Quick answer
Yes — Ledgerlite Home is a one-time-purchase alternative to YNAB. It costs $15 once, while YNAB runs $14.99/mo — about $99 per year, every year. Local-first zero-based budgeting with CSV import, payee rules and net-worth tracking. It is for people who want the job done on their own hardware without a renewal date — not for teams that live inside YNAB's ecosystem.
The verdict
Switch to Ledgerlite Home if you are an individual or small team paying YNAB $14.99/mo for work your own machine can do. One month of YNAB just about covers Ledgerlite Home, and your budget never pays rent again.
Stay with YNAB if your workflow depends on its integrations, you need enterprise features (SSO, admin controls, SLAs), or your team is large enough that per-seat collaboration tooling is worth the bill. Ledgerlite Home does not try to replicate those.
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 |
| 5-year cost | $15 | $495 |
Where YNAB still wins
- Ecosystem and integrations. Established tools accumulate years of third-party integrations, templates and add-ons. If your workflow is wired into YNAB's ecosystem, switching means rebuilding that plumbing — a real cost.
- Team and enterprise features. Shared workspaces, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs and a vendor to call when something breaks — that is what the higher subscription tiers actually buy, and a pay-once app does not come with it.
- Familiarity and hiring. YNAB is the name people already know. Onboarding a team onto a tool nobody has used before takes time the subscription never charges for.
Where Ledgerlite Home wins
- Price, permanently. $15 once versus $99/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- 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.
The math
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.
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.
Try Ledgerlite Home — $15, one time
Or get Ledgerlite Home plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.