Self-Host Firefly III: Personal Finance Manager 2026

TL;DR

Firefly III (AGPL 3.0, ~16K GitHub stars, PHP) is a comprehensive self-hosted personal finance manager using double-entry bookkeeping — the same accounting method used by professional accountants. Track all transactions, set budgets, monitor bills, and generate detailed reports. Mint shut down in 2023; Copilot charges $9.99/month; YNAB charges $14.99/month. Firefly III gives you more detailed financial tracking than any of them, free, on your own server.

Key Takeaways

• Firefly III: AGPL 3.0, ~16K stars, PHP — double-entry bookkeeping with full transaction history
• Rules engine: Auto-categorize and tag transactions based on patterns
• Bills tracking: Track recurring bills and get notified when they're due
• Budgets: Set spending limits per category per month
• Reports: Customizable charts — spending over time, categories, account balances
• Fixer companion: Optional data importer to auto-import from banks (via Nordigen/SimpleFIN)

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Firefly III vs Actual Budget

Feature	Firefly III	Actual Budget
Accounting method	Double-entry	Envelope/zero-based
Best for	Detailed tracking, multiple accounts	Zero-based budgeting, YNAB users
Complexity	More complex setup	Simpler UI
Reports	Extensive	Basic
Bank sync	Via companion app	SimpleFIN/GoCardless
Mobile app	PWA + third-party	PWA
Rules engine	Advanced	Basic

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Part 1: Docker Setup

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  app:
    image: fireflyiii/core:latest
    container_name: firefly-iii
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - firefly_upload:/var/www/html/storage/upload
    environment:
      APP_ENV: production
      APP_KEY: "${APP_KEY}"             # 32-char random key
      APP_URL: "https://money.yourdomain.com"
      DEFAULT_LANGUAGE: "en_US"
      DEFAULT_LOCALE: "equal,en_US"
      TZ: "America/Los_Angeles"
      TRUSTED_PROXIES: "**"
      DB_CONNECTION: pgsql
      DB_HOST: db
      DB_PORT: 5432
      DB_DATABASE: firefly
      DB_USERNAME: firefly
      DB_PASSWORD: "${DB_PASSWORD}"
      MAIL_MAILER: smtp
      MAIL_HOST: mail.yourdomain.com
      MAIL_PORT: 587
      MAIL_FROM: firefly@yourdomain.com
      MAIL_USERNAME: firefly@yourdomain.com
      MAIL_PASSWORD: "${MAIL_PASSWORD}"
      MAIL_ENCRYPTION: tls
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy

  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: firefly
      POSTGRES_USER: firefly
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "${DB_PASSWORD}"
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U firefly"]
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 20s

  # Cron for recurring transactions:
  cron:
    image: alpine:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: sh -c "echo '0 3 * * *  wget -qO- http://app:8080/api/v1/cron/CRON_TOKEN' | crontab - && crond -f -L /dev/stdout"
    depends_on:
      - app

volumes:
  firefly_upload:
  db_data:

# Generate APP_KEY:
docker run --rm fireflyiii/core:latest php artisan key:generate --show
# → base64:xxxx...

docker compose up -d

---

Part 2: HTTPS with Caddy

money.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8080
}

Visit https://money.yourdomain.com → create admin account.

---

Part 3: Account Setup

Asset accounts

These are your real accounts:

1. Accounts → + Create new account
2. Type: Asset account (checking, savings, investment)
3. Name: Chase Checking, High-Yield Savings
4. Opening balance + date

Expense accounts

Where money goes:

1. Type: Expense account
2. These are created automatically when you add transactions
3. Examples: Amazon, Whole Foods, Shell, Netflix

Revenue accounts

Where money comes from:

1. Type: Revenue account
2. Examples: Employer Inc, Freelance Client, Dividend income

---

Part 4: Transactions

Add a transaction

1. Transactions → + Create new transaction
2. Type: Withdrawal (expense), Deposit (income), or Transfer (between accounts)
3. From: Chase Checking
4. To: Whole Foods (auto-creates expense account)
5. Amount: 87.43
6. Category: Groceries
7. Date, description, tags

Transaction types explained

Withdrawal:  Money leaves your asset account
             Chase Checking → Whole Foods (-$87.43)

Deposit:     Money enters your asset account
             Employer Inc → Chase Checking (+$5,000)

Transfer:    Between your own accounts
             Chase Checking → High-Yield Savings (-$500)
             (No net change to your total)

---

Part 5: Rules Engine

Auto-categorize transactions based on patterns:

1. Rules → + Create rule
2. Trigger: Transaction is created
3. Conditions:
   • Description contains: NETFLIX
   • OR description contains: SPOTIFY
4. Actions:
   • Set category: Subscriptions
   • Set budget: Entertainment
   • Add tag: auto-categorized

# Example rules:
Rule: "Grocery stores"
Conditions:
  - description contains: TRADER JOE
  - OR description contains: WHOLE FOODS
  - OR description contains: KROGER
Actions:
  - category: Groceries
  - budget: Food

Rule: "Utilities"
Conditions:
  - description contains: PACIFIC GAS
  - OR description contains: ELECTRIC
Actions:
  - category: Utilities
  - budget: Housing

---

Part 6: Import Transactions

CSV import (manual)

1. Export transactions from your bank (CSV/OFX)
2. Import → CSV file
3. Map columns: Date, Description, Amount, Account
4. Rules auto-apply during import

Firefly III Importer (companion app)

# Add to docker-compose.yml:
services:
  importer:
    image: fireflyiii/data-importer:latest
    container_name: firefly-importer
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8080"
    environment:
      FIREFLY_III_URL: "http://app:8080"
      FIREFLY_III_ACCESS_TOKEN: "your-personal-access-token"
      # For Nordigen (European banks):
      NORDIGEN_ID: "your-nordigen-id"
      NORDIGEN_KEY: "your-nordigen-key"
      # For SimpleFIN (US banks):
      SIMPLEFIN_TOKEN: "your-simplefin-token"

---

Part 7: Budgets and Bills

Budgets

1. Budgets → + Create budget
2. Name: Groceries
3. Monthly amount: $500

Budget progress bar shows: Spent / Budgeted

Bills (recurring expenses)

Track recurring bills and get notified:

1. Bills → + Create bill
2. Name: Netflix
3. Amount: ~$15.49
4. Repeat period: Monthly
5. Expected date: Day 5 of month
6. Associated accounts: Credit Card

Firefly III matches transactions to bills automatically and shows upcoming bills in the dashboard.

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Part 8: Reports

Budget report

Shows spending vs budget per category, per month.

Expense report

Categories breakdown:
- Groceries: $487 (97% of budget)
- Entertainment: $234 (117% of budget — over!)
- Transportation: $312 (104% of budget — slightly over)
- Utilities: $148 (99% of budget)

Net worth over time

Charts your total assets minus liabilities over months/years.

Category report

Drill down into any category — see every transaction in Groceries for the past 3 months.

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Maintenance

# Update:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Database backup:
docker exec firefly-iii-db-1 pg_dump -U firefly firefly \
  | gzip > firefly-db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz

# File upload backup:
tar -czf firefly-uploads-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz \
  $(docker volume inspect firefly-iii_firefly_upload --format '{{.Mountpoint}}')

# Logs:
docker compose logs -f app

Why Self-Host Firefly III?

The case for self-hosting Firefly III comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Firefly III means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Firefly III, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Firefly III headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Firefly III data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Firefly III without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Firefly III's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Firefly III backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Firefly III's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Firefly III's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Firefly III's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Firefly III's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f firefly-iii

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Firefly III's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

1. Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
2. Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
3. If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
4. If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats firefly-iii. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Firefly III Updated

Firefly III follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Firefly III is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

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See also: Actual Budget — simpler zero-based budgeting alternative

See all open source finance tools at OSSAlt.com/categories/finance.