Deploy and Host Household Envelope Budget with Actual on Railway

A protected Actual Budget sync server with persistent budget files.

About Hosting Household Envelope Budget with Actual

Households wanting an envelope budget with files they control.

Sign in through the operator gateway and create the Actual server password during first setup. Create or import a budget, add accounts, import a small statement file and reconcile it. Keep independent budget exports.

Included services and storage

Service	Persistent storage	Public access
App	/data	Private network only
Gateway	None; container state is disposable	HTTPS domain

First deployment

Review required inputs in the deploy form and supply your own administrator email where requested.
Deploy the services and wait for the application and any database migrations to finish.
Open the generated HTTPS domain and follow the workflow above.
For the first browser prompt use username operator and the generated Gateway.GATEWAY_PASSWORD from Railway variables. App-specific accounts, where present, remain separate. The App service has no public domain.

Why Deploy Household Envelope Budget with Actual on Railway

The definition supplies an HTTPS endpoint, generated credentials where supported and explicit storage paths. PostgreSQL, when present, stays private. Public upstream image manifests are locked to immutable digests so an upstream tag change does not silently replace a running version.

Common Use Cases

Plan monthly spending envelopes.
Import statements and categorize expenses.
Synchronize a household budget across browsers.

Dependencies for Household Envelope Budget with Actual

Upstream application and its documentation. The upstream authors own the application and its license. This recipe does not claim application authorship or official endorsement.
Caddy gateway using generated Basic authentication and WebSocket-capable reverse proxying.
A Railway plan with resources sufficient for these services. Hosting, storage and outbound traffic are billed by Railway; no software subscription, bank connection, SMTP account or provider credit is included.

Operational limits and backups

This provides the sync server, not financial advice or a banking service. Bank sync, if used, requires a supported external provider and your own authorization. The extra gateway can require an initial browser login on each device; native clients unable to supply it need a separately reviewed authentication setup.

Run one replica for volume-backed applications. Schedule volume backups and export important application data; a persistent volume is not a backup. Keep generated secrets with the backups and review upstream migration notes before changing the pinned image. Credentials cannot all be rotated by changing first-run environment variables after accounts already exist.

Validation status

Prepared on 2026-10-18 from upstream installation documentation and public image manifests. Railway schema, variable references and publication metadata are checked before publication. Application runtime boot checks were not performed. This is an independently authored deployment recipe for existing software, not a claim of novel software, audited security or Railway partner verification.

Deploy this recipe

Review the required inputs and hosting resource costs before deploying.

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These are separate deployments; no preconfigured integration between the applications is implied.

Disclosure: this template is maintained independently. Its maintainer may earn Railway usage kickbacks when other people deploy it. Railway bills hosting separately; no paid software subscription or provider credits are included.