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Open Net Worth is a self-hosted take on Claude and ChatGPT Personal Finance

Open Net Worth is an AGPL-3.0 project that tracks budgets and investments on your own machine. Its agent, Lucius, can also place trades through a broker.

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Editorial2 min read

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Open Net Worth GitHub repository

Image: GitHub

Why it mattersClaude Personal Finance works in the US only and reads data through Plaid. Open Net Worth runs on any computer and supports any country and currency.

Claude Personal Finance and ChatGPT Personal Finance both read your money through a US bank link. The ledger stays on their own servers. Open Net Worth does the same job on your own computer. It also places trades.

The project at open-net-worth-ai/open-net-worth passed 418 stars on 12 November 2026. That is 28 days after its first commit. The licence is AGPL-3.0. The description reads: "Self-hosted alternative to Claude and ChatGPT Personal Finance. An AI agent that manages your budget and investments, and can place trades."

What it does

The app keeps a real ledger on disk. It supports multi-currency balances, zero-based envelope budgeting, holdings, dividends, realised gains, options and RSU grants. There is also a retirement plan and a net-worth projection. A bank sync pulls transactions through SimpleFIN, Plaid, Enable Banking or Lunch Flow. A broker connector reaches Alpaca and Interactive Brokers.

The agent is called Lucius. The README says Lucius "works your real book through real tools". He logs and sorts transactions, reconciles accounts and builds reports. He can also act in connected apps through Model Context Protocol servers. Placing a trade with a connected broker is one of those actions.

Every tool Lucius calls carries one of three permission levels: always_allow, needs_approval, or blocked. The default is needs_approval. So a trade or a transfer asks before it runs. An admin can lock a tool out entirely.

The app installs three ways. A desktop build bundles Python. A server install runs it headless. Docker runs the same server image. The desktop app can point at a remote server instead of local storage. A family can share one ledger on the home network.

Where it sits next to Claude and ChatGPT

Anthropic launched Claude Personal Finance on 5 November 2026. It reads US bank data through Plaid in read-only mode. It is open to Pro, Max and Ultra plans. The data stays on Claude. ChatGPT Personal Finance is also US-only. Both carry the vendor's own limits on what the agent may touch.

Open Net Worth takes the other side. The data stays on your machine. The agent can act, not only report, and that includes trades at a connected broker. Any country and any currency work, because the connectors are not tied to Plaid. Some readers do not want a US cloud to see their finances. They now have a way to try an AI agent on that data.

What a careful user should check

AGPL-3.0 is a copyleft licence. A company that forks it and offers it as a service must publish its own changes. A broker trade from a language model also needs a careful read of the permission map. Setting always_allow on a trade tool defeats the point of the review.

A new project with 418 stars has not been run at scale yet. A reader taking it seriously should start on a paper broker or a small account. Watch what the agent does before granting more rights.

Source

open-net-worth-ai/open-net-worth, GitHub.

SourceGitHub

This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.

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