You want your financial life on your own machine, not in someone else's cloud. Good news: you have real options, and several are free. This is a comparison from the people who build one of them, the Krosos desktop app, so take the bias as declared. For a lot of readers, a free app below is the better answer, and we say which.
The short version
- Want it free, on any computer or phone, and mostly about investments? Start with Wealthfolio.
- Have a home server and want a web app in ten languages? Ghostfolio.
- Care most about correct performance maths? Portfolio Performance.
- Actually want a budget, not an investing view? Actual or Firefly III.
- Live in Belgium, France or Germany, have a Mac with Apple Silicon, and want capital-gains tax calculated from your own transactions? That is the gap the Krosos desktop app fills, for €60 a year.
At a glance
| Mainly for | Where it runs | Price | Automatic sync | Capital-gains tax | Retirement forecast | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wealthfolio | Investing and personal finance | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, or your own server | Free; broker sync from $79/yr | Paid add-on | None listed | Yes, with Monte Carlo |
| Ghostfolio | Investment portfolios | Your own server, or their cloud | Self-hosted free; cloud Premium $48/yr | Import and export listed | None listed | FIRE calculator |
| Portfolio Performance | Investment performance | Windows, macOS, Linux, plus a mobile app | Open source | Not mentioned | Records tax paid; no report listed | Not listed |
| Actual | Envelope budgeting | Local app, optional self-hosted sync | Open source; donations | Bank sync via GoCardless (EU/UK), SimpleFIN (US/Canada) | None listed | None listed |
| Firefly III | Bookkeeping and budgets | Your own server | Free, open source | Data importer | None listed | None listed |
| Krosos desktop | Whole net worth, tax, forecast | Mac with Apple Silicon only (beta) | €60/yr | Exchanges, wallets, banks through your own Enable Banking app | Belgium, France, Germany | Yes |
Checked on the products' own sites on 2 November 2026. "None listed" means we did not find it on their public feature pages, not that we tested the app and proved it absent. Prices and features change, so check before you decide.
"Local" does not settle the privacy question
Local storage answers one question: where the database sits. It does not answer the second one, which is who touches your data when it syncs.
Wealthfolio is a good example of an honest design. The free app stores everything on your device, with manual entry and CSV imports. Automatic broker sync is the optional Connect subscription, which runs through SnapTrade, a third-party aggregator, on read-only connections. That is a reasonable trade, and you should know you are making it.
On Krosos desktop, exchange and wallet sync goes directly from your machine using your own read-only API keys. Bank balances are different: they go through your own Enable Banking app, which is a third party too, and setting it up takes more effort than a one-click link. What a bank connection actually shares covers that in detail.
So if privacy is the reason you are here, ask both questions of every app, ours included. And if manual entry suits you, then a free local app with no sync at all is the most private option on this page.
What five years costs
The list prices above hide what you pay over time, so here it is over five years, at today's prices.
| Setup | Five years |
|---|---|
| Wealthfolio, Portfolio Performance or Actual, manual or free sync | 0, plus your time |
| Ghostfolio on your own server | 0, plus the server |
| Ghostfolio Premium in their cloud | $240 |
| Krosos desktop | €300 |
| Wealthfolio with Connect Essentials (broker sync) | $395 |
On price alone, Krosos does not win against a free app, and it never will. You would be paying for the time you do not spend on tax and upkeep, so the fair test is what that time is worth to you. A portfolio with three purchases a year does not need us.
Where the others win
- Platforms. Krosos desktop is a Mac-only beta for Apple Silicon, installed through Homebrew. Windows is planned, not available. Wealthfolio runs on every desktop system and on phones. If you use Windows or Linux, this comparison ends here for the desktop app, though our hosted plan works in any browser.
- Price. Five of the six options on this page start at zero.
- Openness. Their source code is public, so you can read it, run it and fork it. Ghostfolio is AGPLv3 and Portfolio Performance is EPL. Krosos is not open source. If you need to audit every line, that decides it.
- Self-hosting. Wealthfolio publishes Docker guides and Ghostfolio is built for your own infrastructure. Krosos desktop is a single app on a single Mac: one licence, one seat at a time, no server of your own.
- Performance maths. Portfolio Performance has years of focus on time-weighted and money-weighted returns. If that is your main question, it is the specialist.
- Budgeting. Actual and Firefly III do day-to-day budgeting properly. Krosos is not a budgeting app.
Where Krosos desktop wins
- Tax from your own transactions. The Belgian, French and German presets work out the capital gains from your actual buys and sells, with each country's rate, exemption and cost-basis method. Across the other apps' public pages we found no equivalent. If you are unsure why the method matters, FIFO or average cost shows the difference on real numbers.
- The whole picture in one file. Bank accounts, brokers, property, loans and crypto sit in one ledger, with a retirement forecast running on what you actually own. You can try that forecast without installing anything on the free calculator.
- No server to look after. There is no Docker and no port to secure. The app and its database live on your Mac as a single file you can copy.
- Nothing on our side. On desktop there is no Krosos server holding your data. The app contacts us once a day for the licence check, and fetches prices and syncs from your machine. Everything else works offline.
Two limits are worth knowing before you buy. It needs a yearly licence, and if that lapses the app goes read-only: your data stays yours, but you stop adding to it. And backups are your job, because we have no copy.
How to choose
Start with a free one. If Wealthfolio or Ghostfolio does what you need, stop there, and keep the money. Move to something paid only when you can name the job the free app leaves you doing by hand. For a Belgian, French or German investor on a Mac, that job is usually the tax calculation, and you can try Krosos desktop free for 14 days to see whether it earns its €60. If you would rather we handled backups and access from any device, the hosted plan is the same price.