Budget It brings your bank accounts together, sorts your spending and keeps a budget for each kind of it. It runs on an old laptop you already own, and your budget is stored there, not with us.
SAVED!
Your guide lives on your Home screen and tells you how the month is going, in their own words. Switch guides whenever you like, or turn them off.
LuffyCheers when you’re on track, and panics when the snack money runs out.Shishishi! You’re right on track. More meat money later!
Boa HancockExpects perfection from your budget, and usually gets it.Of course you’re on budget. I expected nothing less.
One command on any Linux machine. It sets up Node.js, copies the app and starts it every time the laptop boots.
Banks connect through your own free Plaid account, read only. You sign in inside Plaid’s window, so Budget It never sees your bank password. No Plaid? Import a CSV or add accounts by hand.
Budget It suggests budgets from what you spent last month. Add it to your phone’s home screen and it opens like a normal app, with notifications.
Built for real life: bills that repeat, a paycheque that has to last, and housemates who owe you for the groceries.
You paid for the whole house, but only your part is your spending. Send a charge to a Split It group in two taps and your budget keeps just your share. Try it:
The demo splits equally. The app uses whatever split the group agreed on.
Phone notifications when:
Charges sort themselves into categories, and a rule remembers your fix for next time. Leftovers can roll over, or overspending can carry into next month.
Found from charges that repeat and shown on a calendar, with what your subscriptions cost a year and a reminder the evening before one is due.
Budget It finds your paycheque and shows what’s free to spend until the next one, after cards and bills.
A chart of your net worth month by month, savings goals that say how much to put away to finish on time, and a pay-it-off planner for cards and loans. Investment accounts show what they hold and how they’re doing.
There is no AI inside Budget It. A built-in MCP connector lets your own assistant, like Claude, Muse or ChatGPT, answer “how much did I spend on dining this month?” or add a cash purchase for you.
Invite the people you live with by link. Everyone gets their own private budget and can share chosen accounts with the rest, read only.
A US dollar or euro account keeps its own money, and your net worth, goals and safe-to-spend add up in your home currency.
What came in, what went out and how much you kept, your top five places, and your biggest and lightest months.
Budget It is plain Node.js with no packages to install. It sits next to Split It on the same laptop, and everything it knows is a folder on your own disk.
# 1. Download and install $ git clone https://github.com/sherrypanaich/budget-it $ cd budget-it && bash install.sh # 2. Add yourself. The first person runs it. $ cd ~/budget-it && node server.js add-user Sam # 3. Reach it from your phone, free $ sudo tailscale funnel --bg 8090 → https://old-laptop.tail1234.ts.net
Budget It started as one household’s way to stop guessing where the money went. It’s free to use, change and share, and it always will be.
Found a bug, a bank export the CSV import can’t read, or a category that sorts wrong? Open an issue or send a pull request. The whole app is plain HTML and JavaScript, with tests that run without a bank.
Budget It is free and has no ads. One fund keeps Budget It and Split It going, and $30 covers about a month of running costs.
Donations go through GitHub Sponsors, monthly or one-time. They aren’t tax-deductible and don’t come with a receipt. The running total and where the money goes are on Split It’s page.
Yes. The app is free and open source, and Tailscale’s free plan covers the web address. Plaid’s free plan connects up to 10 banks for the whole laptop, and a bank you disconnect still counts toward the 10. The only running cost is the electricity for a laptop that’s on all the time.
On your laptop, in a folder called data/. Banks connect through your own Plaid account, so bank data goes from Plaid straight to your laptop and never to us. Bank connections are stored encrypted, and Budget It can read balances and transactions but can’t move money.
No. You can import a CSV from your bank’s website, or add an account by hand and keep its balance up to date. You can also look around with sample data first and remove it in one tap.
The banks Plaid supports in Canada and the US. For any other bank, use CSV import or keep the account by hand.
Budget It is new. It has been tested with Plaid’s test bank, and not yet with real banks, so expect a rough edge or two and please report what you find. It only ever reads your accounts.
Yes. Invite them with a link. Each person gets a private budget, and whoever runs the laptop sees people and health but never anyone’s accounts, charges or budgets.
The app is down until it’s back on, and your phone still shows your last numbers. Nothing is lost, because everything is saved on the laptop.