Personal finance · checked 2026-10-19

Can I vibecode Lunch Money?

KINDA· weekend project

Lunch Money's core is a ledger: accounts, transactions, categories, rules that clean up payees, recurring items, monthly budgets, tags, splits and totals in several currencies. An agent builds that on SQLite with CSV and OFX import in one session. The pipes are what cost the weekend. Lunch Money pulls transactions through Plaid, which is built for companies; for one person SimpleFIN Bridge, which Actual Budget's docs price at $15 a year for mainly US and Canadian banks, is the realistic route. A multi-currency budget also needs daily exchange rates kept for past dates, and a phone-friendly view needs hosting.

$10/moprice

$120you'd save a year

weekendbuild time

—people replaced it

Before you start

What you need on hand.

DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.

TimeA weekend; bank sync and currency rates are the slow parts

Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
Node.js 22better-sqlite3 compiles a native module, so build tools must be installed.
Your Lunch Money CSV exportUse it to check totals and, with the follow-up prompt, to import your history.
Bank files or SimpleFIN BridgeOFX or CSV downloads from your banks, or a SimpleFIN account if you want automatic pulls.

Before you buildLunch Money has a 30-day trial with every feature. Actual Budget is free to self-host and can sync banks through SimpleFIN, so try it before building.

1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.

The prompt

Build me a personal budget and transaction tracker to replace Lunch Money. Requirements:

- Node.js 22 + TypeScript: a Fastify API and a React front end built with Vite. `npm start`
builds the UI and serves it on http://127.0.0.1:4750 only.
- Storage: better-sqlite3 at ./data/money.db. Money is integer minor units plus an ISO
currency code; every write runs in a transaction. Accounts (checking, credit card, cash,
manual asset), transactions (date, payee, category, tags, notes, amount, currency, reviewed
flag), splits, and transfers stored as linked pairs.
- Import: CSV (`papaparse`, map columns once per account) and OFX or QFX (`ofx-js`). Show a
preview, skip duplicates by FITID or by date, amount and payee, and report what was skipped.
- Rules: when the payee contains or matches a regex, or the amount is in a range, set payee
name, category or tags and mark reviewed. Run on import and on demand, and show in the
transaction's history which rule changed what.
- Recurring: propose monthly and weekly items from history (same payee, amount within 10%,
steady interval) for me to confirm; show expected against received this month.
- Budgets: a monthly amount per category with optional rollover, shown in a base currency
using daily rates kept in a table. FX_SYNC=1 fetches rates from the Frankfurter API; otherwise
rates are entered by hand.
- Inbox of unreviewed transactions with keyboard shortcuts to categorize and mark reviewed.
- Reports with Recharts: spending by category per month, income against spending, net worth.
- Optional bank sync: with SIMPLEFIN_ACCESS_URL in .env, pull new transactions into mapped
accounts once a day. Off by default.
- Single user. No accounts, no telemetry; only the SimpleFIN and rates calls can leave the
machine, and both are off by default.
- Out of scope: Plaid, mobile apps, shared budgets, crypto wallets, investment performance.
- README: exporting CSV or OFX from banks, where the data lives, backups, and how to compare
one month's totals with Lunch Money's own CSV export.

Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.

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Then keep going

Next prompts, same folder.

The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Lunch Money.

Extend the budget tracker in this folder. Requirements:

- Add `npm run import:lunchmoney <file.csv>` for Lunch Money's transaction export. Map date,
  category group and category, payee, amount, currency, notes, tags and account name; recreate
  categories and accounts that do not exist.
- Rebuild splits from the parent ID column and mark rows that have a recurring ID.
- Run in dry-run mode first and print counts per account; skip rows already present.
- Update the README.

Extend the budget tracker in this folder. Requirements:

- On the first day of each month at 08:00 (`node-cron`), email a summary with nodemailer using
  SMTP settings in .env: spending by category against budget, the five largest transactions,
  and unreviewed counts.
- Render the email as plain HTML without remote images.
- Add a `npm run summary -- 2026-09` command that prints the same summary for any month.
- Update the README.

Extend the budget tracker in this folder. Requirements:

- Add a /quick page built for phones: amount keypad, category buttons for the six most used
  categories, an account picker remembered from last time, and a Save button.
- Make it installable as a PWA (`vite-plugin-pwa`) and queue entries offline, sending them
  when the connection returns.
- Protect the page with one password from .env; the README explains HTTPS over Tailscale.
- Update the README.

What you lose

Automatic bank syncing through Plaid, and cryptocurrency wallet sync
A hosted web app you can open from any device without running a server
The developer API and the community integrations built on it
Recurring-item detection and rules tuned by the company over the years
The Discord community and the beta-testing program

Why people still pay

Everything is in one price, with no tiers or ads, and by the company's own account it doesn't sell your data. The price you join at is kept for as long as you stay. Add automatic bank sync and multi-currency totals, and it suits people who want a finance app that runs itself.

Moatintegrations execution polish

Do the math

Lunch Money or your own copy?

Over

Your usage

Count my time12h ×$/h

Lunch Money, 1 yr$120

Your own copy, 1 yr$20running + build session

You keep$101pays for itself in the first month

Estimate · Runs on your machine for nothing. SimpleFIN Bridge is about $15 a year if you want automatic bank pulls. The build is token usage on your agent plan.

Leaving Lunch Money

Take your data, then cancel.

1 · Take your data out of Lunch Money

1Open the Transactions page and clear any filters, because the export covers only the transactions in the current view.
2Click the Export to CSV icon at the far right above the table. The file holds date, category group and category, payee, amount, currency, notes, tags and account name.
3Splits and groups come with parent IDs and original names, and recurring items carry a recurring ID, so you can rebuild them elsewhere.
4Net Worth and Analytics data can be downloaded as CSV too. We found no export for rules or budget settings, so screenshot them before you leave.

2 · Cancel Lunch Money

1Open Settings, then the Billing page.
2Choose the option to cancel the subscription and delete your account.
3Your account and all its data are purged and unrecoverable within 48 hours, so export first.
4To keep the data instead, use Pause my subscription on the same page: charges stop and unused time becomes credit.

While paused you cannot open your data, and pausing gives up your locked-in price, so compare it with simply exporting and cancelling.
The pricing page does not mention refunds beyond the 30-day risk-free trial; ask support if you were charged by mistake.
Removing a bank account from Lunch Money is separate from deleting the account, and an account that shares a Plaid connection with other active accounts cannot be removed fully.
Download the CSV before cancelling and test an import into your replacement while your old data still exists.

Checked 2026-10-19 against Lunch Money's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4

The escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These are already free.

Actual BudgetOpen sourceMIT local-first budgeting with an optional self-hosted sync server; bank sync is optional and uses SimpleFIN Bridge (about $15 a year, per its docs) or other bridges.★ 30k · active Oct 2026 · one-click install
Web, Windows, macOS, LinuxVisit ↗Firefly IIIOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 self-hosted finance manager with budgets, rules, recurring transactions and several currencies; closer to bookkeeping than to a budgeting app.★ 25k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗SureOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 community continuation of the archived Maybe app: accounts, transactions, budgets and net worth, self-hosted with Docker.★ 11k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗

All 4 free alternatives to Lunch Money ›

The numbers

Lunch Money pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	What you get
Monthly	$10	—	All product features, access to the Discord community and the beta-testing program.
Annual	—	$8.33	The same features as Monthly.
Organizations	custom	—	A separate plan for sharing Lunch Money with a team.

Free tier: A 30-day trial with all features; there is no permanent free plan.
Billing: Monthly or annual, in USD, with CAD and EUR views of the price. Your price stays at the rate you joined at or last chose. Pausing gives a prorated credit for unused time but gives up the locked-in price and blocks access to your data while paused. Coupon codes have been discontinued. Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link work everywhere; SEPA, iDEAL and other methods depend on region.
Hidden costs: None on the plan itself: one all-inclusive price. Bank syncing runs through Plaid, which cannot reach every bank, and some connections must be removed account by account.
Source: lunchmoney.app

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Questions

Lunch Money, briefly

Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.

Ask a question ›

Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Automatic bank syncing through Plaid, and cryptocurrency wallet sync, A hosted web app you can open from any device without running a server.

About $10 a month on the Monthly plan, $120 a year (checked 2026-10-19).

Automatic bank syncing through Plaid, and cryptocurrency wallet sync; A hosted web app you can open from any device without running a server; The developer API and the community integrations built on it; Recurring-item detection and rules tuned by the company over the years; The Discord community and the beta-testing program. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.