What Is sure and How to Use It: we-promise's Self-Hosted Personal Finance Suite

Personal finance apps are convenient right up until you remember your bank data sits on someone else's server. Self-hosting fixes that but often brings a wall of deployment, backup, and multi-device sync work. we-promise/sure targets both ends. It is an open source, self-hosted suite that pulls bank accounts, transactions, bills, investment holdings, and an AI finance assistant into one system, with web, phone, desktop, and PWA clients sharing a single backend. Its tagline says it is for everyone and built by everyone.

What Is sure

sure is a community-built open source personal finance app that puts data ownership first. It gathers multiple bank accounts and transaction feeds, bills, securities and investment holdings, an AI conversational assistant, and PDF statement import into one self-hosted service, covering web, mobile, desktop, and an installable PWA. The repository was created in July 2025 and was still receiving commits on 11 November 2026, a lively pace. It has about 12,114 stars and 898 forks, with a homepage at sure.am and source under AGPL-3.0. One point to set out early. It is a tool for organizing and viewing financial data. It offers no investment advice and makes no buy or sell decisions for you. Everything runs under your own account on hardware you choose, so the records never need to leave your control.

Features

• Multi-source account sync. Enable Banking, Akahu, Plaid, SimpleFIN, and similar connectors pull balances and transactions from several banks into one ledger.
• Securities and holdings. TwelveData and Yahoo Finance keep prices current, so the portfolio sits in one view beside the bank side.
• Bills and transactions. Income and spending, plus recurring bills, live together and sort by tag.
• Document import. PDF statements are vectorized through pgvector on PostgreSQL, then queried through the assistant in plain language instead of opened one by one.
• Finance assistant. A /chat endpoint answers questions like how much went to dining this month, drawing on the imported records and linked accounts.
• Encrypted storage. Sensitive at-rest data, including bank IBANs, IPs, account numbers, and holdings payloads, is encrypted before it lands on disk.
• One-click backup. sure-backup packages the database, volumes, .env, and compose files, with rollback and restore.
• One backend, many clients. Mobile, Tauri desktop, and PWA share the same service.

For deeper protection of the disk holding your backups, pair it with What Is VeraCrypt and How to Use It. Bank connectors, price feeds, and the vector store are each swappable, so you are not tied to one provider.

How to Use

1. Prepare an always-on machine with Docker and Compose, then copy compose.yml from the official docs.
2. Fill in environment variables and database settings, then start the web and worker images.
3. Create an account in the web UI, then bind a bank data source in settings and finish the authorization flow.
4. For security prices, add a TwelveData or Yahoo Finance API key.
5. Drop PDF statements into the import page. Once vectorization finishes, the chat assistant can query them.
6. Run sure-backup regularly and store the archive on another disk or off site. Restore with compose.restore.yml.

Keep a second copy of backups. What Is FreeFileSync and How to Use It shows one way to mirror them.

Supported Platforms

The server runs most comfortably on a self-hosted Linux host, where Docker and Compose are first-class. Desktop clients cover Windows, macOS, and Linux, and the mobile and PWA clients use the same backend, so data stays in sync across devices. A single instance is enough for a household, and the database, storage volume, and environment file can all be backed up together.

Pricing

sure is open source under AGPL-3.0. The software is free to deploy and use, with no subscription or premium tier. What costs money is the infrastructure: an always-on host, a domain, and third-party bank data interfaces, some charging per call or per account. Those running costs dominate the total over time, so work them out before comparing feature lists. For one household the bill is modest but does not disappear, and the license never adds a cent.

Use Cases

• Privacy first. Keep bank statements off commercial ledger services.
• Household books. One shared instance, with each member's accounts and bills kept separate.
• Investment overview. Holdings and bank balances in a single view, for record keeping only.
• Small teams. Freelancers or studios running their own accounts.
• Document archive. Vectorize paper and PDF statements, then search history in natural language.
• Learn by building. Practice Docker, Helm, and vector retrieval on a real project.

To be clear, this tool only records, organizes, and totals what you put in. No figure on its screens is a basis to buy or sell, and the assistant summarizes rather than recommends. Markets carry risk, and any investment decision is yours to make and to own.

How It Works

sure is built as a community project, with detailed contribution guides, review automation, and quick issue responses, which is what the "by everyone" tagline points to. It uses CalVer with SemVer aliases, and development has run from early 2024 into November 2026 with unusual transparency. AGPL-3.0 fits the self-hosting stance, since modified versions serving others must also stay open. Docker images split into web and worker roles, and a Helm Chart reaches Kubernetes, covering solo users and small teams alike. For anyone who wants financial data back under their own roof, that model is a good deal more reassuring than a closed product. Development has stayed visible for years, so a change in direction or a stalled release is easy to spot early.

Conclusion

sure turns managing your own books, once a fairly tall order, into a Compose file plus one backup routine. Its feature coverage is broad and the multi-device experience is consistent, which suits people willing to run their own service. One last reminder. The tool only lays your data out clearly and keeps it on your own machine. It makes no investment judgment for you, and with real market risk, that call stays yours alone.

Project https://github.com/we-promise/sure Homepage https://sure.am