A plain walk-through of what Money Manager Ex actually does: accounts, budgeting, investments, reports and privacy, in the free, open-source v1.9.2 release.
Free & open source (GPL v2) · Windows, macOS & Linux · Android & iOS companions
Money Manager Ex features cover the everyday jobs of personal finance without a subscription: it tracks multiple accounts and currencies, records transactions with splits, plans budgets, follows investments and builds reports — all from a single data file kept on your own device. MMEX is a wxWidgets desktop app that stores everything in one SQLite file you can optionally protect with AES-256 encryption.
Create as many accounts as you need — checking, savings, credit cards, cash and investment accounts — each with its own opening balance and currency. Money Manager Ex converts between currencies using rates you set, so travellers and people paid in more than one currency can still see a single consolidated net worth.
Record income, expenses and transfers between accounts. A single transaction can be split across several categories (for example one supermarket receipt divided into groceries, household and toiletries), and each entry can carry a payee, notes and attachments.
Payees are reusable, so you type a shop name once and reuse it. Categories are nested, letting you group, say, "Car" into "Fuel", "Insurance" and "Repairs". A clean category tree is what makes the reports readable later.
Set up rent, salary, subscriptions or loan payments once and let MMEX remind you or enter them automatically on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly cycle. Upcoming items appear on the dashboard so nothing is missed.
Track investment accounts with individual holdings, purchase prices and current values. It is a record-keeping tool rather than a live trading terminal, but it is enough to see how a portfolio contributes to overall net worth.
Add non-cash assets such as a house, car or equipment, with optional appreciation or depreciation over time. These feed into the net-worth figure alongside your accounts.
Define a budget per category for a month or a year, then use the budget performance report to compare planned against actual spending. It is a straightforward envelope-style approach rather than an automated coaching system.
Attach receipts, invoices, warranties or PDF statements directly to transactions and accounts, so the paperwork lives next to the money it relates to.
MMEX ships with standard reports for cash flow, income and expenses, and category breakdowns, plus a General Report designer that runs your own SQL against the database and renders charts. The SQL layer is powerful but does take some learning.
Import statements in QIF or CSV format from your bank, and export any data back out to CSV. There is no built-in bank aggregation — you download the file from your bank yourself and import it, which keeps things private but means some manual steps.
The interface is translated into 30+ languages by the community through Crowdin, so most users can run MMEX in their own language.
The same application runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux, and a portable mode lets you carry MMEX and its data on a USB stick. Separate Android and iOS companion apps sync with the desktop file.
Money Manager Ex is released under the GNU GPL v2. It is free to download, use, change and share, with no ads and no paid tier. Official releases are published on GitHub; donations to the project are optional.
Your finances live in one SQLite file that you can encrypt with AES-256. Nothing is uploaded to a company server, so the data stays under your control on your own device.
There is no proprietary cloud. If you want sync, keep the single data file in a folder that Dropbox, Google Drive or another service already syncs, and open it from any machine. See the comparison with Quicken for how this differs from subscription apps.