Integrate with Actual Budget

Support level: Community

What is Actual Budget?

Actual Budget is a fast, privacy-focused app for managing personal finances. It helps users track and manage their income, expenses, and budgets in real time.

-- https://actualbudget.org/

Preparation

The following placeholders are used in this guide:

• actual.company is the FQDN of the Actual Budget installation.
• authentik.company is the FQDN of the authentik installation.

info

This documentation lists only the settings that you need to change from their default values. Be aware that any changes other than those explicitly mentioned in this guide could cause issues accessing your application.

authentik configuration

Redirect URI changes in authentik 2026.5

In authentik versions earlier than 2026.5, all Redirect URIs are automatically treated as Authorization type. If you are using one of these older authentik versions, add only the Authorization URL to your Redirect URIs and do not configure a Post Logout URI.

To support the integration of Actual Budget with authentik, you need to create an application/provider pair in authentik.

Create an application and provider

1. Log in to authentik as an administrator and open the authentik Admin interface.

2. Navigate to Applications > Applications and click New Application to create an application and provider pair. (Alternatively you can first create a provider separately, then create the application and connect it with the provider.)

   • Application: provide a descriptive name, an optional group for the type of application, the policy engine mode, and optional UI settings. Note the application Slug because it will be required later.
   • Choose a Provider type: select OAuth2/OpenID Connect as the provider type.
   • Configure the Provider: provide a name (or accept the auto-provided name), the authorization flow to use for this provider, and the following required configurations.
     • Note the Client ID and Client Secret values because they will be required later.
     • Add a Redirect URI of type Strict Authorization as https://actual.company/openid/callback.
     • Select any available Signing Key.
   • Configure Bindings (optional): you can create a binding (policy, group, or user) to manage the listing and access to applications on a user's Application Dashboard page.

3. Click Submit to save the new application and provider.

Actual Budget configuration

With Environment Variables

You can configure OpenID Connect with Actual Budget by adding the following variables to your .env file.

.env

ACTUAL_OPENID_DISCOVERY_URL=https://authentik.company/application/o/<application_slug>/
ACTUAL_OPENID_CLIENT_ID=<Client ID from authentik>
ACTUAL_OPENID_CLIENT_SECRET=<Client Secret from authentik>
ACTUAL_OPENID_SERVER_HOSTNAME=https://actual.company

By editing the JSON file

You can configure Actual Budget to authenticate users with OpenID Connect by modifying the /data/config.json file or its equivalent specified by the ACTUAL_DATA_DIR environment variable.

/data/config.json

{
    "openId": {
        "discoveryURL": "https://authentik.company/application/o/<application_slug>/",
        "client_id": "<Client ID from authentik>",
        "client_secret": "<Client Secret from authentik>",
        "server_hostname": "https://actual.company"
    }
}

Using the UI

Alternatively, it is possible to configure OpenID Connect via the UI.

1. Sign in to Actual Budget and select your budget by clicking its name.
2. In the top-left corner, click your budget name to open the dropdown and choose Settings.
3. Scroll down and select Show advanced settings, then enable I understand the risks, show experimental features.
4. Enable OpenID authentication method.
5. Scroll up and click Start using OpenID under the Authentication method section.
6. Fill in the following values:
   • OpenID Provider: authentik
   • OpenID provider URL: https://authentik.company/application/o/<application_slug>/
   • Client ID: enter the Client ID from authentik.
   • Client Secret: enter the Client Secret from authentik.
7. Click OK. Actual Budget redirects you to the login page after saving the OpenID configuration.

User provisioning

First OpenID user

The first user to log in with OpenID is granted admin permissions and becomes the server owner. The server owner cannot be changed from the Actual Budget UI.

Actual Budget does not create additional OpenID users automatically unless ACTUAL_USER_CREATION_MODE=login is configured on the server. If you do not enable automatic user creation, create each user before they sign in with authentik:

1. Log in as a local (non-OIDC) admin.
2. Navigate to Server online > User Directory.
3. Create users with usernames matching the corresponding authentik users.
4. Open the budget and grant access from the User Access tab.

To let Actual Budget create users when they first sign in with authentik, add this variable to your server configuration:

.env

ACTUAL_USER_CREATION_MODE=login

Configuration verification

To confirm that authentik is properly configured with Actual Budget, open Actual Budget, select the OpenID login method from the dropdown menu, and click Sign in with OpenID.

Resources

• Actual Budget docs - Authenticating With an OpenID Provider
• Actual Budget docs - Managing Multi-User Support