Firefly III Alternative: Open Net Worth vs Firefly III

You’d look for a Firefly III alternative if you want what Firefly’s own docs say it won’t do: track stocks, forecast, budget zero-based or add AI. Open Net Worth, the open-source personal wealth agent, does those in one self-hosted book, while Firefly III stays the better pick for rules, recurring transactions and a mature API.

We build Open Net Worth, so treat this as the maintainers’ view. It’s your own private family office, run by Lucius, an AI agent that keeps the books and watches your holdings. For the other open-source tools in this space, see our open source net worth tracker comparison.

Short answer: Firefly III is free, open source (AGPL-3.0) and self-hosted: income and expense tracking with rules, recurring transactions, piggy banks and a REST API, and no AI by design. Open Net Worth (AGPL-3.0) adds holdings with live prices, property, a zero-based budget, accounts in any currency and Lucius, and it needs an AI model at first run. Pick Firefly III to track spending without AI; pick Open Net Worth to hold the whole balance sheet.

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

A Firefly III alternative at a glance

Row details:

• Price: Firefly III’s README calls it “free and open source” and lists paid hosting from third parties. Open Net Worth is free, and you pay your AI provider or run a local model.
• How it runs: Firefly III’s Docker route uses a Compose file plus two environment files, with MariaDB by default and PostgreSQL as an option. Open Net Worth’s desktop app bundles everything; on macOS it needs Apple Silicon.
• Bank sync: Firefly III’s data importer is a separate tool with its own install. It reads CSV and CAMT.053 files and connects to Enable Banking, GoCardless (for people who still have access), Lunch Flow (paid) and SimpleFIN. Open Net Worth’s connectors cover SimpleFIN, Plaid, Enable Banking, Lunch Flow, Lunch Money and YNAB, plus GoCardless for existing accounts.
• People, AI and API: Firefly III supports many users with separate administrations, says it won’t add AI, and has a REST API that covers almost every part of the app. Open Net Worth has no user accounts, ships Lucius, and offers onw mcp, which lets other AI apps act as you.

Sources: Firefly III’s README, introduction, Docker guide and third-party providers page.

Where Firefly III is better

Firefly III is the older, bigger project. Its GitHub repository dates from June 2014, and it’s on a stable release line (releases). Open Net Worth first shipped on Oct 2 this year and has shipped more than one release a day since. Firefly’s third-party apps page lists a Home Assistant integration, Android and web apps, bots and exporters. Open Net Worth has no phone app: a phone opens it in the browser, from a server within reach.

Its automation needs no model. Rules combine triggers and actions and run when a transaction is created or changed. Recurring transactions, piggy banks, webhooks and reports are built in, and the REST API uses OAuth2. Recurring transactions and auto-budgets need a cron job running.

It can serve several people. Firefly III supports an unlimited number of users, each with an administration separated from the others. It cannot share one between users; its FAQ says a partner would have to use your login. Open Net Worth has one password per book, and its database isn’t encrypted on disk.

And it makes a promise we can’t. The README says Firefly III “will never contact external servers until you explicitly tell it to”. Open Net Worth sends no telemetry, but it calls the services you configure and checks prices, news and updates. Our data flow post lists every call.

What people ask of Firefly III

In an r/selfhosted thread from 2022, the asker wrote “Firefly is nice but I would prefer a zero budget solution.” The top reply pointed to Actual Budget. Another user found Firefly “not super friendly to just trying to figure out a “budget for the month” scenario” and said it “doesn’t have a great user-friendly bulk transaction import method”.

A thread from Mar 2026 came from someone who had “spent way more time troubleshooting imports, rules, budgets not behaving how I expect, and general backend stuff than I expected”. Replies named Sure and Actual Budget; our Actual Budget comparison covers the second.

AI is required at first run

Open Net Worth’s first run asks you to connect a model and has no skip button. You can use an API key (Anthropic, OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint), an existing Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity sign-in, or a free local model through Ollama. With a local model, your requests to Lucius stay on your machine. With a hosted provider, that provider receives your conversation and the data Lucius looks up for it (AI provider docs).

Without a model, accounts, transactions, budgeting, investments and net worth keep working (FAQ). Lucius, Automations, bank sync and reading PDF, CSV and XLSX statements need one (importing docs). For a CSV, a synonym heuristic suggests the column mapping first, and the model is asked only when that can’t cover date, description and amount. Keep a model connected anyway, since Lucius reads CSV files.

Where Open Net Worth is different

Holdings and property sit in the same book

Firefly III’s What it isn’t page is direct: “Unfortunately you won’t be able to manage your stocks or portfolio with Firefly III.” It suggests Portfolio Performance, and says the value of your house “can’t be added to your net worth”. It also says the app won’t support forecasting or financial planning.

Open Net Worth tracks the positions themselves: holdings with lots, FIFO or specific-lot sales, dividends, and TWR and MWR returns, priced from Yahoo Finance and CoinGecko (investments docs). A house, car or watch counts at your share of the value you enter, minus any loan against it (assets docs). Outlook runs thousands of simulated market paths from your real net worth. Our guide to what counts in net worth covers the house and mortgage in detail.

A zero-based budget, with a payment envelope per card

Firefly III budgets are fixed amounts for a period, such as Groceries at 300 a month (budgets docs). Its maintainer prefers that and calls zero-based budgeting “pretty terrible” in a page of personal opinion. Open Net Worth offers Zero-Based, where every dollar gets a job under Ready to Assign, or a 50/30/20 split (budgeting docs). If you come from YNAB, our migration guide shows how a plan comes across.

Every account keeps its own currency

Firefly III supports many currencies. Each asset account has one, and a transaction in another currency needs the amount in both. Budgets count only a transaction’s main currency, and exchange rates are off until you enable them (currency docs, exchange rates). In Open Net Worth each account keeps its own currency, and every total converts to your base currency (docs).

Lucius ships with the app

Firefly III’s third-party apps page lists three MCP servers (MCP is the protocol AI apps use to call tools) and an AI categorizer, all built by community members on the API. Firefly’s maintainer explains why the app itself has no AI: he finds output unreliable, and he won’t send data to a cloud, while running a model locally isn’t feasible for many people (FAQ).

Lucius is part of Open Net Worth. He reads and changes your book through about 300 tools, the same write paths the screens use. A new conversation starts in Auto: ordinary changes go through and can be undone with Restore, risky ones ask first. Manual asks for every change, which suits anyone who shares the maintainer’s doubts about model output. Automations run him on a schedule or an event, such as a daily briefing or a bank sync, and Lucius writes each briefing from your own book every time it runs. Open Net Worth trades through your broker’s own MCP server, and asks first by default. Our post on the AI agent for personal finance covers permissions in detail.

Other apps can use your book through onw mcp. A connected app acts as you, with no confirm cards; only tools set to Blocked are refused (connect AI apps). The personal finance MCP server guide shows the setup.

Fewer parts to run

A Firefly III install is the app, a database and a cron job, plus a second tool if you want the importer. Open Net Worth’s desktop app bundles its own runtime, and the server is one process (installation docs). Our self-hosting how-to and self-hosted finance overview cover the routes.

Moving from Firefly III

Open Net Worth has no Firefly III importer or connector, so the move is a file. Firefly III’s export page says the tutorial is unfinished and warns not to use CSV export as a backup; back up the database as well.

1. In Firefly III, open /export for all transactions as CSV, or use the command line for a date range and chosen accounts.

   Terminal, on a self-managed install

   php artisan firefly-iii:export-data --start=2026-01-01 --end=2026-12-31 --accounts=1,2 --export-transactions

2. In Open Net Worth, open the matching account, click Import, drop the file and click Read the statement. Lucius reads CSV files, so have your model connected.

3. Review each row as Link, Import or Leave out. Expand a row to change its payee and category before it books, then click Confirm.

The transactions CSV doesn’t carry Firefly’s budgets, piggy banks, rules or recurring transactions. The command line can export each as a separate file, but Open Net Worth has no importer for them, so set the budget up again on Plan › Budget. Add holdings and property under Investments and Assets. Importing the same file twice is safe: rows already booked are left out (importing docs). Our bank statement import guide covers the review step, so you can keep tracking in Firefly for a while and bring newer transactions over later.

Which one fits whom

Firefly III fits you if you want a spending tracker with rules and recurring transactions and no AI anywhere. It also fits if you need several logins on one server or want a REST API to build on.

Open Net Worth fits you if the Firefly III alternative you want keeps spending beside holdings, property and retirement odds, in any mix of currencies. It also fits if you’d let an AI agent do the bookkeeping under rules you set. The features page lists the rest.

Our take

Pick Firefly III to track spending with no AI; pick Open Net Worth if you want the whole balance sheet and an agent. Firefly’s rules, recurring transactions, API and separate logins are things we don’t match, and it has a head start of more than ten years. Holdings with live prices, property, a zero-based budget and a built-in agent with Restore are things Firefly’s docs say it won’t do.

If you run Firefly III happily and want a chat layer, a community MCP server may be enough. If you want an agent that books, reconciles and runs on a schedule, with Restore to undo what he changed, that’s what Lucius is for.

Reconciling is part of that job: when a balance is a few cents off the bank, Lucius can trace it to the row from a screenshot of your bank app.

Try it before you move anything. Open the demo on demo data (no sign-up; the book is shared and AI limits apply). If it fits, install the app from the docs, export one account from Firefly III and import it, while you keep tracking there. Compare the first import with your bank statement. Questions go to Discord, bugs to GitHub issues.