The price anchor
| Ledgerlite Home | YNAB | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 — no subscription | $14.99/mo |
| Annual | $0 after purchase | $99 |
| 5-year total | $15 | $495 |
| 10-year total | $15 | $990 |
Subscription figures from the vendor's published pricing ($14.99/mo, ~$99/yr); the Ledgerlite Home column is the full price, paid once.
Break-even analysis
One month of YNAB just about covers Ledgerlite Home, and your budget never pays rent again.
- After 1 year: Ledgerlite Home has cost you $15 total — YNAB has cost $99.
- After 3 years: Ledgerlite Home is still $15 — the subscription is at $297.
- After 5 years: Ledgerlite Home is still $15 — the subscription is at $495.
What you get for $15 once
- 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.
- No renewal, ever. The license does not expire and there is no per-seat meter — $15 is the whole price.
Pricing 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.
Ledgerlite Home — $15, one time
Or get Ledgerlite Home plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.