before it books. PDF, CSV and XLSX are read by Lucius, so they need a model. Our guide to importing bank statements covers that path.

Every account keeps its own currency, and the totals are in your base currency.

Investments, position by position

Investment accounts hold positions with lots and live prices, in the same book as your budget, property and debts. That’s the part of the picture Claude Personal Finance doesn’t read today. Our open-source net worth tracker post shows what that book looks like.

Lucius changes the books, under rules you set

Lucius can add and categorize transactions, reconcile and run Automations on a schedule. Open Net Worth also trades, through your broker’s own MCP server, and asks first by default; our bank and brokerage data connectors stay read-only. Each conversation has an approval mode: Manually approve asks before every change unless you’ve set that tool to Always allow, and Automatically approve, the default for a new conversation, makes ordinary changes and stops for riskier ones. You can set any single tool to Always allow, Needs approval or Blocked (permissions docs).

That’s more power than read-only, and more to get right. If you want an AI that only reads, set the tools that write to Blocked, or use Claude Personal Finance. Our post on AI agents for personal finance explains what Lucius does on a schedule.

Use the Claude plan you already pay for

Lucius needs an AI model, and one option is “a subscription you already pay for”. Install the official Claude Code tool on the computer running Open Net Worth, sign in with a Claude plan that includes Claude Code, and pick it in Settings → AI (AI provider docs). Plan limits apply. You can also use an API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini or OpenRouter, or a local model through Ollama or LM Studio.

With Claude as the model, what Lucius sends in a chat goes to Anthropic. With a local model, the chat itself stays on your machine; bank connectors, price checks and web search still make their own calls.

Claude Desktop can read your book

Open Net Worth is also an MCP server. Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or ChatGPT can connect to your book and use the same tools Lucius has: balances, transaction search, budgets (connect AI apps docs). That puts your own ledger, from any country, inside the Claude app you already use. Our personal finance MCP server guide covers the setup and which tools to block, because an MCP client can call the tools that change your books without a confirm step. For Claude only, the Claude Desktop and Claude Code setup guide goes step by step.

What Open Net Worth asks of you

It’s more work than a sidebar button. You install the app or run a server, connect a model before first use, and set up bank connectors with your own accounts. Plaid in Open Net Worth needs your own Plaid developer account, and SimpleFIN Bridge costs about $15 a year. Our SimpleFIN setup guide walks through the token and the 6-hour sync, and the Plaid setup guide covers the developer keys and Plaid’s plans.

There are gaps. Nothing is in the App Store or Google Play yet (a native app is in development, not yet released); on a phone it runs as a home-screen web app from your server. The macOS app needs Apple Silicon. Each book has one password, with no separate user accounts, and the database isn’t encrypted on disk, so use disk encryption. Compare your first imports with your bank statement. Our self-hosting how-to shows the setup step by step.

Which one fits whom

Claude Personal Finance fits you if you’re in the US, already pay for Claude Pro, Max or Ultra, and want plain answers about spending with no setup and no way for the AI to touch your money.

Open Net Worth fits you if you’re outside the US, want holdings, property and every currency in one book on a machine you control, or want an agent that does the bookkeeping and runs reviews on a schedule. It also fits if you’d rather pick your model, including a Claude plan you already have. If you’re weighing other AI money apps too, Muse vs Dots vs a self-hosted agent and Open Net Worth vs Monarch Money cover two of them, and best AI for personal finance sorts the whole field by the job you want done.

Our take

If you’re in the US and want answers, try Claude Personal Finance first. If you want your money in your own hands, in any country, with an agent that works the books, Open Net Worth is what we built. The two also work together: Claude Code can be the model behind your self-hosted book, and Claude Desktop can connect to it over MCP.

Try it on demo data first. Open the demo (no sign-up; the book is shared and AI limits apply), or read self-hosted personal finance to see how Open Net Worth compares with other open-source tools.