Ledgerlite Home and YNAB solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $15, the other is a subscription at $14.99/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| 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 |
What Ledgerlite Home does well
- 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.
What YNAB still does better
There's a real reason YNAB costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on YNAB's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $14.99/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Ledgerlite Home pays for itself and then some: one month of YNAB just about covers Ledgerlite Home, and your budget never pays rent again.
Try Ledgerlite Home — $15, once
Local-first zero-based budgeting with CSV import, payee rules and net-worth tracking.