YNAB is $14.99/mo — $99 or more a year, forever — for envelope math on top of your transactions that does not need a server, a login or a rent payment. Ledgerlite Home does the same job locally: zero-based budgets, CSV imports and a net-worth tracker, all in a SQLite file on your own machine. $15, once.
If you've searched for a YNAB alternative, Ledgerlite Home is the pay-once option worth putting at the top of the list: Ledgerlite Home is $15, one time, and covers the same core job YNAB charges $14.99/mo for.
What makes Ledgerlite Home the pick for 2026
- Zero-based budget — Assign every dollar of monthly income to a category envelope, with Income / Assigned / To-budget always in the header.
- Rollover envelopes — Per-category toggle to reset monthly or carry unspent funds forward for sinking funds like Vacation or Car Repairs.
- CSV bank import — Fast manual entry plus CSV import of any bank export.
- Map columns once — Ledgerlite fingerprints each bank's header format and remembers your date/payee/amount mapping for next time.
- Payee rules — Rules like payee contains KROGER to Groceries apply automatically on every import, creatable inline while editing a transaction.
Ledgerlite Home vs YNAB, at a glance
| Ledgerlite Home | YNAB | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $15 once | $14.99/mo |
| Your data | Local SQLite file on your disk | Their cloud |
| Works offline | Always | Limited |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Zero-based envelope budgeting | Yes | Yes |
| CSV bank import w/ saved mappings | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic bank sync | No (import CSV exports) | Yes |
| Payee auto-categorize rules | Yes | Yes |
One month of YNAB just about covers Ledgerlite Home, and your budget never pays rent again.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Ledgerlite Home is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/budget-planner-personal-mvp. The $15 buys the packaged Windows installer; building from source is free.
Where does my financial data live?
In SQLite files under your OS user-data directory. No account, no cloud, no telemetry — copy the files to back up or move machines. Note there is no automatic bank sync; you import CSV exports.
Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $15 once, own it forever, no renewal and nothing ever leaves your computer.
The bottom line
Ledgerlite Home won't out-feature YNAB on every axis — no subscription tool with a bigger team and a bigger roadmap loses on everything. But for the core job, $15 once against $14.99/mo forever is a trade most people should at least look at. Ledgerlite Home is part of OneTimeSuite, a catalog of pay-once apps that replace subscription SaaS.
Try Ledgerlite Home — $15, once
Local-first zero-based budgeting with CSV import, payee rules and net-worth tracking.