Ghostfolio Alternative: Open Net Worth vs Ghostfolio

Decide in one read whether Ghostfolio’s portfolio view is enough, or whether your budget, loans and property belong in the same book as your holdings. Open Net Worth, the open-source personal wealth agent, brings all of it into a private family office you run yourself, with Lucius working the books.

We build Open Net Worth, so treat this as the maintainers’ view. For the wider field, see our open source net worth tracker comparison.

Short answer: Ghostfolio is an AGPL-3.0 portfolio tracker, free to self-host, with a paid hosted Premium. Wealthfolio is a local-first investment and spending app with mobile apps and paid sync. Open Net Worth (AGPL-3.0) adds a zero-based budget, loans and property beside your holdings, plus Lucius, an agent that changes the books under rules you set, and it needs an AI model at first run. For portfolio analytics alone, Ghostfolio is the more focused tool.

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

Why people look for a Ghostfolio alternative

Two r/selfhosted threads show what sends people searching. In January 2026 one user posted “Wealthfolio went paid (for syncing) where to turn to now?” and asked: “Are there any selfhosted offerings that sync with online accounts?” One reply said “Just because you’re self hosting it doesn’t mean it’s free.” Another said “I just do a manual export/import once or twice a month and call it good enough.” The Wealthfolio developer replied that “Wealthfolio stays free, open-source, and local-first on self-host, desktop, and mobile”; only the optional Connect service is paid.

The second thread, from April 2026, is titled “How do you track your net worth across multiple accounts? Built something yourself or using Ghostfolio?” The asker listed 21 accounts across 5 banks, crypto, a pension and investments, and wrote “So far I want to avoid importing all transactions.” One reply says “I tried Ghostfolio, but had several issues, I’m using Wealthfolio for a few weeks and I’m satisfied so far.” Another says Wealthfolio “offers a good mix of spending/budget and investments.”

Those two needs come up again and again: a view across every account, and an honest answer on what sync costs.

A Ghostfolio alternative at a glance

Row details:

• Price: Ghostfolio’s pricing page lists managed cloud plans (Basic free, Premium USD 48 a year, Max USD 149) and a free Open Source plan, “self-hosted, update manually”. Wealthfolio’s Connect page lists Basic at $2.99 a month, Essentials at $7.99 and Duo at $12.99. Open Net Worth is free; you pay your AI provider, or run a local model.
• Runs as: Ghostfolio’s README names PostgreSQL and Redis as its backend. Open Net Worth keeps one database file, by default under ~/.open-net-worth; its desktop app needs Apple Silicon on macOS.
• Holdings: Ghostfolio measures performance with Return on Average Investment, dividends included, from Today to Max. Open Net Worth reports TWR and MWR, and records lots with FIFO or specific-lot sales.
• Budget and debts: Ghostfolio’s features page and README list no budgeting, but its features page lists Liabilities (a student loan, say) and Wealth Items (a watch or trading cards). Wealthfolio’s README lists budgets, liabilities, mortgages, real estate and vehicles.
• Sync and AI: Wealthfolio’s Connect page names SnapTrade as its aggregator and lists 43+ institutions; its README says 30+. Ghostfolio’s MCP server is switched on with ENABLE_FEATURE_MCP, which defaults to false and is marked experimental.

Sources: Ghostfolio pricing, features and README; Wealthfolio Connect and README.

Where Ghostfolio is better

Ghostfolio is the narrower tool, which suits portfolios. Its features page lists allocation by account, asset class, currency, region and sector, benchmarks, and Ghostfolio X-ray, a static analysis that flags portfolio risks. Its FAQ walks through importing from Interactive Brokers. Open Net Worth has allocation, sector and geography, and concentration risk on its Investments Analysis tab. It has no feature named X-ray, and its analytics are younger.

You can also skip the server. Ghostfolio’s README calls its hosted Premium “the easiest way to get started”. Open Net Worth is software you run yourself, so updates and backups are yours.

It is the older, larger project. The homepage showed 9,664 GitHub stars when we looked, and Ghostfolio ships releases often. Open Net Worth first shipped on Oct 2 this year and has shipped more than one release a day since.

Its MCP server also ships: the features page says it lets “your AI client analyze your portfolio and import activities into it”. If you only want Claude reading a portfolio, Ghostfolio does that today.

Where Wealthfolio is better

Wealthfolio is the closer cousin. Its README lists investments, net worth with liabilities, spending and budgets, goals, an AI assistant and MCP in one local-first app, free and without an account. It has native iOS and Android apps; Open Net Worth runs on a phone as a home-screen web app.

Its paid Connect service covers things we don’t match: end-to-end encrypted device sync and cloud backups from $2.99 a month, brokerage sync through SnapTrade from $7.99, and a shared household view on Duo. Open Net Worth has one password per book, no user accounts, and a database that isn’t encrypted on disk.

Where Open Net Worth is different

One book for the budget, the debts and the property

Ghostfolio lists liabilities and wealth items, and Wealthfolio lists debts and real estate, so each can show an asset next to shares. The difference is how much of the rest lives there too. Open Net Worth has seven account types, including Credit and Loan, and works your net worth out fresh from accounts, holdings and assets, minus what you owe. An asset such as a flat or a car can carry its own loan and your share of it. Values you enter stay as entered; only holdings get live prices. For what counts and what stays out, such as unvested RSUs, see what counts in net worth.

On top sits a budget: Zero-Based envelopes with Ready to Assign, or a 50/30/20 split, with a payment envelope for each credit card.

Each account keeps its own currency, and every total converts to your base currency. Prices come from Yahoo Finance and CoinGecko, two of Ghostfolio’s supported data providers too.

Lucius works the books

Both rivals offer AI through MCP, and Wealthfolio’s homepage lists Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP agent with access you can revoke. In Open Net Worth the agent is the main interface. Lucius reads and changes your book through the same guarded write paths as the screens. A new conversation starts in Auto: ordinary changes go through and Restore undoes them, risky ones ask first. Manual asks for every change.

Automations run him on a schedule or an event, such as a daily briefing, 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 those tools ask first by default; our bank and brokerage data connectors stay read-only. Our post on the AI agent for personal finance covers the permission levels.

onw mcp also lets Claude or another app use your book. 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 has the setup, and External MCP servers lists the brokers you can add.

The price is the model. First run asks you to connect one, with no skip: an API key, an existing CLI sign-in, or a free local model through Ollama. With a hosted provider, that provider receives your conversation and the data Lucius looks up; our data flow post lists every outbound call.

Sync costs money here too

SimpleFIN Bridge costs about $15 a year (connector docs), Plaid needs your own developer account, and every connector needs a working model. Statement import skips the aggregator (guide). The SimpleFIN setup guide shows the SimpleFIN route, and the Plaid setup guide shows the Plaid one.

Moving from Ghostfolio

There is no Ghostfolio importer, so this goes through files.

1. In Ghostfolio, get your activities out. The README documents an export endpoint, GET /api/v1/export, which needs a bearer token from POST /api/v1/auth/anonymous with your security token. Its import API accepts BUY, DIVIDEND, FEE, INTEREST, LIABILITY and SELL types.
2. In Open Net Worth, install the app, then add each brokerage as an Investment account in its own currency.
3. For shares you’ve held a long time, Investments → Holdings → Add with Kind Opening balance skips the history. To bring transactions across, open the account, click Import, drop a CSV and click Read the statement. Our importing docs list PDF, CSV, XLSX, OFX, QFX, QBO, QIF, MT940 and CAMT.053; JSON isn’t one of them, so save your export as CSV first. The import books the file’s transaction rows, so check Investments → Holdings afterwards: a buy and sell file may not build your lots.
4. Review each row as Link, Import or Leave out, change payee and category where needed, then click Confirm. Importing the same file twice is safe.
5. Anything Ghostfolio holds as a liability becomes a Loan account here, so add it under Accounts rather than importing it as a row.
6. Compare each holding’s quantity and your total with Ghostfolio for a month before you switch it off.

If you only want a net worth number, an account can be just a name, a type, a currency and a balance, with no transactions to import.

Which one fits whom

Ghostfolio fits you if the job is understanding a portfolio, in a minimal interface, with a hosted option when you don’t want a server. Wealthfolio fits you if you want that plus spending and net worth in a local-first app with phone apps, and you’re happy to pay for sync.

Open Net Worth fits you if the Ghostfolio alternative you want keeps budget, debts, property and holdings in one ledger, in any mix of currencies, with an AI agent doing the bookkeeping under rules you set. The self-hosting how-to shows what running it involves, and self-hosted personal finance covers the wider choice. If the budget is the main job, our Actual Budget comparison is the better read.

Our take

Pick Ghostfolio or Wealthfolio for a tracker. Pick Open Net Worth if the budget, loans and property should sit in the same book as your holdings. We don’t match Ghostfolio’s return analytics, hosted option or project size, or Wealthfolio’s mobile apps and encrypted sync.

What we offer is breadth plus an agent with Restore. The price is a model at first run. Check the first numbers against your broker.

Where this fits

Ghostfolio answers how your investments are doing, and Wealthfolio adds net worth and spending. Open Net Worth is built for what your whole balance sheet is doing: cash, shares, company equity, the house and the loans, in any currency, with or without a bank connection. It is your own private family office, run by Lucius, who keeps the books and reports in on a schedule.

Try it before you move a portfolio. Open the demo on demo data (no sign-up; the book is shared and AI limits apply). If it fits, install the app, add one brokerage account and import its file while Ghostfolio keeps running. Questions go to Discord, bugs to GitHub issues.