Actual Budget runs on your own machine — the client starts it, so there is no endpoint to ping. 452 installs a week from npm. Last commit 3 Nov 2026.
Actual Budget, carefully: deletes preview first, and new transactions check for duplicates.
Nothing serious here today
Today is the operative word: we check Actual Budget every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.
Connect this server
This server runs on your own machine — install it with the package manager and the client starts it for you. Package name taken from the official registry entry.
claude mcp add actual-budget-mcp -e 'ACTUAL_SERVER_URL=<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>' -e 'ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID=<ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>' -- npx -y actual-budget-mcp{
"mcpServers": {
"actual-budget-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"actual-budget-mcp"
],
"env": {
"ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID": "<ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>",
"ACTUAL_SERVER_URL": "<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>"
}
}
}
}[mcp_servers.actual-budget-mcp]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "actual-budget-mcp"]
env = { ACTUAL_SERVER_URL = "<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>", ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID = "<ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>" }{
"mcpServers": {
"actual-budget-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"actual-budget-mcp"
],
"env": {
"ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID": "<ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>",
"ACTUAL_SERVER_URL": "<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>"
}
}
}
}{
"servers": {
"actual-budget-mcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"actual-budget-mcp"
],
"env": {
"ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID": "<ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>",
"ACTUAL_SERVER_URL": "<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>"
}
}
}
}Put your own values in place of
<ACTUAL_SERVER_URL> (URL of your Actual Budget server, for example http://localhost:5006), <ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID> (Your budget's Sync ID, found under Settings > Show advanced settings).
The author’s registry entry marks them as required.
Optional settings from the registry entry, left out of the block above:
ACTUAL_PASSWORD (Password for your Actual Budget server. Not needed if you set ACTUAL_SESSION_TOKEN), ACTUAL_SESSION_TOKEN (Session token for servers behind OIDC, which have no password. Use instead of ACTUAL_PASSWORD; if both are set, the token wins), ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD (Only needed if your budget file is end-to-end encrypted), ACTUAL_READ_ONLY (Set to 1 to hide every write tool from the model, exposing only reads and analysis), ACTUAL_TOOLSET (Set to chat to offer the 18 everyday tools instead of all 44, which is 17.4 KiB of tool descriptions instead of 39.7 KiB on every connection. Defaults to full), ACTUAL_DATA_DIR (Directory for the local budget cache), ACTUAL_HTTP_TIMEOUT_MS (How long to wait for your server to start replying, in milliseconds. Defaults to 60000; raise it if a GoCardless bank sync is being cut off).
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Actual Budget — questions
Answers built from our own checks of this server.