actual-mcp

Actual Budget MCP Server

MCP server for integrating Actual Budget with Claude and other LLM assistants.

Overview

The Actual Budget MCP Server allows you to interact with your personal financial data from Actual Budget using natural language through LLMs. It exposes your accounts, transactions, and financial metrics through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Features

Resources

Account Listings - Browse all your accounts with their balances
Account Details - View detailed information about specific accounts
Transaction History - Access transaction data with complete details

Tools

get-transactions - Retrieve and filter transactions by account, date, amount, category, or payee
spending-by-category - Generate spending breakdowns categorized by type
monthly-summary - Get monthly income, expenses, and savings metrics
balance-history - View account balance changes over time

Prompts

financial-insights - Generate insights and recommendations based on your financial data
budget-review - Analyze your budget compliance and suggest adjustments

Usage with Claude Desktop

To use this server with Claude Desktop, add it to your Claude configuration:

On MacOS:

code ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

On Windows:

code %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the following to your configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "actualBudget": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "actual-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ACTUAL_DATA_DIR": "/path/to/your/actual/data",
        "ACTUAL_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "ACTUAL_SERVER_URL": "https://your-actual-server.com",
        "ACTUAL_BUDGET_SYNC_ID": "your-budget-id"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "actualBudget": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-it", "--rm", "-p", "3000:3000", "sstefanov/actual-mcp:latest"],
      "env": {
        "ACTUAL_DATA_DIR": "/path/to/your/actual/data",
        "ACTUAL_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "ACTUAL_SERVER_URL": "https://your-actual-server.com",
        "ACTUAL_BUDGET_SYNC_ID": "your-budget-id"
      }
    }
  }
}

After saving the configuration, restart Claude Desktop.

Installation

Prerequisites

Node.js (v16 or higher)
Actual Budget installed and configured
Claude Desktop or another MCP-compatible client

Setup

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/s-stefanov/actual-mcp.git
cd actual-mcp

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build the server:

npm run build

Configure environment variables (optional):

# Path to your Actual Budget data directory (default: ~/.actual)
export ACTUAL_DATA_DIR="/path/to/your/actual/data"

# If using a remote Actual server
export ACTUAL_SERVER_URL="https://your-actual-server.com"
export ACTUAL_PASSWORD="your-password"

# Specific budget to use (optional)
export ACTUAL_BUDGET_SYNC_ID="your-budget-id"

Example Queries

Once connected, you can ask Claude questions like:

"What's my current account balance?"
"Show me my spending by category last month"
"How much did I spend on groceries in January?"
"What's my savings rate over the past 3 months?"
"Analyze my budget and suggest areas to improve"

Development

For development with auto-rebuild:

npm run watch

Testing the connection to Actual

To verify the server can connect to your Actual Budget data:

node build/index.js --test-resources

Debugging

Since MCP servers communicate over stdio, debugging can be challenging. You can use the MCP Inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node build/index.js

Project Structure

index.ts - Main server implementation
types.ts - Type definitions for API responses and parameters
prompts.ts - Prompt templates for LLM interactions
utils.ts - Helper functions for date formatting and more

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.